Meet The Maker – Sue Candy

Sue Candy – Ceramicist

After studying a City & Guilds course in Ceramic Design and having a number of careers including English Teacher and member of a wholefood co-operative, Sue set up as a full-time ceramicist eight years ago.  She now works from a workshop at the bottom of her garden in the creative town of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, designing and making contemporary tableware, wall pieces and ceramic jewellery.  

Jewellery Box

All of Sue’s work is handmade with care from porcelain slabs, and decorated using a variety of techniques including inlay, sgraffito, incising, metal lustre painting and printing.  Each piece is finished with a transparent silky glaze and fired to 1230°, making her tableware waterproof and dishwasher safe.  Her reputation is built on the clean geometric shapes and delicacy of her designs, applied with a limited colour palette. 

Tall Lidded Box

The imagery Sue uses is drawn from coastal, horticultural, Scandinavian and Japanese influences, which unconsciously become absorbed into the melting pot of ideas, and resurface as a range of unique decorative and functional tableware and accessories.

Chutney, Salt and Pepper and Mustard pots

 Sue regularly exhibits at galleries all over the UK and stocks approximately twenty galleries at any one time.  She also sells direct to the public at contemporary craft fairs and online.  She is a member of Northern Potters and an Associate Member of Northlight Art Studios.

Jewellery Box, Vase and Bud Vase

Heart Gallery regularly showcases Sue’s ranges and we currently have this turquoise version on our shelves.

Meet The Maker – Rowena Gilbert

Rowena Gilbert – Ceramicist

Searching for the perfect fusion of strong design, innovative style and spontaneous expression. The clay vessel is Rowena’s bold canvas; strong, simple and unfussy in form. Layers of clay echo periods of time, memories; slow, controlled, ordered. The surface evokes moods, tensions, actions and reactions.

Ceramic Stem Vases – Meadow Design

Rowena’s pots and bowls are slip-cast using a fine white clay body or adding metal oxides to produce coloured clay bodies. The coloured clay layers are brushed on or inlaid in incised lines and marks. The surface marks are created using various sgraffito tools when the clay pot is in a leather-hard state

Ceramic Small Bowls – Meadow Design

Rowena bisque fires to 1000C then masks areas on the outside of the pot/bowl using wax or paper resist, glazing the unmasked areas with a transparent gloss with its final firing at 1120C.

Dandelion Ceramic Curved Vases

Heart Gallery adores Rowena’s work and is proud to be one of her carefully chosen stockists for her latest range. Call in and see it soon x

Ceramic Deep Bowl – Meadow Design

Meet The Maker – Lesley Nason

Lesley Nason – Ceramicist

After working as a textile designer in the fashion trade for 20 years, Lesley decided 8 years ago to take a break from the creative world. She started a natural health business which allowed her plenty of free time and it was in this free time that she decided to enroll on a beginner’s ceramic course. Lesely was hooked! Her ceramic work has now taken over from her other business and Lesley is once again enjoying working creatively and designing and making beautiful objects…..only this time her medium is clay!

Three trees – ceramic wall plaque

Using porcelain clay Lesley creates contemporary wall art, decorative vessels and jewellery inspired by the countryside surrounding her home in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Her work combines the use of engraved surface texture, oxide, resist and crackle glaze to depict and capture the beauty of the British landscape.

Two Trees

Lesley’s  initial sketches are transferred onto the soft clay with texture then following a bisque firing resists, oxides and crackle glazes are applied to add detail, shading and contrast to the piece.

Running Hare

Heart Gallery is showcasing Lesley’s stylish wall plaques and vessels in the Christmas Exhibition and we love her colour palette and designs of the British countryside.

Vessel

 

Meet The Maker – Elissia Grace

Elissia Grace – designer/maker

The arrival of a niece and nephew reawakened Elissia’s interest in childhood and in family life.  She really enjoys trips to the seaside and grand days out.

Dangling Leg ceramic range

These have become the focus of her design work and provide a great opportunity to bring together the things that she loves e.g. line, pattern and colour.

Dangling Leg range – textiles

Elissia often works from photographs that she has taken on days out. She can then produce line drawings and sewing-machine drawings, to which she then adds pattern and colour elements using a combination of collage and Photoshop. These images are then developed for homewares, fabrics and gifts.

Dangling Leg ceramic range

Her current range consists of ceramic ware, framed art work, interior textiles such as cushions, aprons and tea-towels, some of these in child-friendly sizes.

Child’s apron from Dangling Leg range

Meet The Maker – Simone Morris

Simone Morris – Ceramicist

Since graduating with a First Class BA Hons in Decorative Arts from Nottingham Trent University in July 2011 Simone is now working in her own little studio in Staffordshire, designing, making and selling her porcelain work.

Porcelain bowls – Simone Morris

 Inspired by colour, collections and porcelain as a material, Simone uses hand building techniques, mould making and slip casting to create collections for both you and the home. Mixing her own colours into porcelain gives her the ability to create a unique tonal palette that brings her work together as a collection.

Vessels – Simone Morris

As a Staffordshire maker she is passionate about supporting local businesses. She sources all materials locally aiming to keep Stoke on Trent as the heart of her Ceramic world.

Tea lights – Simone Morris

Heart Gallery fell in love with Simone’s work in 2011 so we are really proud she has carefully selected us to showcase a range for her.

Meet The Maker – Ami Derbyshire

Ami Derbyshire – Ceramicist

Ami’s one-off ceramic pieces are infused with nostalgia, wit and intricacy.  She invites the viewer to step back in time drawing them into a kaleidoscope of decadence and whimsical imaginings.

Madame Guillotine

Ami’s one-off ceramic pieces are infused with nostalgia, wit and intricacy.  She invites the viewer to step back in time drawing them into a kaleidoscope of decadence and whimsical imaginings.

Summer Frolics

To this Ami adds a hearty dose of humour by combining found objects with her own additions to create witty, tongue in cheek pieces.   All finished in a variety of sumptuous glazes. 

Tea’d Up

Please accept our invitation and step into Ami’s ceramic wonderland……………

The Bold and the Beautiful

fanciful vessels……..

 

Meet The Maker – Gary Thomas

Gary Thomas – Artist and Ceramicist

Gary’s return to ceramics came somewhat late in life after many years spent working as a graphic designer, art lecturer and stained glass window restorer.

’4′ Series

Ever since then, the magic of clay and the processes associated with it have become all consuming – striving and searching for that little something extra!

‘C’ Series

 Form, shape, surface, colour, pattern, texture – the driving force for all the pots made by Gary at Deanroyd Pottery, Walsden.

‘Ampersand’ series

For Heart Gallery’s latest short exhibition, SPIRIT, Gary produced a small body of work on tiles and framed them simply so that the detail in the ceramics stood out.

’4′ series

 

Meet The Maker – Eric Moss

Eric Moss – Potter

Eric work’s in raku and naked raku as he likes the way the finished pots reflect their ‘elemental’ journey from mud to ceramic: Eric thinks this particular process imparts a ‘sense of life’ within a piece. 

Knife Family

The transparent crackle glaze Eric uses dresses tightly-controlled, sculpted forms in a complementary random and natural effect sometimes punctuated by paper and glue resisted areas. Thrown pots are modified with shaped ‘ribs’ during throwing and often have no base so the pot can ‘rock and roll’ without tipping. 

Seedpod

Seedpods group

Eric enjoys this play between the fragility of the pot and the durability of its composition.  His forms suggest seeds and nuts, ringed planets, flower bracts and jet engine parts. 

Small Boat Balancers

Larger, sculptural, work: The ‘Big Boat’ theme Eric is exploring is assembled components, press moulded with a variety of surface treatments and levels of enclosure; The ‘Knife form’ – not quite a cylinder and not quite a cube is intriguing by virtue of it being three dimensional but with only two sides and one edge – follow the knife edge with your finger and you end where you began.  This form is ‘scale independent’, lending itself to manufacture in many sizes – groups of varied sizes ‘nest’ together in ‘family units’

Knife couple

Much of Eric’s work is in 2 or more parts and very tactile with a range of display configurations which invites the observer into the sculptural process. 

Squid & Seed Mated Pair

Shark

Heart Gallery has showcased Eric’s work before but we still get excited when he delivers his new pieces – his work will be with us for our next exhibition launch to celebrate our 6th Birthday.

Eric Moss

SPIRIT

SPIRIT – Heart Gallery’s 6th Birthday Exhibition

Yes! We are 6 next month and after the year that we have had in Hebden Bridge with the devastating floods we felt it was something we needed to celebrate! So you really do have to come and join us on Sunday 23 September for the Summer Garden Party celebrations we had to postpone.

SPIRIT – Heart Gallery’s 6th Birthday Exhibition

We have rushed to put this exhibition together but have fantastic support of previous makers alongside new ones keen to be a part of our celebrations. Keep checking into the blog for some sneaky peeks at all the work due in for this exhibition and see you on the 23rd x

Meet The Maker – Fiona Mazza

Fiona Mazza – Ceramicist

Fiona was born in Yorkshire and has always been interested in the natural world. After going back to education in 1998 Fiona studied ceramics in a part time capacity and then became technician and part time lecturer at Harrogate college. Fiona was awarded with a first class BA honours at Harrogate College in June 2010.

Butterfly Wings Clock – Fiona Mazza

Fiona’s work is noticeably influenced by landscape, and the nature in the landscape. Each piece is hand-built or slip cast and carved. Coloured slips are used and burnished to create a smooth finish and then the piece is bisque fired to 980°. One of Fiona’s ranges focuses on the wonderful world of butterflies. Enabling an exciting development of colourful forms. The final firing for the butterfly pots is Raku, the drama of which appeals to her both as a maker, and as an appropriate way to finish the work.  

Butterfly Wings Clock – Fiona Mazza

Fiona has also been making moulds and casting from pumpkins grown on her allotment, then applying slips and carving holes so they can be lit with the lights provided creating subtle patterns on the area around the pumpkins. The final firing for the pumpkins and the clocks is to 1220° in an electric kiln this makes them more durable.

Ceramic pumpkin lights – Fiona Mazza

Heart Gallery was blown away by Fiona’s work when we first met her in April 2012 and couldn’t wait to showcase her pieces. We hope you are as excited about her work as we are; the little battery operated light in the pumpkin gives it a lovely red, blue or green glow.