Placement at Northshore Pottery, Caithness, 2015
Beautiful entrance into a beautiful studio
My main aim during this great experience was to further my skills as a thrower and Jenny Mackenzie Ross has helped me progress so much in such a short space of time. I concentrated on learning to pull handles, put spouts on jugs, turn appropriate bottoms for each piece as well as learn to control various sizes and shapes of pots in general.
I was aiming towards creating my first teapots, putting together all the skills I'd learned from my time in the pottery. |
My first teapots
I instantly fell in love with making teapots. As they involve multiple separate pieces becoming one, there's so much possibility to have fun with them and give them personality.
Below are some of my finished soda fired pieces, experimenting with expressive brush strokes and allowing the soda firing process to take control:
"Info-Objects" Self-Directed Project, Gray's School of Art, 2014
The aim of this project was to communicate numerical data/information and embed it within a three dimensional form, thereby avoiding the common line graph, pie chart or bar chart.
I chose to research Scottish Heather Honey and its distribution worldwide.
Scottish Heather Honey, although not as familiar a honey, actually turns out to be even more beneficial a product health-wise than the infamous and very expensive Manuka.
I chose to research Scottish Heather Honey and its distribution worldwide.
Scottish Heather Honey, although not as familiar a honey, actually turns out to be even more beneficial a product health-wise than the infamous and very expensive Manuka.
The above drawing illustrates the global distribution of Scottish Heather Honey; The centre symbolises Scotland, the far left point is the USA, next to the right is France, then Belgium, Germany, Denmark and the far right point is China. I adapted this drawing to fit onto the face of my 'designed object'-a combined honey spoon/knife/drizzler.
After doing many sketches, I drew up my final knife design in Rhino and printed it using the Rapid Prototyping Machine.
I then made a gel flex and plaster mould of this RP and cast a few in wax so that I could then cast the design in a few different metals. Unfortunately, the copper and brass casts were unsuccessful due to faults in the machinery but my aluminium cast worked really well:
I then made a gel flex and plaster mould of this RP and cast a few in wax so that I could then cast the design in a few different metals. Unfortunately, the copper and brass casts were unsuccessful due to faults in the machinery but my aluminium cast worked really well:
My honey knife design combines the aesthetic of the traditional honey drizzler with the function of the industrial honey scraping knife and the generic spoon to create a functional and aesthetic piece of cutlery which also portrays on the face of the knife, the global exports of the honey it has been designed to be used with.
Commonwealth Games Live Project 2013
This project required me to design a piece to be installed within a space in the Athletes Village for 2014's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The theme was to be 'Iconic Scotland' and so I have deconstructed tartan and then reconstructed it in a contemporary way including abstracted images of iconic Scottish landscapes.