Introducing Guest Artist CLIVE DAVIES : a potted history

HWAT is delighted to welcome the distinguished potter, Clive Davies, as one of our special guest artists for the 2009 Harleston & Waveney Art Trail.

Clive Davies has been a professional potter for nearly forty years. During that time he has shown his ceramics in many exhibitions in the UK and abroad.

Davies works with a fine, textured stoneware clay, to create a range of jugs, bowls, plates and mugs, that are decorated with a variety of coloured patterns. He also designs & makes fountains to commission, and other sculptural pieces.

Clive explains more about his working methods:

I use a fine, pale stoneware clay, very smooth and a delight to work. The pots are firstly bisque fired. Base glazes are then applied by dipping and pouring, after which various coloured glazes are used to create a range of patterns and effects. To achieve this I use wax resist, brushes, rollers and sponges. The decorated wares are finally fired to 1300 centigrade in a reducing atmosphere to produce distinctive flowing colours. Decorating the pots is like a continuous experiment, one set of patterns and colours suggesting and nudging, urging on others.

Clive tells us where his fascination with ceramics began:

By the time I had finished National Service in 19621 knew two things; one was that I was unemployable and two that I was creative, but being untrained, I had no direction and was frustrated. Change came when two friends introduced me to ceramics. In a very short time I gave up my employment rented a cottage in rural Suffolk and became self-employed. I threw myself obsessively to learning everything I could about pottery I progressed.

By 1973 I became a full member of the Crafts Potters Association. I developed a range of domestic ware that was plain and simple and finished in a celadon glaze. This work sold well for many years at David Mellors and similar outlets. In 1980 I went to the Dordogne to set up a small wood firing pottery. This marvellous experience gave me a different aspect on ceramics. On returning to England a year later, I was resolved to serious change. I made a new clay body; fine and smooth and developed coloured glazes to fit.  I am still fascinated with pattern and colour.

panoramic-pots.jpg

Clive Davies has had numerous exhibitions, nationally and internationally, including: Norwich Castle Museum, Aldeburgh Festival, Bath Arts Fair, St Ives Gallery, Aberystwyth University, Lancaster University, South Bank Centre London, Manchester Royal Exchange, Bluecoat Display Centre Liverpool, Round House Gallery Burton on Trent, Crafts Galerie Viena, CraftCo Southwold, Keramikmuseet Grimmerhus Denmark.  His work is also in many collections across the world: U.S.A. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Japan, Thailand, & India.

Clive Davies Pottery
Ramms Yard
25 Earsham Street
Bungay
Suffolk
NR35 1AF
01986 892685

Introducing Guest Artist DEREK NICE : invocations of the sea

HWAT is excited to welcome on board the artist sculptor Derek Nice for the Harleston & Waveney Art Trail 2009.

Derek Nice’s sea-dream is occupied in making and constructing things. Often transforming objects which have already been made – dissolved, disassembled by the sea: worked over, beached and bleached, reworked, into constructs which are invocations of the sea.

Or images which allude to, and celebrate, these transitions and processes.The erosion of land, of structure, of vessels, the stripping down of paint in layers, the exposure of grain and texture. The shapes that constitute a boat, prow, sail or rudder, a harbour or a saltpan.

You can’t take the sea away from him: it’s in his veins and arteries, the sea that is all round Britain and all round Malta. What the sea is, and what the sea does, is also Derek’s waking dream.

Piece written by David Page, a long-standing friend of Derek Nice. They had a joint exhibition in Cork Street, London in the summer of 2008.

Derek Nice will be exhibiting work both at the Harleston Gallery and at the Upper Waveney Sculpture Meadow.