Satellites by Dan Coopey at Corvi-Mora
Dan Coopey is a British artist living and working in Minas Gerais, Brazil. To be honest I’d not heard of him until a friend sent me a link to one of his Instagram posts about this exhibition. The Corvi-Mora is fairly local to me but again, I’d never visited. So a double first! Coopey studied […]
Coiled scrunchie
Teaching is never a one-way process. I often learn things from my students – as they do from each other. It’s one of the most rewarding parts of the job. On one of my coiling courses last year we were exploring how the technique can be used to create alternative forms. One of the students […]
Dryad Basketry: A Global Collection
The Dryad Furniture Showroom in Leicester was founded in 1907 by Harry Peach, a businessman who was interested in craft and design. He sold cane and wicker furniture, and during the First World War donated materials for wounded soldiers to make baskets as occupational therapy. This was so successful that he opened a handicrafts section […]
Haegue Yang: Leap Year
The title of Korean artist Haegue Yang’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery is certainly apt, as she leaps between different subjects and materials, from folk art to household objects, from paper collage to clusters of bells. I went for the basketry but stayed for much more. These were my three favourite themes. Basketry There were […]
Kitchen extension basketry
I’ve been a bit preoccupied recently because we are building a kitchen extension. Not building it ourselves, of course, but having teams of workmen knocking down walls, inserting steel beams, and building new walls. That’s as far as they’ve got in four weeks, which is pretty good going – partly because it hasn’t rained and […]
Product development for Lalo The Shop
While I enjoy creating and making my own work, I also really like collaborating with others to produce something new. So when Honey Simmonds of Lalo The Shop contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in helping out with developing a new bag I was very happy to talk to her. Lalo The Bag […]
Elements 4: Earth
It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally finished the final element of the four: Earth. To be honest, I found this the trickiest one to conceptualise. My first idea was of a snow-capped volcano (think Mount Fuji), but that didn’t seem very challenging in terms of coiling structure, though I could have added folds and […]
Elements 3: Fire
Of the elements I’ve made so far, Fire has had the most conventional start – a circular bowl starting from the centre. When I felt that the base was big enough I started creating protrusions that would become the flames. I wanted there to be further spaces in each flame on each round, so the […]
Elements 1: Water
This didn’t start out as a series. I just wanted to refire my making mojo after six weeks of lacking the energy even to read or watch TV, let alone make anything. I’d been looking at some of the wonderful Japanese wave and ripple designs published by the Public Domain Review. So I picked a […]
Pine needle baskets in Guatemala
Well, my last post turned out to be a little optimistic! After my bout of flu before Christmas I went down with another respiratory infection (possibly Covid, given how long it took to recover), followed by a urinary tract infection. But finally, after six weeks or so, I feel more like my normal self and […]
