Sarah Drew
jewellery artist
I have been making jewellery from odd things since I was 14, and selling my work for the past 20 years through contemporary craft shows, exhibitions and through galleries around the UK, France and in Hong Kong.
I live in St Austell with my family and dog, and work in my studio in St Austell town centre. Using recycled materials and basically ‘rubbish’ to make jewellery is a sustainable way of creating unique pieces that aren’t a strain on new resources and whose material components are traceable.
I’ve sourced traceable boulder opals from Australia which I set in recycled gold and eco-silver for magically coloured statement rings and pendants; and I can collect amethysts, aquamarine and other crystals from local disused clay pits in Cornwall to make into claw-set rings and combined with found rust to make statement necklaces. I loved working with raw Whitby jet for my Strata collection.
I like to challenge ideas of preciousness by combining these found materials with gold and semi-precious stones so that they are appreciated in the same piece, in the same way: so that we recycle plastic as well as we do gold.
Sarah Drew
Karen McEndoo SWAc NAPA
My childhood was spent in Africa, much of it in the depth of the African bush with my father where he worked for the WHO. I later studied Graphics and Illustration at Taunton more recently moving towards abstraction which better suited my response to events and scenery around me. Several years ago I made Cornwall my home, the wilderness here reflecting my memories of the colours, smell and art of Africa
Terra Mater Art came about as a result of our collective response, as artists, to the growing concern over climate change. It is true to say that there is worldwide unease about the state of the planet, as is the apparent and increasing frustration around the slow reaction of governments to tackle global warming
Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the task and am often left with a sense of hopelessness, after all what can I do on my own? I have found the answer in my own garden in Tregony near Truro and the wilder areas around me whilst I both walk and sketch; so much better to focus on something that I can control and to encourage wildlife and biodiversity in my unkempt garden.
My painting may not be realistic in style but is influenced by areas around my home, not only because they are breathtakingly beautiful but because they are teeming with life, life that is worth celebrating, protecting and encouraging.
It is fortunate that as artists we can use art as a positive medium to raise issues to hopefully engender interest and inspire others to feel the same way.
I am a full member and committee member of the Penwith Gallery in St Ives and member of the South West Academy of Applied Arts. My work iis on show in several galleries around Cornwall and in Marlow, Bucks.
Karen McEndoo
Jill Eisele
painter
My painting career started as a Fine Arts graduate and has always been about moving forward with a personal visual language.
Mostly landscape inspired, I am deeply affected by the layers of history I find so powerfully in West Penwith.
I take regular drawing and painting trips to provide copious drawings and ideas for exploration in my studio. I am inspired by atmosphere, weather and light, my work is about moments….beginnings and possibilities; layers of colour and texture, that mirror my surroundings.
I am delighted to be part of this exhibition, and will be showing work mostly originating in the strange spring of this year.
Jill Eisele
Bridget Macklin
Ceramicist
I am a ceramic artist with a fascination for stories. Geology is at the core of my work: the forces which shape our moors and mountains, cliffs and coasts.
Each piece of work begins with the same blank canvas: a thin sheet of pure white porcelain with its connotations of beauty, value and fragility.
Into this I mix local raw materials which I find whilst out walking. These materials interact with the porcelain to build vibrant strata of colour and interest. The inside of each piece is glazed while the exterior is polished and waxed to a unique glow.
For Germination I have focused on new life, sometimes in the form of making vessels to hold and nurture seeds during the physical act of beginning to grow, sometimes it has been the birth of new ideas – many of which started to grow during the isolation imposed by lockdown.
I am an Associate member of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen and a selected member of Design Nation, a Crafts Council body set up to promote British design by some of the most innovative designers and craftspeople from across the UK.
Bridgit Macklin
Dana Finch
painter
I work with a combination of sensory memories, impulse and painterly process, building illogical narratives from layers of paint and toil. It is a loose system of forgetting, recalling and excavating lost moments, fragments of childhood exploration and glimpses of paradise, and unfolding it all into a place apart - a place of mystery and longing.
I have been painting all my life, and sometimes making other art forms. I studied Visual Performance at Dartington College of Art in the 1990s. I like to travel to hot places, love deserts and fountains, and now paint quietly in a studio at Trewidden Gardens surrounded by the exuberant plants that feature in much of my work.
Paula Downing
ceramic artist
My work has evolved over time and is always changing.
The ideas are a result of observations made whilst walking the moorland and spectacular rugged Atlantic coastline of Cornwall. For some years I had the privilege of living on the edge of the moorland, just out of St. Ives and very close to the dramatic Atlantic coast. The ancient sites, hilltop forts, quoits, standing stones, way markers and remnants of the mining industry in that area, were and for me still are, a constant source of inspiration and wonder. It never fails to excite me.
I find it breathtakingly beautiful, whatever the weather. I have always been fascinated by the variety of rock forms. The way the sea has sculpted powerful profiles to edge the land as it meets the sea. This thread of an idea continues in my work but is constantly changing and developing.
No two pieces are ever the same. Hopefully, my work is an honest and respectful response to the world that remains unchanged by modern humankind.
Katie Bunnell
Ceramic artist
Dr Katie Bunnell has a longstanding love of ceramics in all its complex historical, contemporary, cross cultural and artfully decorative guises. This interest is referenced in her recent work through playfully modelled scenes exploring human perspectives on animals and landscape, and the relationships between mark making and three dimensions. Drawing is fundamental to Katie’s practice and new works in clay have sprung to life from ink and brush paintings based on traditional Chinese techniques for rendering trees, mountains, rocks, clouds, branches and flowers. There are references also to chinoiserie plate designs and staffordshire flatback figurines.
Katie completed an MA in Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art, London in 1993 and in 1998 was awarded a doctorate from The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen for her PhD thesis, The Integration of New Technology into Ceramic Designer-Maker Practice. In 1999 Katie became course leader for 3D Design for Sustainability at Falmouth University, and subsequently Associate Professor of Design, establishing Autonomatic, an award winning research group exploring craft and digital technologies. Katie has presented her work in conferences and exhibitions worldwide, including Collect, the leading international fair for contemporary craft and design and has work in the work in Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collection.
Katie’s recent work marks a return to a direct engagement with clay, her love of its incredible versatility, and all the risk, frustration and delight it brings with it. Working from her studio at Grays Wharf, Penryn, Cornwall, she combines her individual practice with community projects and workshops. As a Whitegold Curator from 2019 to 2021, she worked with Rosanna Martin to establish Brickfield, a community brickworks based in a disused china clay pit in St Austell, and initiated the Whitegold International Ceramics Prize which celebrated artists who work in and with community. In 2022 Katie worked together with Grays Wharf CIC to produce My Jubilee, a community art project enabling 70 mostly over seventy year olds to celebrate their lives through designing their own commemorative plate in the year of the Queen's platinum jubilee.
Working with clay, stuff of the earth, and heating it to phenomenonly high temperatures in a kiln is provocative in a world of global warming: it is impossible to ignore the fact that the transformation of soft clay into hard ceramic takes huge amounts of energy. This material transformation is everywhere and often obscured in everyday life, and it deserves our full attention. The process of making ceramics brings it into view and fosters real consideration of what gets fired and what gets recycled. The purchase of a new kiln this year has greatly increased the energy efficiency of making and the ability to track and control that.
Instagram: @_katiebunnell_
www.katiebunnell.co.uk
Donna Burns
Jewellery artist
I live and work from my home studio in south east Cornwall. Working mostly with recycled silver I shape simple organic lines and forms to craft timeless, understated jewellery. Exhibiting with Terra Mater has allowed me the freedom to explore new ideas and create one off pieces from my experiments with reclaimed and repurposed materials. Things I have gathered during walks in the Cornish landscape or that have serendipitously made their way into my studio.
The Tides exhibition features artworks created as a visual response to its theme. Pieces that are inspired by the ceaseless ebb and flow of the sea, which in turn evokes the rhythmic patterns of breathing and the dancing cycles of the moon. Framing these fleeting ephemeral moments that weave the eternal cycle of life against the infinite form of the circle.
www.donnaburns.co.uk
Linda Gibson (Styles)
Ceramic artist
I am a believer in the old ways of seeing and doing, whilst also being open to stepping outside of my comfort zone of preferred solitary practice, collaborative self-directed research projects continuing to be the backbone of my practice since 2004, the excitement of possibility being difficult to quantify in words.
My core belief is in the power of our natural creative instincts, the need to embellish being intrinsic to humankind, pottery telling us so much about ways of living and being in a time before this.
I feel that the integrity of ‘old’ skills is more relevant today than ever before, tactile sense being an underrated pleasure, the mark of the hand continuing to link us, as one, as human beings.
My ongoing research continues to explore rites of passage and ‘love’ in all its guises. This necessitates delving into the power of the sacred nature of the contemplative object, especially to do with the all-encompassing sorrows of Maternal grief.
Throughout the decades of devotion to my practice, I have continued to carry a yearning to develop the wilder aspects of my work, evoking memories of a time and place which I feel is familiar, yet is still ultimately unknown, perhaps a combining of looking and feeling my way back, in order to move forward.
My technical interest continues to lie in low temperature heat works, using an ever-evolving combination of specific combustibles for optimum alchemical effects, and continue to call upon my recollection of fragmented memories of this sacred place that has been my home for forty-five years.
The need to collect specific objects that are linked to my earlier manifestations of ‘self’, covering the latter half of the 20th Century, fire being integral to my core being from the age of five.
I have returned to working within the figuratively based and popular culture referenced assemblage technique, that I have used intermittently since 1993…about to be exaggerated, distortion and chaos to the fore, tested to the point of and perhaps beyond collapse.
Footnote: It is my core belief that an uprising of the feminine is building momentum, the old ways coming to the fore once again.
Linda Gibson
Laurel Keeley
Ceramic artist
Originally studying English and American Arts and Literature at Exeter University, with a Masters degree gained in Toronto, Canada, she returned to Exeter to undertake a PhD in American Arts, studies which were abandoned in favour of following Vocational Ceramics at Exeter College of Art and Design. The first workshop was established in Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon in 1978, since when she has sold through group and solo exhibitions, and Crafts Council registered galleries throughout the UK. She worked in the tile design industry from 1978 to 1981, and has taught in Adult Education Centres in various locations in Devon. She now lives in Mid Devon and teaches only at Coombe Farm Studios, Dittisham, Devon.
Whitney Manning
Sculptor
I’m a Cornish artist and make animal skull sculptures, artwork and leatherwork embellished with pyrography.
Having studied archaeology in Truro, I’ve always been fascinated with ancient cultures, societies and symbols: in particular those from Celtic and Scandinavian cultures. I use recurring symbol themes from different periods such as the bronze age, iron age, neolithic and Mesolithic, that were shared by many ancient people across the world. They give my artwork meaning and link what I make now to
what was made in past civilisations.
I also like to link the symbols I use to the place of origin or location where the skulls were found; a way of honouring the animal’s life. For our Degrees show, the skulls I drew on symbolise the death of animals and risk of extinction of many species due to climate change.
But they are also a hope that we as humans can revert to living alongside and in tandem with nature and animals once more, as ancient people did thousands of years ago.
www.instagram.com/
ironwoodembers
Jo Hague
Textile artist
Jo is a sustainable textile designer from Lostwithiel, Cornwall. She designs and makes 3D sculptural wall and hanging installations for indoor and outdoor sheltered spaces within commercial and residential environments.
She repurposes discarded industrial plastic waste and at times will combine those plastics with 100% organic wool felt to transform into hand crafted artworks. Unwanted plastic materials are sourced from local scaffolding companies, garden centres, supermarkets and coastal erosion projects, therefore, helping to protect our ecosystem and wildlife.
Once a piece of work is designed and cut, it is machined using threads made from recycled plastic bottles or 100% organic cotton.
Inspiration for each piece of work is taken from Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly’s natural environment. Jo’s approach to her craft is slow and mindful with minimal colours and textures to bring about a sense of curiosity. Her work is unique and is intended to create aesthetically pleasing textiles that cast shapes and patterns within the shadows either with natural or artificial light.
Her work portrays a sense of simplicity, calmness and balance.
‘Tides’ highlights the fact that at least 14 million tons of plastic ends up in our ocean which can be found on the shoreline, sea surfaces, sea floors and in marine organisms. Plastic pollution threatens human health, food safety and quality, coastal tourism and contributes to climate change.
Ann-Margreth Bohl
sculptor/installation artist
Stone, Light, Shadow and Sound with their unique qualities and timelines are the starting point in my work, combining geological and universal time with endless rhythms and levels of impermanence.
I try to tap into what it means to be human, trying to make sense of the right here right now and the consequences of our actions.
When I was a young child my parents took me to many churches in my native Germany, I have a sense that the multi sensory feast housed in these buildings still finds a way into my work.
Working as a paediatric nurse with terminally ill children started in my early twenties the questioning of life, death and the transience of human life.
In the past 20 years I have been drawing and carved stone, created light and sound-installations, collaborating with musicians, digital sculptors, light designers and sound engineers.
www.annmargrethbohl.com
Dana Finch
Paula on the beach
Dr Katie Bunnell
Donna Burns
Linda Gibson (Styles)
Laurel Keeley
Whitney Manning
Jo Hague
Ann Margreth Bohl