2019 AWARD WINNER | Cardiff School of Art

Elin Hughes

BA (Hons) Ceramics | Cardiff School of Art

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1. Tell us about yourself, your work, and your career path so far.

I was born in Carmarthen and spent my first few years living in Llandovery, so like most children living in South Wales at the time, my earliest experience of throwing a pot was at St Fagans National Museum of History. Later on we moved further north and I found myself completing a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Dolgellau’s Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor.

Throughout my childhood I had violin lessons, at first with a classical teacher and later with the jazz violinist Billy Thompson where the focus was very much on improvising. I found it a very difficult thing to do on an instrument but working with clay I have finally found a place where improvising comes naturally and I’ve reignited that freedom of playing with a material that is very easily lost when we grow into adulthood. Writing my dissertation on the relationship between clay and time at the end of 2018 became the spark for a new body of work this year. I became interested in how the linear approach we have to making can be challenged and as a result have tried to use cycles, returning over and over again to a piece.

2. Describe your first encounter with clay?

I think like a lot of children, rather than clay exactly, what I remember vividly is making things from materials with a similar texture and consistency. We always had lots of colourful playdough in the house and a plastic extruder which my brother and I pushed clay through to make coils. I remember the sweet salty smell really vividly and the way it stained our hands. In the tiny village where I lived we also had a play park next door where I would sit for hours in the summer rolling earth from molehills into balls. There are lots of these memories involving touch from my childhood and I think the importance of these came back when I rediscovered clay at college. My first encounter with clay itself is a little less exciting, I painted a mug at Narbeth’s creative café and it’s been sat on a shelf in my grandparents’ kitchen for the past twenty or so years. Needless to say it hasn’t been a love at first sight kind of relationship with clay!

3. Why did you choose ceramics?

My conversion to clay surprised me. I’d always considered myself a two dimensional thinker, drawing and painting all my life but never venturing far into the mysterious three-dimensional world until about five years ago. Encouraged by my college ceramics teacher Jane, I visited the International Ceramics Festival in 2015 and found myself watching Gareth Mason’s demonstration on the main stage. I’d never seen anyone engage with a material with such passion, enjoyment and humour before and there was something so daring about throwing slabs of clay on the floor and using a blow torch on porcelain, it reminded me of watching daredevils and stuntmen on Britain’s got Talent. There was an element of risk that the clay might collapse at any time which I found really exciting. Perhaps as a result, to begin with I adopted a very slow, safe method of making through coiling to begin to understand clay as a material. I spent months peacefully coiling big bosomed hairy bird sculptures for my foundation show which couldn’t be more far removed from what I make now.

4. Where do you find inspiration? Places, people, objects, music...

My dad loves British comedies like The League of Gentlemen, Shooting Stars, Harry and Paul and The Mighty Boosh, so I grew up with this surreal sense of humour embedded in my childhood. Although he’s Welsh, I don’t have a Welsh accent myself so people are really surprised when they find out I am a fluent Welsh speaker! This sense of surprise and fracturing the familiar can also be seen in the songs by my favourite band MGMT, the rhythm’s unexpectedly changing tempos and time signatures fracture synthy electronic pop melodies. I finally feel that these influences are working their way into my work, there is a sense of fun and anticipation to these new vessels which is something I struggled to get into my pots before. Studying abroad in Sweden I found myself really questioning my identity for the first time, as a Welsh person, a UK citizen and member of Europe but also the rest of the world and that’s had a huge influence on my recent work which is more fractured, in flux and appears to be always on the brink of collapse.

5. What are the tools of your trade that you can't do without?

I would struggle to make the objects I do without a wheel. I have tried using slabs before but the particle alignment in the thrown pots adds a tension to the vessels which gives me something to work against when I slice and turn them inside out. It adds a whole new dimension to the making as I’m not only fighting against gravity but also against the clay’s natural tendency to curl around. I say fighting against but it is as much a case of working with the material as going against it. It would also be difficult to make without a cutting wire too. It’s the only tool you really need when throwing a pot on the wheel, although kidneys and sponges on sticks help. I use a cutting wire lots to slice my vessels apart in fluid sweeps. Using a pin tool can work too but being much more direct you risk the lines looking too contrived. The cutting wire helps keep a freshness to the shape and follows the natural curve of the vessel.

6. What is a typical day in the studio like?

I usually have a variety of clay pots all at different stages of drying in the studio at the same time. In the morning I might throw a series of 2-3kg bowls, a couple of smaller cylinders then a handful of experimental forms off the hump. I wrap these up then the next day I alter them, stick them together then continue wrapping and unwrapping the pieces and building up the vessels for up to a week. In the meantime I’ll get back on the throwing wheel or make some exciting extrusions with which I can alter the thrown sculptures. I don’t like to use a heat gun because I find the pieces don’t dry as evenly and being patient also means I have to spend more time with each stage of the vessel considering how to best balance the form. In between juggling the various processes of throwing, hand-building and extruding I take lots of tea breaks, sometimes taking time off in the library where Cardiff Met keeps a great selection of journals including The Log Book – the international publication for those interested in wood-fired ceramics.

7. What do the next 12 months have in store for you?

I’m excited to have the opportunity over the next couple of months to travel around different parts of the UK, beginning with exhibiting at New Designers at the end of June. I’ve been following a few makers from other universities on Instagram and it will be fantastic to finally see their work in the flesh! Throughout July I will have a selection of my functional reduction fired pieces on display in a guest maker space at Celf Aran Arts in my hometown of Dolgellau. I’ll also be off to the International Ceramics Festival in Aberystwyth working as a CSAD student demonstrator (and hopefully getting the opportunity to sneak over to see Jean-François Bourlard & Valérie Blaize’s experimental punk raku performance!). We graduate in mid-July after which I’ll be travelling to Worcestershire on a month long Ryall Hill residency, digging up river clay and making work for Art in Clay Hatfield where you can find me with the rest of the CSAD exhibitors. I’ll be returning to live in Cardiff after that and moving into a new studio at Cardiff School of Art’s Incubation Space for recent graduates.

8. What advice do you have for those currently studying ceramics in further education?

Find the opportunity to study abroad! In my second year I spent six months at Gothenburg University’s HDK where I had the chance to fire a Japanese style anagama kiln for the first time as well as help set up a music festival alongside a group of international students. Brexit has cast uncertainties over the future of Erasmus funding and studying abroad but British Council Wales has recently launched a new short term student mobility programme called Global Wales Discover which will allow Welsh undergraduates to work, study or volunteer in another country for up to eight weeks. For other students in the UK, keep your eye out for opportunities. Funding is usually available to support living costs and travel and you may also be lucky enough to be offered free language lessons. Who knows where you’ll end up and what lifelong friends you’ll make!