2019 AWARD WINNER | Staffordshire University (MA)

Kian and Debbie

MA CERAMICS | Staffordshire University

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

Kian and Debbie are both graphic designers by training, and by a chance encounter, Kian fell in love with a teapot during his degree studies in Australia and upon returning home, he enrolled into a diploma course on ceramics in the hope of learning how to make teapots. Debbie frequently visit him in the studio and gradually pick up the skills and knowledge of handbuilding ceramics. Upon Kian’s graduation from college, he received interests from galleries and the couple also took in many different projects relating to ceramics, from wall murals, to making sculptures, to doing commercial jobs and education. The encounter with chefs and fueled by the growing culinary scene in Singapore, both the former paved a path in the couples’ foray into ceramic tableware making that lasted for 17 years.

2. Describe your first encounter with clay?

Kian remembers his first encounter with clay as a 6 year old digging into the soft soil in the garden of his home. Under the hot sun and humid weather of the tropics, undeterred, he reaches the layer of soil that became reddish brown, soft, moist and malleable, making human and animal figurines before baking it under the sun to fix the shapes.

On a humorous note, Debbie always concluded that she picked up clay making as a result of cleaning up after Kian.

3. Why did you choose ceramics?

It can be said that in due respect for the material, we may ponder upon the question of whether we choose ceramics or ceramics chose us, it may be a mutual relationship that, be it fate or chance encounter there was no deliberate plan that led us into this path or career. In a way, we just let the clay do the talking. That said, it is an amazing material quite unlike others that existed in time immemorial, both aesthetically forgiving and yet technically unforgiving, vice versa depending on personal expectations.

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

Having made tablewares for quite some time, we have grown quite accustomed to listening and observing the needs of users in aesthetics and functionalities. We are always questioning “why?”, “why not?” challenging if it is possible? Can it be done? Can it be better? As such inspiration can and may be a derivative of our mindset, our thirst for creativity and innovation.

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

The tools of our trade will be most importantly our hands and our many senses in marriage to a positive mindset and good discipline.

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

A typical day in the studio will be filled with passion for the craft and art of ceramics, as such that will fuel us with energy to “work” if not play with clay for 12 hours a day. The responsibility of studio ceramicist is not unlike that of parents caring for their children as the life of clay in becoming ceramics is a cycle of cause and effects or consequences, for if the foundational stages in the nurturing of the clay processes are not observed carefully much akin to a child’s growth to adulthood, resulting consequences may arise only after the final glaze firing in the form of explosions, cracks or various faults.

In a large part, a ceramicist’s studio discipline also revolves around health and safety, such is the importance of keeping the workplace dust free, so that we can live to enjoy another day.

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

We will be heading back home with new found skills and knowledge, with which we can better serve our clients and also impart to learners so that the spirit of ceramics may burn brightly into the future.

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

The world of Ceramics is a life-long journey, as one cannot acquire all there is to know and in practice about this craft and embracing it’s full potential in one’s life time. Thus it is very important to share and pass on knowledge and skills so that fresh learners do not necessarily have to keep repeating steps already accomplished by predecessors, accelerated learning can further develop and create more potententials in the use of this material that is generally of abundance in this world. Both the teacher and learners have to put aside their egos and listen and learn, humbleness as with the practice of clay making is a virtue. For clay is unassuming, the humble clay.