ARTISTS TALKING

Andrea Walsh is an artist working with ceramics and glass, and is interested in the physical and metaphorical relationships between the material object, and external qualities of light, shadow, and surface.

In 1995, she enrolled on the BA Fine Art course at Staffordshire University. Conceptually driven, she was interested in how objects could be read, depending on how they were displayed, for example, whether they were sited as part of an installation or within a museum context. Pieces were made by Walsh where possible, or by specialists in a range of materials, including raw steel and lead.

Material realisation

For her degree show, Walsh was working on a project involving glass objects. Not content this time to hand over to a technician, her curiosity for what was possible was a turning point. She realised a “longing to be in tune with a particular material. The experience of being in the hot shop was enthralling; the molten glass was seductive, magical.” While wanting to get closer to the glass, this was also a stepping back from the main route of her practice, and changing course. She had to learn technical skills, and characteristics of a material, for its own sake, not for its appearance within a conceptual piece.

Staff at Staffordshire encouraged this new direction, and recommended the International Glass Centre, in the West Midlands, where she started an intensive practical course, getting to grips with the properties and techniques of the material. By the end of 2000, she was ready to find her own aesthetic voice in glass and went to Edinburgh for the M Des.

Technical and aesthetic development

Walsh wanted to retain the transparency and liquid stillness of molten glass, without embellishment. To achieve this, it was necessary to cradle the molten glass in some way. This led to her to the consideration of what material could contain the ‘pool’ of glass, and she found it in the next door department. With support from the Ceramics team, she worked towards what she wanted: a white simple aesthetic, as unobtrusive as possible, the contained glass being the focus. Bone china was suggested to her, for its shell-like qualities. This was challenging, as she wanted to make large pieces.

A Masters degree is usually a period of research in an already known material, but she had to get in tune with ceramic, so it was a time of intense learning. Although the clay behaved in a similar way to glass, it could vitrify, and develop its own characteristics. “The journey from the mould (slip casting) to the kiln was precarious: the walls could disintegrate, crumble – it was heartbreaking. I began to add paper, which allowed some forgiveness in the structure, and gave essential strength.” She left Edinburgh after five years of formal education with a technical understanding of two materials, and how they could combine in a way that was to form the character of her work.

Setting up studio and first exposure

Walsh worked as exhibition coordinator in a contemporary art gallery in Edinburgh for five years, with the intention of continuing her own work, but it proved impossible. It was a building sense of frustration, which propelled her to set up practice and a Start up award from Scottish Arts Council in 2005 made it possible. Contact with makers through the gallery, the stories of creative success and business survival, helped her see what was achievable. She focused on a new body of work with the combination of the two materials and it was to this element that she had an especially good response.

Spurred on, Walsh presented her work at Origin 06, and exhibited at Beaux Arts, Bath had exhibitions at Beaux Arts, Bats and Open Eye, Edinburgh, as well as a showcase platform in the V&A with the Crafts Council. Feedback was positive, which gave her the confidence to continue making. Restricted by the kiln size, she thought about her pieces as groups, and her previous concerns of context came back into play.

Although conceptual motives do exist, she also concentrates on the very basic qualities such as translucency, and clarity. She is interested in what happens particularly when the objects are placed in daylight, and how that offers different interpretations.

Cove Park

After a period of working towards the deadlines and demands of exhibitions and events, Walsh felt it was time to stop. Some time had been given over to research but the question “how can I keep it fresh?” was in her mind. How to avoid repetition without abandoning the essence of her work was also a concern. In the studio environment, it was hard to pursue this enquiry with any depth. The timing was right, she sees now: she was ready for Cove Park.

She had considered applying for residencies before, but had not felt ready or that she was at the right stage of her career. What drew her to Cove Park, to apply for the international crafts residency, in 2007, was the setting, and its obvious relationship with her work. The connection between the still surface of Loch Long contained in the walls of the hills led the way for her research brief, to look at this idea of water in the landscape.

Cove Park, in Argyll & Bute, provides residencies for artists of all disciplines. Set up in 1999, the 50-acre site has unusual and beautifully sited studios (some salvaged freight containers, with glass windows punched into their ends). All face the same stunning view, but are discrete from each other. Artists are encouraged to interact with others but most time is given over to solitary occupation.

Andrea decided to spend her time totally dedicated to her practice; to reflect, and to decide in which direction to go. She took equipment with her, but spent the first month walking, allowing time to explore the area. The lack of a rigid timescale was daunting, and the concern that three months might pass by without accomplishing anything was a real one.

During the second month, many ideas came through; the question was only which one to follow. Month three was one of experimentation, while addressing her original intention. On a grand geographical scale, she considered the formation of water. “Loch Long appears deceptively shallow, there is a sense of its having no sea bed... (of) being unable to fathom it, or what it may contain.”

New depths

A new direction emerged: the idea of plumbing the depths of the vessels themselves, the potential in articulating the bases with forms that would be visible beneath the surface of the glass. The idea was more complex than she at first realised or had time to explore to fruition on the residency, but the impetus was there, and on leaving she spent a further five months of technical exploration before completing a single large piece.

Instead of using the ceramic to provide base and walls for the pools of glass, she disconnected the base of the vessel altogether, and developed wide rings of clay, which were then used to contain the glass base itself.

Without the base, the objects have little stability during the making and firing process, and therefore the walls of the pieces had to be made thicker by using an alternative method. This led to a focus on larger, individual pieces (widest diameter 400 mm) and now she sees the way clear to further explore the animation of the base surface, beneath the glass.

The experience of Cove Park was, for Walsh, more than three months in an extraordinary setting. She sees it now as a luxury, albeit a necessary one, to have that ‘time out’ to allow ideas to develop, to filter and refine. She said that in the course of a ‘normal’ year, the 5 months’ research post-residency would have been unjustified, but the residency gave this time a different value.

Exposure

In 2008, she showed the new work at Collect, and Ceramic Art London, where she displayed the pieces and met her public. The response was good, and has helped her to strengthen contacts. She is seeking more platforms, but is conscious that she is still new in practice. While she is keen to keep the momentum of Cove Park going “(it) affected every area of my life”, she is in no hurry and feels that something will develop from the work’s exposure.

“Stepping into the unknown... does scare me, but my view is that I need to challenge myself. It is absolutely necessary to do something new in order to continue and develop my practice... to keep things moving”.

Work/life/support

As much as the ideal would be to focus entirely on her own work, Walsh still works part-time in the same contemporary art gallery, and recognises the mutual benefits: she brings her particular expertise to the promotion and exhibition of the objects, while she gains from the workings of the gallery. Walsh also acknowledges the valuable support of a small group of friends, established ceramicists, who are key to her development.

“Life is very work focused, but I have chosen this route. I am passionate about this... it has fuelled my making. I am lucky to have been able to commit a large part of my life to my work.”

Links

www.andreawalsh.co.uk

The writer

Kate Stoddart is a freelance curator specialising in the visual arts, with twenty years’ experience of exhibitions, events, interpretation and publications. She currently advises artists and organisations how to develop, as well as researching, writing, fundraising and running projects. She has worked in a commercial gallery, a museum, an arts centre, an auction house and an artist-led festival.

Recent projects include the development of a textiles collection, and solo exhibitions by Catherine Bertola and Philip Eglin at Nottingham Castle Museum, 2007 and Quiet Sound, Fermynwoods 2006.

kate.stoddart@btopenworld.com

Kate Stoddart

Kate Stoddart