Sandy Brown has been making ceramics now for over 50 years and is internationally known. After being introduced to ceramics in Japan, Sandy learned there that pots can be dynamic, exciting, free, and irregular. Moreover, they can be loved and used for those qualities.
Sandy makes a wide range of ceramics from mugs to large sculptures and architecture, having even made a full-sized building, ‘Temple’. Smaller pieces are thrown on a slow-turning Japanese kick wheel, the most sensitive wheel there is, which allows her to make soft, sensual forms. The larger sculptures are developed from maquettes which Sandy makes intuitively, essentially through doodling.
Some of her ceramics are vehicles for painting. Dinner plates and platters for example. The way in which Sandy works means that pieces are unique and cannot be repeated. Using sgraffito, coloured glazes and oxides, applied with various sizes of brushes and slip trailers, decoration is inspired from nothing else other than the language itself. The painting of each piece leads into the next piece, with no plans or pre-conceived ideas. Sandy works instinctively, intuitively. “That is so easy once I get going. It is playing, and because I feel so happy when I am feeling free that comes across in the work. The work is joyful, celebratory.”
Sandy has exhibited world-wide and is held in collections in many museums worldwide including the V&A Museum, London; World Ceramic Centre, Ichon, Korea; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada; Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts, Germany.
