With a training in art, design, and ceramics culminating in an MA in ceramics, Sarah creates ceramic sculptures. Taking the idea of clay as a metaphor for the body, and the body as vessel, her work explores these concepts through an abstracted study of the physiology and corporeality of the body.
Working intuitively with the clay allows a sense of the organic, allowing unexpected quirks and folds to be captured. Texture is applied and distorted on the clay itself and enhanced by the use of variegated earthy colours. ‘Alien’ objects such as nails, steel swarf, copper tubes, rope, textiles, rust, and guitar wire are added both pre- and post-firing as a way of opening up new possibilities, as well as acting as a metaphor for hubris in our relationship to nature.
Sarah explores opposites of fear and wonder, attraction and repulsion, as well as the sense of otherness evoked by looking at representations of our own bodies. She aims to create work that is both highly tactile and that elicits a visceral response. Some pieces are interactive with wires that can be plucked, and whistles that can be removed and played.
Sarah’s work is hand built using soft slab building and extruding. The process is informed by some knowledge of anatomy. Forms are built up in many stages, decorated with a volcanic engobe, oxides, and a variety of glazes, and may undergo several firings in an electric kiln.