Interviews with our makers

How did you get into textiles? What led you to create the forms that you make?

Caro: I’m lucky to come from a family with some exemplary women textile makers – my mum is a knitter; my grandmother was a weaver, and my great-grandmother was a rug maker. In saying that, it was a bit of a circuitous route for me to start working with textiles and I first studied visual communication, worked, and travelled a fair bit, before biting the bullet and moving to Melbourne to study a bachelor of textile design at RMIT.

Following my studies, I was keen to develop a more object-based practice and set out to learn techniques for creating 3-dimensional forms. The woven vessels that I currently make came about after a lot of experimentation with different processes and materials. The traditional craft methods that I use, such as twining and coil basketry, hold central places in the expressions of a diverse range of cultures. For this reason, it’s really important to me that my work reflects my own vernacular, time and space, and the materiality of the work plays a large part in that.

Could you tell us about the tension between making ‘functional’ forms that aren’t functional in the way one might expect?

Caro: For me the tension between functional and unfunctional is inherently a bit funny. When I first started making these vessels, I was thinking about Claus Oldenburg’s massively oversized soft sculptures of everyday objects. In a similar way, I find the gap between the antiquities that my work references, and the result of trying to recreate the forms with an unwieldly material, to be quite joyous.

Many of the vessels that inspire my forms are quite domestic and functional in nature, and the people who used them were unlikely to have expected them to be unearthed as artefacts centuries later. In a broader sense, I think a lot about personal and cultural legacies when I’m weaving. I find the idea that we can’t all build pyramids and that we’re very likely to be eulogised by a completely mundane object is, in some ways, kind of freeing.

How has the pandemic impacted on your practice? Has this pushed you to develop your work in different ways? How so?

Caro: The pandemic gave me a lot of space to experiment with some very time-intensive making processes and in a broader sense, it also led me to question how my work is situated within a global context. When international supply routes started to be impacted, I looked at the materials I was using in a different way, thinking more thoroughly about their provenance. Not being able to look and feel the material prior to purchasing has been quite tricky, as I’m usually quite focused on how each textile’s properties will contribute to the form and texture of the work. For this reason, for the past few months I’ve been using a restricted palette of premium stretch velvet in different shades of blue. This limitation has been quite fruitful though as I’ve focused on weaving more complex shapes, and I’ve fallen more in love with blue than ever.

How do you anticipate or hope your works are received and enjoyed by those who experience them?

Caro: I hope that people take as much joy as I do in the formal aspects of the vessels. The pieces have a sturdy solidity, undulating texture and velvet lustre. I designed the vessels to create a visual contrast with domestic objects in complementary materials such as ceramic or glass. These works are a vivid blue which I think looks equally as good with other bright or beautiful earthy tones.

Weaving these works feels very much like a collaboration between me and the material, and it also means that each vessel is a one-of-a-kind sculpture that can never be exactly recreated. Although I’d never described myself as particularly spiritual, I do think that each vessel has its own unique kind of essence and I hope that people might connect with that aspect too.

Who do you look up to in the Victorian maker community? What do they inspire in you?

Caro: As I’ve moved into a more object-based practice, many of my contemporary references are ceramicists and sculptors. I love the diversity in the work of James Lemon, an artist & potter, whose pieces range from anarchically joyful to more functional and refined. Molly Younger is another maker whose exploration of materiality I find really inspiring. Both these makers have a tactility to their work which I really enjoy.

What advice would you give to new makers thinking of starting their own practice?

Caro: I think one of the most challenging parts of being a new maker is having faith in the creative process and not being too disheartened if an idea doesn’t pan out quite as expected. It may not be the same for every maker, but personally my studio is littered with ‘failed’ experiments which have just served to push me in new directions. While I find that making has some real highs and lows, if I focus on producing something that I enjoy, it tends to cut out a lot of the noise of self-doubt and I can relax into the process.

Many of us have found comfort and joy within our local communities during the lockdowns. What has been your community highlight during this time?

Caro: I feel really proud of what we’ve achieved as a community through the various lockdowns, and I think that it’s been an experience that has brought us together. A real highlight for me has been having the opportunity to virtually visit so many artist and maker studios which has been such an insightful way to learn about a variety of practices.

In a broader sense, it’s certainly comforting to know that people will, by and large, put the wellbeing of the community above individual wants. In saying that, I think our focus should really shift now to our global community and ensure that near and far neighbours can share the privileges that we’ve been lucky to access.

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Caro Pattle is an emerging craftsperson based in Naarm/Melbourne.

Caro’s practice explores materiality. Her current works focus on coiled and knotted vessels woven from synthetic-blend textiles. Inspired by forms found in domestic antiquities, the vessels are liminal objects which attempt to collapse past forms with present materiality. The vessels playfully muddle organic/synthetic and past/present binaries, presenting a divergent material cultural legacy for future beings to unearth from the anthropocenic strata.

Caro’s projects span large-scale public art installation through to objects for interior worlds. Caro graduated with a Bachelor of Textiles at RMIT in 2019. The recipient of several travel grants and industry prizes, she was named the Australian Textile Graduate of the Year by the Design Institute of Australia for 2020 and was shortlisted for the Design Files Awards 2021.

How did you get into Ceramics? What inspired you to begin using glass and other found materials in your work?

Georgina: I started taking a pottery class after work and instantly fell in love with it, and I gradually worked out ways I could do it more and more. After about a year I bought my own wheel and set it up in my shed. After a while I outgrew the shed and moved into my first studio which meant I could buy my first small kiln. In 2019 I participated in a residency in the small town of Onishi, Japan, which was an amazing experience. I got to experiment with Japanese clays which are quite different to the commercial clays available in Australia. Some of these clays contained pebbles, but the clay itself was still incredibly smooth and easy to work with which made them wonderful to throw. When I returned to Australia I started experimenting with adding small pebbles and rocks to different clay bodies. As sea glass has been smoothed down and wouldn’t cut my hands while throwing, I decided to start experimenting with that too. I was fascinated by the results and have been using it in my work ever since.

Could you tell us about how that works, using glass in your practice? It’s fascinating!

Georgina: One of the main components in glass is silica which is also a key ingredient in ceramic glazes, it gives them their glassy quality. The firing temperature of glass is lower than the temperature that I fire my ceramics to (1280 degrees) so the glass melts during the firing creating its own little drip of glaze. The colour of the drip depends on the colour of the glass, I tend to use mainly clear or green but will use any colour I find. There are also some interesting chemical reactions that can happen during the firing which alter the colours of the glass. This reaction occurs when the colourants in the glass react with the ingredients in my glazes or clay bodies, and you can get bright orange toasting around the glass drip or green glass turning red during the firing.

Your use of colour is sublime. Could you tell us about how you manage the perfect balance of colour in your glaze and glass?

Georgina: I’ve spent a long time developing my glazes, experimenting with different colours and textures. I attended the School of Clay and Art’s Studio program which placed a large focus on glaze development. This gave me the skills and understanding of glaze materials and chemistry to develop a suite of glazes in various shades and textures. I’m very drawn to blue and green colour palettes so I tend to combine them with neutral colours like black white and cream.

The addition of the glass adds an extra element and pop of colour to the glaze, it’s often quite unpredictable so you never quite know how it’s going to turn out. The key is a lot of testing and experimenting, to understand how the glass reacts to different clays and glazes. I was completely surprised when I discovered that green glass would turn red when it came in contact with one of my white glazes. There are endless possibilities and always new things to try, by testing you can make these exciting discoveries that then inform the direction of your work.

Who do you look up to in the Victorian maker community? What do they inspire in you?

Georgina: My teacher and mentor Neville French has been a great inspiration to me. He gave me the knowledge and understanding of glaze chemistry I needed to successfully develop my own glazes and always pushed me to keep experimenting with my forms. He taught me the importance of allowing time for creative play and experimentation within my practice.

I also share a studio with Kate Wishusen (Dot & Co) and Madeleine Thornton-Smith who have been a great support to me. We’re able to help each other troubleshoot problems when they arise — there are always a lot with ceramics — and discuss our ideas and work. This has been particularly important over the course of the pandemic where there have been so few opportunities to connect with the creative community.

What advice would you give to new makers thinking of starting their own practice?

Georgina: Firstly, I would say find the opportunities to learn from as many different people as possible, it’s amazing to see how different people approach their practice. Every potter I’ve met does things differently, and I think sometimes when you’re starting out you think there is a ‘right’ way to do things, but there are many ways you can create something and it's great to be able to pick and choose the techniques that work for you. Attend workshops and masterclasses, there are a lot of interesting online events and classes out there now too. I’d also say take the time to develop your own style, find what you love making and don’t be afraid to experiment. There’s a real pressure with social media that you have to be always making new and different things, or sticking to the latest trends. Take a step back, go at your own pace, and don’t be afraid of failure. My failures have led me to develop some of my best work, I now see failure as an intrinsic part of the process.

Many of us have found comfort and joy within our local communities during the lockdowns. What has been your community highlight during this time?

Georgina: I really enjoyed getting to know my local community better over the past year and a half, there have been so many small moments that have brought joy into the banality of life in lockdown. Last year we would have cocktails on Friday nights with our neighbours over the back fence, it was great just to have that small social interaction when we weren’t able to see anyone. It’s also been wonderful to support all the small businesses in my area and try all the delicious food on offer. I’ve found some new local gems and it’s been so heart-warming to see how these businesses have been giving back to the community even when times are so tough.

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Georgina Proud is a ceramic artist based in Melbourne/Narrm. She places a focus on materiality, creating experimental ceramic vessels with inclusions of glass and other found materials. Her work investigates how these materials react to the ceramic and firing processes.

Georgina works primarily with wheel-thrown forms exploring methods of collage and assemblage to create distinct sculptural vessels. She enjoys playing with the tension between the functional and sculptural, making work that blurs the lines between the two. Her practice places an emphasis on glaze development with a focus on new textures to add to her ever expanding glaze library. Her work explores the themes of femininity, fragility and strength through bold curves and textured surfaces that are at once both soft and robust.

How did you get into ceramics? What led you to develop the shapes you make?

Ella: When I was a kid, our neighbour was a potter and she used to let me hang around in her shed studio sometimes and paint things or play with bits of clay which she would then fire. The mystery of the process fascinated me. When I moved to Melbourne about ten years ago, I got a studio and started playing around with clay again. When my uni endeavours didn't work out, I got a job as a studio assistant for a potter and learned a bit more about the practicalities of production. I was going to my studio in my spare time and learning to slipcast from YouTube videos. The corrugated form came about when I was playing with some garden edging that was lying around and lots of experiments and mistakes later, you have the forms I make today!

Did you experiment with any other processes before you explored slipcasting? It is such a brilliant method of hand-made production. What do you find exciting/enjoyable about the process of slipcasting?
Ella: I started by just buying a block of clay and playing around with it, making shapes and little sculptures in my hands. Lots of playing with finishes and textures and learning about the firing process itself. I never learned the wheel and still don't know how to throw! Slipcasting appeals to me because you can create forms that you can't achieve on the wheel. I also enjoy the work that goes into designing and making the moulds too, it's an artform in and of itself. I've made mine so they can be used interchangeably to create different variations in form.

You have started your business during the pandemic, could you tell us what inspires you to push through the challenges that face small businesses during these times?

Ella: I had my son about six months pre-Covid, so weirdly, it kind of softened the impact of lockdowns and isolation as I was in that mode already. Unexpectedly, having a baby also allowed me the time to focus solely on my own practice, rather than working for someone else, or holding down various hospitality jobs. I used nap times to make things in my backyard studio and was gradually able to work more as we settled into a routine. He is two years old now and goes to day-care two days a week, the working-from-home-with-a-toddler struggle is real. But it is also the biggest inspiration to push through too!

Who do you look up to in the Victorian maker community? What do they inspire in you?

Ella: Victoria has an amazing community of makers and craftspeople - far too many to mention individually. I am incredibly lucky to have (my non-backyard) studio amongst a collective of very talented makers, designers and artists including Simone Tops (metal and leatherwork), Claire Best (handmade shoes), Ali Frith (ceramics), Anthony Klein (furniture) and my partner Huw Smith who does beautiful steelwork (among other things) and whose design-brain inspires and encourages me to play and try new things constantly.

What advice would you give to new makers thinking of starting their own practice?

Ella: Monetising a craft or passion can really take the joy out of it if you let it. Dedicate time to experimenting and playing with ideas and concepts that aren't necessarily for anything or anyone, but just for yourself.

Many of us have found comfort and joy within our local communities during the lockdowns. What has been your community highlight during this time?

Ella: I've found that people in the local maker community have been really open and receptive to connecting, supporting and sharing ideas online, both within and outside of the maker community. I'm looking forward to hopefully meeting a few of my new 'online' maker friends in the real world soon!
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Ella Reweti is a Perth-born, Melbourne/Naarm-based ceramicist. She is self-taught, continually learning as she makes each piece slowly by hand in her Northcote backyard studio before firing.

Ella works primarily with slip casting methods to produce vases, planters, and tableware. Her practice is centred around making functional, sculptural pieces, inspired by industrial architectural forms. She has developed a range of stackable, interchangeable plaster moulds that can be used to create multiple configurations, which forms the basis of her collection of vessels, entitled ‘Tilde.’

How did you get into working with algae-based bioplastic? What led you to working with it?

Jessie: The environmental issues we face are extreme and have been forefront in my mind for most of my life. A few years ago, I experienced serious health issues and it made me rethink how I was spending my life. At the end of 2019 I made a commitment to start exploring this practice and began experimenting with a range of recipes I’d found on open-source resources like Materiom. I had most success with algae-based recipes and coincidentally was provided the opportunity to travel to Morocco on an artist residency at the invitation of Anais Lellouche, a London-based curator who I’d gotten to know when she lived in Melbourne. Upon further research, it turned out Morocco is where most of the world’s agar comes from, which is the algae-based polymer I’d been using. I used this opportunity to research deeply into the supply chain — meeting with marine biologists, academic researchers, local harvesters, sustainability experts and the family who began the industry there, and still run Africa’s only processing plant — which provides more than half the world’s supply of bacteriological agar (the substance at the bottom of petri dishes).

It is a fascinating material, and I know everyone will want to know – what actually is it?

Jessie: It’s helpful here to firstly define a plastic, both as a material property and a material. Plasticity is the ability for a material to be moulded into various shapes.

A plastic material is generally something we know to be a synthetic material made with polymers as their main ingredient. The most common one we know, which has become default, is petrochemical plastics. These are surprisingly also algae-based. Petroleum is formed from algae that has been buried underneath rock and subjected to heat and pressure for millions of years.

The environmental issues surrounding our use of petrochemicals are well-known. Not only drilling for extraction of these finite deposits of fossil fuels, but also the process of refining and burning them. They continue to cause issues due to their impolite persistence to biodegrade as well as their inability to be readily recycled without further high-energy processes involved.

A bioplastic is a plastic material that is made using organic materials – in my work, I happen to use algae-based polymers. When harvested responsibly, these are a renewable resource. The molecular structure of these polymers is also far simpler than that of other bioplastics, such as starch-based materials, making them able to be recycled and composted far more readily and simply.

The development of sustainable materials is so important for the future of our communities, how do you see it being used in the future? Is it a scalable product?

Jessie: Yes, absolutely. The main advantage this material has over many other plastics is that it can be readily recycled in a simple, low-energy process that can be done by consumers. While the work I make as design objects and artworks is more of the collectable variety — with pieces held in collections including the NGV — it is the research and development behind this which I can see being applied in practical settings where this recyclable quality has the most value.

In early 2022, I will be participating in the 23rd Biennale of Sydney. However, as well as exhibiting work, I’m also working with their exhibitions team to make recyclable exhibition design components. These will be large-scale sheets of bioplastic replace unsustainable building materials which are commonly used as part of exhibition design and unfortunately are often discarded at the end of a show. At the end of the exhibition, these sheets can be returned to my studio and I can remake them into other objects, future interior fit outs or something else entirely. José Roca, the artistic director of this 23rd edition of the Biennale of Sydney, is taking huge steps to reduce the environmental impact of this event. We are already seeing many companies and institutions change the way they do things. I think this will raise the bar for all future major events of that kind of scale.

What are the challenges you've faced working with such a new material? What has helped you to overcome those challenges?

Jessie: The recipe I devised for the purpose of creating the algae-based bioplastic material that this tableware is made of, as well as the technique I employ to mould it, have been equally challenging parts of this project. There were no resources or mentors to learn from.

Technically intricate, the processes required for moulding a workable, functional, utilitarian object of high material strength from this kind of material were developed through a laborious, iterative process of exploratory experimentation. I spent over six months in the studio, trailing and toying with different variants to achieve a successful outcome.

At the end of this process, I now have a process and knowledge of a gamut of recipes and techniques I can use to achieve a range of outcomes that are adaptable to a variety of material substrates that can include by-products of food production or craft practices, further reducing waste.

Who do you look up to in the Victorian maker community? What do they inspire in you?

Jessie: Lisa Waup. The range of Lisa’s work as an artist and curator is wide. Her work is incredibly elegant and intertwined with such depth of meaning and story.

Many of us have found comfort and joy within our local communities during the lockdowns. What has been your community highlight during this time?

Jessie: The staff at my local post office are just the best. They are phenomenally kind, caring, patient and have been exceptionally dependable throughout all of this.

What advice would you give to other people thinking of exploring an innovative material?

Jessie: Go deep. Go insular. Record notes. Piece together how things work (most importantly when they don’t). Build up from there.

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Based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, Jessie French’s work explores speculative futures through algae-based bioplastic and ocean ecologies.

Housed within an ethos of consumption, sustainability and regeneration, her work invites others to engage with the possibilities of a post-petrochemical world. Through experimenting with other materials, she explores the potential for closed-loop systems of (re)use and conscious consumption and interaction with objects.

In early 2020, Jessie embarked on a research residency in Morocco, the source of most of the world’s agar, as a member of Seaweed Appreciation Society International. As part of research conducted while on residency in Morocco in early 2020, she visited sites of the agar supply chain to investigate the sustainability of the material and potential issues surrounding its use in her practice. During this time, she met with a range of marine experts, agricultural scientists, people developing aquaculture initiatives, local harvesters and directors and lab technicians working at the only agar processing plant in Africa, Setexam, which produces more than half the world’s bacteriological agar and a good majority of food and other technical agars.

How did you get into ceramics? What draws you to hand building and the coiling methods that you use?

Danielle: I did a wheel-throwing course at Carlton Arts back in 2012. A friend did a short course there and I decided I’d like to make myself a bowl to eat my morning porridge from. I wasn’t a natural on the wheel and moved across to a hand-building course at Slow Clay in Collingwood. That’s where my enchantment towards clay as an art form took hold. I did a number of masterclasses over the years in Australia, Japan and New Zealand and eventually set up my own studio, gave up the desk job and surrendered to life as a full-time ceramic artist.

I enjoy the expansiveness that hand-building offers. The clay responds immediately to your hands and touch, the clay even responds to whether you release your hands from the clay quickly or slowly, it has a strong memory. I use a combination of coils, pinching and carving. For me, hand-building fosters a playful approach, it’s a little like drawing with clay.

I’m also drawn to the historic aspect of pinching and coiling being performed as far back as the Neolithic era. An added bonus — you can do it anywhere, the kitchen table, while camping — it’s entirely portable.

Your glazes are immensely beautiful – could you tell us about the process of developing your glazes? How long have you spent developing this style?

Danielle: I’ve been experimenting with slips (clay body + water), terra sigillata (a super fine slip), oxides and raw materials for a number of years. I was fortunate to have a teacher who encouraged experimentation. The rule was that there were no rules, which was a departure from previous traditional teachings I’d received and I found it incredibly freeing.

I work quite dynamically when glazing, responding to the form. I definitely don’t overthink it and am certainly not precious, there’s every chance they could turn out disastrously and sometimes they do!

What do you hope your vessels bring to those who experience them?

Danielle: That’s a tough question to answer but I guess I’d like them to bring a feeling response and a renewing of the senses. My favourite works of art make me look and feel, they help me make sense and can bring about a different way of thinking, like a holiday for the brain. A little chuckle is also important, I definitely have a lot of fun titling the works.

How has the last two years impacted on your practice? Has it pushed you to develop your work in different ways? How so?

Danielle: I’m not sure I’ll fully realise the impact of the last two years until some more time has passed, I still feel like we’re too close to the source to absorb the full impact. The idleness that resulted from Melbourne’s ongoing lockdowns definitely resulted in large pockets of reflection and likely influenced my decision to pursue the life of an artist on a full-time basis.

There have certainly been challenges along the way. I was unable to access my studio for many months, I think I moved my studio to the kitchen table at least 6 times! Finding the motivation to make work during this time wasn’t easy either. I’ve felt immense fatigue at times, but discovered some illuminating podcasts on neuroscience and how to impact motivation levels and what a crisis does to the brain. I guess I got a bit scientific and employed some techniques that I learnt from these podcasts.

Once my hands were in the clay though, it was a welcome escape, the news disappeared, the curfew disappeared…

I’ve missed working amongst a community of fellow artists, sharing cups of tea, observing each other’s practices. Perhaps it’s made me trust myself more as there’s not been people around to bounce ideas off as easily. There were more than a few occasions when I’d text friends with photos and ask questions like, “which do you prefer, with a handle or without…”

Who do you look up to in the Victorian maker community? What do they inspire in you?

Danielle: There’re a few people actually:

Kate Jones – A naturalistic approach as well as a deep awareness and care around where the clay has come from and where it will end up once it’s been fired.

Mia Boe – Resonant paintings that make me feel lots. A necessary acknowledgement of our violent history as well as a celebration of Mia’s ancestral background. I also enjoy learning new words from the Butchulla language.

Hannah Bertram – A playful and curious approach and the importance of artistic self-reflection.

Yandell Walton – Yandell's’ body of work for “Shifting Surrounds” is an important reminder to connect with and respect our natural world and all forms of life.

What advice would you give to new makers thinking of starting their own practice?

Danielle: Trust yourself and practise being comfortable with exactly where you’re at. Do the best you can with your current level of skill and knowledge. Bring your full attention to what you, your hands and the clay are doing, it takes time for your hands and the clay to understand each other and for you to work out what you want to explore and create. Do what interests you, make the work you want to make because in the end it always comes back to how you feel about your work.

Oh, and play and have fun.

Many of us have found comfort and joy within our local communities during the lockdowns. What has been your community highlight during this time?

Danielle: I definitely got to know my neighbours a whole lot more, I got to know their children (hello Catalina), I watched their babies grow and met babies who hadn’t even met their grandparents!

I met a lot of dogs and puppies, Daisy, Guadalupe, Whiskey, Nina, Fritz, Mr T, Dr Tom and Tofu to name a few. I have an English Staffy named Wallaby and one of her favourite resting places is our street-facing front porch. We spent a lot of time out there greeting passing dogs and neighbours, many pots of tea (and glasses of wine) were sipped on that front porch.

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Danielle Thiris is a Naarm/Melbourne based ceramic artist. She uses a South Australian terracotta clay and hand-builds her pieces using a combination of prehistoric techniques, such as coiling, pinching and carving. Prehistoric vessels, ritual and ceremonial objects, identity, nature (human, animal and plant) and humour are some of the thematic explorations in her practice.

Danielle holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the University of South Australia and a Bachelor of Textile Design from RMIT. She was also a finalist in the Spring Sculpture Prize 2018 and awarded the Bendigo Pottery Award Spring Sculpture Prize in 2019.