How did you come to work with ceramics?
I came to ceramics a bit by circumnavigation. Initially, I was doing a Master of Fine Arts at New York University (NYU). That was in animation and specifically, puppet animation. Originally I was going to study Film and Theatre Design but I moved into a two year course doing Animation.
I learned to build puppets, and stages, and I had learned drafting and model making from my Film and Theatre Design course. I was able to use the skills I had already learned to build articulated puppets and I was able to build sets as well.
I actually made two short films which were shown on PBS.
What happens after that?
I got married and took a year out to have a baby, went back to complete my work at NYU, and then I returned to Ireland. At that point I was going to have my second child.
I was living in Ballymoney and later I moved to Belfast where I started teaching Animation. I ran evening classes for Northern Visions and I taught at schools as well. After things moved towards the use of digital processes, that line of work became less viable.
I wanted to make models with clay so I went to a day class, when the kids were at school, over in Castlereagh with Rory Shearer. I received an arts council grant to install a kiln and went from there.
How do you develop from that starting point?
I started making models and I would sell them at various markets which in many ways was a continuation of what I had learned working on the organic meat stall which was run by the family farm. I had a stall at St George’s Market and I ran that for 6 years.
From there I wanted to learn more about the craft so I went to night classes at the Metropolitan College and I studied for an HND there.
I love studying, but it also gave me access to equipment and materials and I also met other people there who had similar interests to mine. In fact the whole class just clicked and so we set up a WhatsApp group.
Is that how the Cré Collective comes about?
Yes. Our very last project was to organise a group show and we decided to connect our skills, to share the things we were good at, collaborations, time management, promotion and marketing.
From there, after we had finished the course, we wanted to keep working together, and so we looked at various structures and decided on a collective. We wrote up a constitution and we just moved forward as a group.
All the members have lots of different connections and different skills so it has worked very well on the principle of “stronger together”.
