tidal

Tactility was a word I first came across in my 1st year on the 3D Design course at Manchester Metropolitan University, when we were given a project called ‘Pick Me Up’. The idea that something could be made that was so beautiful and intriguing that one just had to pick it up fascinated me and I explored this idea throughout my BA course.

I was selected to exhibit at Fresh, the graduate exhibition at the British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke- on-Trent where I exhibited a large installation piece ‘Tidal’, part of a collection of work that focused heavily on encouraging people to handle ceramic forms more freely.

It is in my nature to explore through touch, as it is an enjoyable experience. The feel of a ceramic surface is far more satisfying to me than any metal or plastic which now seem to dominate our world. Handling is also important, as examining an object through sight alone has its limitations. Physical contact with the object is essential to gather the information required to fully understand the nature of it.

Henry Moore also noted the value of this interaction. Speaking to Edouard Roditi in 1980, he said, “Tactile experience is very important as an aesthetic dimension in sculpture. Our knowledge of shape and form remains, in general, a mixture of visual and of tactile experiences. A child learns to judge distance by touching things and our sense of sight is always closely associated with our sense of touch.”

During my research I noticed a reluctance from other people to handle ceramics and so decided to take a familiar form and tactile situation as my basis for development, hoping that this familiarity would pass to my work, making people more relaxed. I chose the common past time of walking along a beach and collecting pebbles and shells, as this is an action surrounded by aesthetic preference, intrigue, desire and tactile interaction.

The pieces created are pebble-like in form and most importantly the majority are solid. I found that weight plays an important part in making people feel comfortable handling ceramics. When the pieces were hollow, people could tell instantly and some would quickly put the object down again, worried that they would break it.

I mixed up my own clay bodies to create a variety of subtle tones and to give an interesting speckle in the surface. The subtle blue glazes are calming and reference the coastal origins of the forms. The pieces are also decorated with textural areas, small holes, barnacles and gold lustre to create intrigue, which encourages a closer tactile exploration of the form. When making the pieces the most time consuming part was perfecting the contours and smoothing out any dents or bumps in the surface. The senses in our fingers are able to detect a bump
1 micron high (0.001mm) in a smooth surface and so it was vital that the surface was perfect.

Each piece is slightly different, just like my own collection of shells and pebbles, as I feel this is another reason we collect these types of objects; we can never choose just one. My hope is that people will create their own collection of my pieces based on their own visual and tactile preferences, just like I do when collecting shells on a beach.