Tag Archives: Glen Innes Highlands

Art, Artists

Ceramic flair in the high country

2 Comments

AN EXHIBITION OF new ceramic work will open at Glen Innes’ creative hub The Makers Shed in June, featuring the work of local ceramicist and potter Anita Stewart.

Stewart has regularly exhibited work at The Makers Shed since the venue opened in 2018, and is well-known to locals as part of the Glen Innes Pottery Club, situated like the Shed on Grey Street. ‘Winter Clay’ captures some exciting new directions with the ceramicist’s form and style.

Anita Stewart, Glen Innes-based ceramicist.

“Discovering clay for me was like a fish taking to water,” Stewart said. 

“I studied Fine Arts in Western Australia for three years. Like many artists, I had been practicing before I actually decided to do formal training. 

“At Fremantle Tech I did units in painting design and drawing, then in 1995 I travelled to the New England region and discovered the wonderful ceramics courses run by Max Powell at the Glen Innes TAFE.”

Stewart’s newest work features an array of fresh forms – evocative black tiles, ceramic ‘breasts’, and stylised platters – in addition to some classic styles she’s already well-known for, such as her vibrant citrus squeezers.

“The inspiration to create a new body of work usually comes when working on new forms at the wheel,” she said.

“For instance, the last federal election inspired my ‘message in a bottle’ series. Using the surface of the pot as a canvas I add multiple layers to create an image that speaks. The New England Landscape has also given me great inspiration for my work.”

According to Stewart, the Glen Innes Pottery Club was established about 30 years ago and has remained a vibrant part of the community. 

“Lots of well-known potters have been a part of the club,” she said. 

Winner of multiple awards for her ceramics, Stewart laughs when asked to define what it takes to be a practicing artist, adding that “stamina, determination and absolute passion” are essentials for anyone wanting to make a long-term career of creativity; although she believes people should never be shy of signing up for a workshop and having a go.

“It’s really nice teaching people how to work with clay because it’s a very tactile medium and they usually seem really pleased when they’ve created a functional and colourful work of art,” she said. 

“The wheel can be a bit more of a challenge, but they are overjoyed when they manage to throw a pot on it.”

Winter Clay opens at The Makers Shed, 123 Grey Street Glen Innes at 2pm on Saturday June 19 and runs until August 28.

Art, Artists

Perseverance key to Powell’s pottery

Leave a comment

THE natural environment of the New England region, and the mindfulness of daily work in the clay studio during the COVID-19 pandemic, were influential in a collection of new ceramic work by artist Max Powell of Glen Innes.

The exhibition ‘FormWork’ will fill The Makers Shed with an array of pieces throughout spring.

According to Max, daily practice and perseverance were key to this prolific period of creativity.

CERAMIC CURVES: New works by Glen Innes potter Max Powell

“I came to ceramics through art making and fell in love with the endless possibilities of this elemental and enduring material,” he says.

“There is always the element of the unexpected and surprise that keeps me asking ‘what next?’ Clay has become an obsession and a daily necessity as I explore different pathways and grow ideas.

“Spending time in the workshop honing skills and focusing on the evolving processes keeps me in the moment engaging body and mind in a holistic way that has kept me anchored through these turbulent times. 

“The perseverance we need today is a basic tool for the potter.”

Inspiration also comes from spending time in the bush observing the shapes, colours and surfaces found in nature, Max says.

“As well as the making processes involved in transforming this most basic elemental plastic material into expressive form.

“I like the end product to reveal the honesty of the materials by leaving some exposed clay body on show, along with the effects created by the alchemy of multiply firings building up different glaze layers.”

A range of large ‘water bowls’ that can be used outdoors as bird baths, and a selection of vases and platters will be on offer, but also a range of large-scale works that will form a unique centrepiece to any indoor design.

“Besides producing useful objects, clay can sometimes result in ceramic work that can satisfy not only the maker but also engages others and adds richness to their daily rituals,” Max says.

FINE FORM: Max Powell’s new exhibition runs until November 28 at Glen Innes

Beyond the surface

A graduate of the National Arts School, East Sydney Technical College, and Monash University, Max Powell came to ceramics through the art of glazing.

“Painting the surface has always been my focus and with these new works I have tried to develop stronger forms that compliment the surface but still make their own statement,” he says.

A Glen Innes-based secondary and TAFE art teacher, he has a longstanding reputation for high standards of artistic practice in the region.

“I love the sense of community,” he says, “and the open landscape that lets you escape to the nearby majestic national parks. I love the seasonal changes that shape our lives”.

“Inspiration is everywhere: moss, lichen, a rock, a piece of wood, the landscape and the rich history of ceramics and the many stories that get mixed into the clay.”

Powell cites artists like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Lloyd Rees, Elizabeth Cummings and Angus Nivison as influences throughout his career, which started in arts education but quickly moved on to public art commissions and exhibitions throughout the New England region.

“I feel privileged that I have been able to spend my time making art, responding to the world around and engaging with like-minded people,” he says.

FormWork runs until November 28 at The Makers Shed, 123 Grey Street Glen Innes

Art, Artists

Sculptural Story of Shadows and Silence

Leave a comment

THE recent installation of a major work of public art at a junction of the New England and Gwydir Highways through Glen Innes has generated plenty of community queries about the title of the sculpture and the inspiration behind it. Arts North West talked with its Walcha-based creator James Rogers to dig deeper.

“This is no signpost or billboard. No voice cheers it on other than the harsh glare of our daily cycle, weeks and months at a time as the light of the sun and seasons’ angle shapes our moments at the crossroads.”

What we found was an artist thinking about the long-term experience of his work in the context of its setting: not just the centrepiece of a roundabout in a major traffic corridor, but one that sits within an upland valley of the NSW Northern Tablelands.

“‘Blue Hills’ is an abstract, painted steel construction composed of 52 hand-cut, long, curved strips of steel and accompanied bridging elements,” James explained. “The strips are cut from 600-millimetre dia tube. This character of element is something I have been working with in the studio for some years.”

Despite its apparent simplicity, according to James ‘Blue Hills’ took on its own life during its creation.

“I composed the work over five months in Walcha, accumulating groups of the steel slivers into loose-leaning bunches that connect at the foot and the top, into a generally circular form,” he said.

“As work proceeded, lyrical elements were added to accommodate structural considerations and activate the ridge of the sculpture, maintaining a dialog from top to base and back to the ridge of the listing, arrhythmic drapes.

METAL MAN: Sculptor James Rogers working on “Blue Hills” in his Walcha studio (photo by: Caroline Downer, Arts North West)

“The density compounds across the space as the structure circulates. Steel is endlessly plastic and further welding and cutting kept the process alive.

“I work alone and with a small forklift as my assistant. I felt very close in answering the sculpture’s physical demands as the work unfolded.”

Patterns and distance 

Quirindi-born James Rogers is a regular Sculpture By The Sea exhibitor who studied the art form at the former Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education before living, working and regularly exhibiting in Sydney. His public commissions include ‘Song Cycle’ (2001) at Walcha, another sinuous metallic work situated inside a roundabout.

It’s clear that James spent time gauging how ‘Blue Hills’ would appear from road level in a moving vehicle.

“I see the work as a composition of long shadows,” he said. “The tonality of distance is blue and the silence of the Tablelands, so blue; but on closer experience the blue is itself a composition of forms, an interplay across a space of light and shadow, of form and void”.

“Further familiarity may reveal counterpoints of rhythm that invoke pattern, but it all moves on, the blue still unfolding as a memory of looking forward, around a roundabout and indicating some choices made.

“The sculpture is a distillation of nature’s space with a detached countenance that asks us to look into the silence in the shadows.”

No signpost

According to James, who relocated to live, work and exhibit at Walcha in 2009, his work must speak for itself over time.

“Now that ‘Blue Hills’ is installed, and all the barracking and raspberries blended over, the sculpture gets on with its job, mute and silent,” he said.

“No plaque will speak for it adequately if the eye is not enticed. This is no signpost or billboard. No voice cheers it on other than the harsh glare of our daily cycle, weeks and months at a time as the light of the sun and seasons’ angle shapes our moments at the crossroads.

“Whether north, south, east or west, it is a drivers’ and passengers’ exchange. It is all first-timers and learners, fresh-faced and old hands that negotiate an evaluation of delight at their transport through the intersection. No two arrivals will be the same from foggy dawn to day’s end.

“A successful work of art, I think, induces silence, while in our core we suspend disbelief, and the eye’s curiosity moves ahead of what might be daily and commonplace utterance.”

This article was first published by Arts North West. Main image by Carol Sparks.