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Lizzy McCaughan

My new work represents a return to throwing after a long period exploring constructed forms and mixed media, a kind of touching base. I think of my very traditional, uncomplicated shapes as canvasses for playing with colour. I have been experimenting with gestural marks using big Japanese brushes, recording patterns and colours in the landscape where I live. image

 

My previous work developed from an assignment I wrote for students last year, about status and perceived hierarchies in the applied arts, specifically wrapping. Most cultures tend to wrap up objects of importance: in Japan they have special tea caddies with fabulous covers of silk and rich embroideries which form part of the tea ceremony rituals. I researched and experimented with several kinds of textile: screen-printed and stitched calico, felt and knit, and combined them with the simplest of vessel forms, to see what this kind of embellishment said about vulnerability, preciousness, protection, perhaps even a sacred or a magical dimension.

Then I was seduced by cheap acrylic funky wools into knitting ‘bowls to contain bowls’! But the perceived status thing does seem to work: separately each piece is ‘less’ special than the two together

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I have been a student, a technician and a tutor in ceramics in the last 15 years. I have learned so much more from my own students’ consistently fresh response to research, context, materials and design.

A large sculptural commission can be seen at Cambridge Regional College.

Tel. 07851 602 362 | Email: lmccaughan@camre.ac.uk