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Sarah Walton is a potter who lives and works in
Alciston, near Lewes, East Sussex, England.
She has run a pottery there since 1975 using a large oil-fired saltglaze kiln.
She studied Fine Art at Chelsea from 1960-64 and Studio Pottery at Harrow from 1971-73.
In 2008, Sarah began exhibiting her ceramic garden birdbaths at the Chelsea Flower Show, organised by the RHS.
She acknowledges a debt to mediaeval pots, the arts of Mesopotamia and South-East
Asia, to Neolithic Art, to Western Painting, sculpture, architecture, music,
literature, poetry, wit, philosophy and religion, and to innumerable people
through the years, especially Weislaw Pilawski and Irene Milburn.
The English landscape is a theme in her work. She has walked, drawn and painted it since
childhood and this lies behind her evolution of birdbaths which she has made
since 1984. Her ceramics are represented in 13 museums in the UK and she has
won 5 awards. Her work can be bought at Contemporary Applied Arts and
Contemporary Ceramics in London, The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh and
The Leach Pottery, St Ives.
Her studio gallery is open most weekdays, 11am - 5pm.
If you are coming a long way and/or wish to call on a weekend please telephone first
on 01323 811517.
Working methods
Lewes Station, Sussex, England: 1996
Yesterday I sat waiting for a train at a local station and watched one of the attendants
as he signalled trains to depart. I've observed him over the years, the spring in his
walk, the economy of his movements, his relaxed but attentive ways. He dismisses trains
with sensuous ease and whistles while he sweeps the stairs at night. In a sense, he is a
model for how I try to work now, and even for what I make too. I took him for
ordinary until I saw he is so individual.
Keepers, Bo-peep Lane, Alciston, Sussex, England: Summer 2006
Throughout last winter and right up till now, each evening on getting into bed and again on waking, I've lit a candle in my bedroom. It stands on a chest of drawers at eye level as I sit up in bed. The upper third of the room in this old cottage is formed in the roof space and there's not a straight line anywhere at the point where wall meets ceiling. Instead, this angle is a subtly meandering line. A cat may have slept at my feet warming me. Or, on one coming in in the morning and jumping up beside me, I will have greeted it with a stroke down its thick silken back.
Now as I return to 'slab-building' after a twenty year interval, I look for ways of working the clay when it is at its softest. It only just stands up. But I'll let it stiffen from that first shaping and continue when it is firmer, all the time trying to preserve a softness that I have seen in the candle, the ceiling and the cat. When first evolving a shape, I don't mind if one technique blends into several others. As the form evolves, so will the technique with which it's made.
And I've a confession to make. During Holy Communion on a Sunday in church, when I should be thinking of The Holy Ghost and praying for myself and others, instead I'm often more interested in
contemplating the stone slabs that edge the windows, how these apparently haphazard, asymmetric-cut shapes stack one on top of the other to form that edge between the wall and the windows recess. I'm wondering how I can translate those forms and spaces into flowerbricks, all the while preserving what I like most about them, their gravitas and beguiling simplicity.
Biography
Born 1945
Grew up and was educated in London
1960-64
Chelsea Art School (Painting)
1966-71
Middlesex Hospital, London (SRN)
1971-73
Harrow Art School (Harrow Diploma in Studio Pottery)
Apprenticeships with David Leach and Zelda Mowat
In 1975
Set up her own studio at Alciston, Sussex where she
works as a potter, using a saltglaze kiln.
Awards:
1975
Crafts Council Grant to establish a workshop
1978
South East Arts Bursary Award
1990
John Ruskin Craft Bursary
1993
South East Arts Major Award
1998
South East Arts Award
Work in Public Collections
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Crafts Council, London
Contemporary Arts Society, London
South East Arts Collection, Hove Museum, Sussex
Castle Museum, Nottingham
Crafts Centre, Northern Arts, Cleveland
Norwich Museum, Norfolk
City Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent
Newport Museum, Gwent, Wales
Arts Centre, University of South Wales, Aberystwyth
Paisley Museum, Scotland
Glasgow Museum, Scotland
Allen Gallery, Alton, Hampshire
Work may be seen on the following databases and Internet:
www.studiopottery.co.uk/html/pgal-swal.html
The Crafts Council Database 44A Pentonville Rd, London, N19 HF
Axis: www.axisartists.org.uk
Associations
Crafts Council Index, London
Contemporary Applied Arts, London (ex Committee Members)
Craftsmen Potters Association of Great Britain
Exhibitions
Since starting out in 1975, Sarah Walton has
exhibited in both Solus and many
group exhibitions both in the UK and abroad.
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