Meeting the Open Studios West Berks & North Hants makers

Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hants runs this year from May 4 to 27. There are 24 new participants. Over the coming weeks @newburytoday is introducing readers to some of the 135 artists and makers, in 89 venues who will be opening their studios and workplaces to visitors. This week we meet Three Potters@Ceramic Art Westridge.

BAND of three – Sally Courage, Teresa Munn & Moya Tosh – have been exhibiting their ceramics together for 8 years for Open Studios. This year their work can be seen at Westridge Studios, Highclere, where they continue their personal journeys using clay as the vessel for their artistic imaginations.

Much of their work springs from the same source – an emotional response to the natural world – but their interpretations of nature are distinctly different.

Sally says “clay has a language of its own” and she follows the mindset of the clay in her making but her organic forms still show connection with the original fount of inspiration.

Teresa’s work is driven by landscapes and poetry texts where stories are revealed and held in time, charting traces of the human journey.

She retells and reinterprets these stories with her unique ceramic handwriting: “… words came off the page to create their own forms in ceramic scripts. Some in wall mounted pieces others in standalone ‘poem vessels’ showing how, like coracles, our stories travel with us,” she says.

Moya creates abstract pieces and her bark sculptures are manipulated by stretching and pulling the clay until it wrinkles and cracks. Her wheel-thrown bowls and cylinders are cut and pierced and decorated with minimal blocks of glaze to capture the shades and moods of the seasons.

She says: “I enjoy creating small distortions in my pieces by stretching, cracking and piercing to give the work character and reflect that nothing in nature is perfect.”

Westridge Studio, Highclere, Hampshire, RG20 9QS

Opening times: May 4, 5, 6, 11am to 5pm