When art comes as a walking fish
When Grainne Watts walks along a beach, she doesn't spend much time looking at the view, writes Brian Byrne. Instead, her eyes are mostly on the sand, or maybe on the rocks.
"I go around like a hunchback," grins the ceramics artist whose work is currently on display in The Good Food Gallery in Kilcullen. "I hardly ever look up."
But what she's looking for will often be the source of inspiration for her works. Shells, seaweed, bits of rusted iron or even sea-wracked timber. Maybe a broken crab claw. Or, which may have caused raised eyebrows at security in a Spanish airport, stuff from a recent seaside holiday in that country.
"It can be the form, a bend in the shell, or just a line," Grainne says of how the beach debris can influence a piece of art. "Whatever it is, it speaks to me in some way."
That's speaking to an artist, of course. And it is the essential of an artist that she or he can hear such a 'speak'.
Grainne has been an artist for some 35 years. Growing up with it, actually, because her potter mother had her own studio in the family home in Blackrock in Dublin, and Grainne was up to her elbows in clay from an early age. But maybe something of a rebellion happened. "I was always going to be an artist, but when I went to NCAD I started out doing graphics, with a view to becoming an illustrator."
It wasn't a fit. She says it was 'like sleeping on the wrong side of the bed'. "Something about the two-dimensional thing didn't do it for me."
So she shifted back to the 'other side' of the 'bed' and studied ceramics with Peter Brennan, the prime mover in setting up a Department of Ceramics in NCAD. A two-year apprenticeship with renowned Wicklow potter Geoff Healy followed, where she learned to work to a 'rhythm' which still underpins how she works.
"Geoff is a production potter, and the rhythm comes from 'throwing' for eight hours a day when I worked with him. You get into an economy of movement, your stock of clay behind you, and using a minimum number of movements to make a piece."
It is a system she still uses, even though her work is as an artist rather than a production potter. But developing a new piece can still involve a number of versions. "If I'm doing a series, I'll work my way up size by size. It's very difficult to throw something big straight away and get the form you want."
Grainne has currently two main forms to her work. One is the organic container-type pieces which particularly reflect the materials she collects on her beach perambulations. The seaweeds, for instance, in 'smoke-fired' pieces.
"This is done like a casserole. You put the piece in a dish in the oven, wrapped in seaweeds, sawdust, bits of rock salt, things that burn slowly. Put a lid on it, bring the temperature up. The smoke is trapped in the dish, the surface of the piece picks it up, and you get beautiful markings."
The other beautiful thing is, you don't know what you're going to get, so every piece is going to be absolutely individual. The final part of the work is to clean the piece with wire wool, then rub beeswax into the surfaces. "That's like licking a stone to see what it looks like wet. Beeswax brings out all the colours."
Grainne's other main theme is what she calls her 'beasts'. One is a deer/goat character she found in American Indian petroglyphs, while researching ethnic art from various parts of the world.
"I just thought him so funny, with his big feet, and evolved a character around him. He started off as a handle on a ceramic piece, and has grown into his own series."
The other 'beast' is based on Darwin's concept of the Ichthys 'walking fish' which the founder of evolutionary biology suggested was the forerunner of land mammals. Grainne's version has sharp spines, but shares quizzical and humorous expressions with the deer/goat character.
"Both of them make people smile," she says, a thought which prompts her to smile too. "I think it's the humour in the pieces that attract customers."
No more than any other art or craft, what Grainne is doing isn't an easy way to make a living. In particular, the bottom has fallen out of the domestic production pottery market because of cheap imports from China. "But many of the fine art galleries are beginning to treat ceramics as sculpture and art forms in their own right. That's helpful to people like me."
Because a local coffee shop gallery isn't the ideal place to present her models work, Grainne developed a series of framed 'tiles' to show many of her specialities for the GFG exhibition. They're not expensive, and provide an overview of her own particular interests. "They're two-dimensional representations of what I normally produce in three dimensions."
Grainne has a passion for her work. One which is certainly 'in the genes', given her mother's profession. But juggling such a passion with family life is never easy. Does it carry on? She has three sons, aged 17-24, and she's not quite sure.
"What I do is very therapeutic. I get totally immersed in what I do. Nowadays my studio is a 15-minute drive from my home, but when it was in my garden I could work until three or four in the morning.
"One of my sons has a small Internet business selling cycling accessories made from recycled materials. He makes them up on a hand-operated sewing machine. I offered to buy him an electronic one, but he says he likes what he uses. I think he gets it."
That same son also 'gets' something else. When Grainne suggested that he was 'working long hours' on his business, he was pretty direct in his response. "I didn't lick it off the ground."
Of course he didn't. Look at Ichthys. Look at Grainne. Look at her mother.
It's in the genes.
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"I go around like a hunchback," grins the ceramics artist whose work is currently on display in The Good Food Gallery in Kilcullen. "I hardly ever look up."But what she's looking for will often be the source of inspiration for her works. Shells, seaweed, bits of rusted iron or even sea-wracked timber. Maybe a broken crab claw. Or, which may have caused raised eyebrows at security in a Spanish airport, stuff from a recent seaside holiday in that country.
"It can be the form, a bend in the shell, or just a line," Grainne says of how the beach debris can influence a piece of art. "Whatever it is, it speaks to me in some way."
That's speaking to an artist, of course. And it is the essential of an artist that she or he can hear such a 'speak'.
Grainne has been an artist for some 35 years. Growing up with it, actually, because her potter mother had her own studio in the family home in Blackrock in Dublin, and Grainne was up to her elbows in clay from an early age. But maybe something of a rebellion happened. "I was always going to be an artist, but when I went to NCAD I started out doing graphics, with a view to becoming an illustrator."
It wasn't a fit. She says it was 'like sleeping on the wrong side of the bed'. "Something about the two-dimensional thing didn't do it for me."
So she shifted back to the 'other side' of the 'bed' and studied ceramics with Peter Brennan, the prime mover in setting up a Department of Ceramics in NCAD. A two-year apprenticeship with renowned Wicklow potter Geoff Healy followed, where she learned to work to a 'rhythm' which still underpins how she works.
"Geoff is a production potter, and the rhythm comes from 'throwing' for eight hours a day when I worked with him. You get into an economy of movement, your stock of clay behind you, and using a minimum number of movements to make a piece."
It is a system she still uses, even though her work is as an artist rather than a production potter. But developing a new piece can still involve a number of versions. "If I'm doing a series, I'll work my way up size by size. It's very difficult to throw something big straight away and get the form you want."
Grainne has currently two main forms to her work. One is the organic container-type pieces which particularly reflect the materials she collects on her beach perambulations. The seaweeds, for instance, in 'smoke-fired' pieces.
"This is done like a casserole. You put the piece in a dish in the oven, wrapped in seaweeds, sawdust, bits of rock salt, things that burn slowly. Put a lid on it, bring the temperature up. The smoke is trapped in the dish, the surface of the piece picks it up, and you get beautiful markings."
The other beautiful thing is, you don't know what you're going to get, so every piece is going to be absolutely individual. The final part of the work is to clean the piece with wire wool, then rub beeswax into the surfaces. "That's like licking a stone to see what it looks like wet. Beeswax brings out all the colours."
Grainne's other main theme is what she calls her 'beasts'. One is a deer/goat character she found in American Indian petroglyphs, while researching ethnic art from various parts of the world.
"I just thought him so funny, with his big feet, and evolved a character around him. He started off as a handle on a ceramic piece, and has grown into his own series."
The other 'beast' is based on Darwin's concept of the Ichthys 'walking fish' which the founder of evolutionary biology suggested was the forerunner of land mammals. Grainne's version has sharp spines, but shares quizzical and humorous expressions with the deer/goat character.
"Both of them make people smile," she says, a thought which prompts her to smile too. "I think it's the humour in the pieces that attract customers."
No more than any other art or craft, what Grainne is doing isn't an easy way to make a living. In particular, the bottom has fallen out of the domestic production pottery market because of cheap imports from China. "But many of the fine art galleries are beginning to treat ceramics as sculpture and art forms in their own right. That's helpful to people like me."
Because a local coffee shop gallery isn't the ideal place to present her models work, Grainne developed a series of framed 'tiles' to show many of her specialities for the GFG exhibition. They're not expensive, and provide an overview of her own particular interests. "They're two-dimensional representations of what I normally produce in three dimensions."
Grainne has a passion for her work. One which is certainly 'in the genes', given her mother's profession. But juggling such a passion with family life is never easy. Does it carry on? She has three sons, aged 17-24, and she's not quite sure.
"What I do is very therapeutic. I get totally immersed in what I do. Nowadays my studio is a 15-minute drive from my home, but when it was in my garden I could work until three or four in the morning.
"One of my sons has a small Internet business selling cycling accessories made from recycled materials. He makes them up on a hand-operated sewing machine. I offered to buy him an electronic one, but he says he likes what he uses. I think he gets it."
That same son also 'gets' something else. When Grainne suggested that he was 'working long hours' on his business, he was pretty direct in his response. "I didn't lick it off the ground."
Of course he didn't. Look at Ichthys. Look at Grainne. Look at her mother.
It's in the genes.
