About

Creative Thinking Through Sustainable Making

Alison Brown-mauve fish trap necklace

I am a multi-disciplinary artist uncovering ways to make meaningful artwork. Transforming the commonplace, seeing something extraordinary in the ordinary. We inhabit a world of excess production and overconsumption, themes of over-fishing, mass extinction of familiar animal species or monoculture crops weave themselves through my work, along with the imperative to ‘make do and mend’ wherever possible. Ingenuity, creative thinking, delighting in re-using, re-loving the broken and overlooked. Thoughtful creativity ... made beautiful. 

Inspiration manifests itself through the incidental and odd - buried nails, rusty wire, unearthed bird skulls - repair, reuse, reimagine

Can you love what I see?

Patch of Grass wire grass and porcelain feathers_Alison Brown

Tactile Surfaces

Texture is important to me. I love the pliability of clay, torn edges, and fingerprints, subdued only when necessary. I want to enhance this quality not deny it. Pieces touched by the lightness of spontaneity. I work between the lines, inhabiting liminal spaces; playing with forms for the wall and / or the body produces an intimate experience of sculptural works - challenging perceived boundaries where sculpture is untouchable, but jewellery is haptic art. Making in multiples enables myriad compositional adjustments, where small wearable elements can be upscaled, introducing an interactive tactility to larger wall adornment.

 

Look See Touch. Celebrating beauty in the imperfect, and delicacy in shadows.

Alison Brown_porcelain fish wreath and sketchbook

'All things are delicately interconnected'    Jenny Holzer Truism

I find there is a circularity in how I work. As a child I loved things that had a history - dusty old barns on grandad's farm, a chipped mug with a nice pattern, hand-crocheted lace made by my great aunts - and I'm still hunting for detritus and the imperfectly mellowed. Years ago my degree show at Camberwell featured Goldfish Bowls and Toucan Jugs, now thirty+ years on and the fascination with fish and feathers still persists. 

Chapel reflection in old potting shed window

Background

An artist by nature and creative to the core with a ceramics degree from Camberwell School of Art in the early 80s, a few years ago I returned to education, graduating from Bath Spa University with a Masters in Ceramics. I have now embarked on another adventure with my husband Robin; renovating a chapel in Devon, creating studios out of a cobwebby piggery, and taming a neglected environment to resurrect a productive, flourishing vegetable garden.

Event Listings for 2023

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