Helen encourages everyone to get their hands dirty and try pottery

Helen encourages everyone to get their hands dirty and try pottery

27 January 2016

HELEN Faulkner doesn’t just think of her beautifully glazed tableware as artwork.

She designs her pottery with food in mind — will the mug sit comfortably in the hand, will it keep the coffee hot and is it big enough to get a good caffeine hit?

These are just some of the questions she considers at her potter’s wheel in the Down Arts Centre studio, where she is the new artist-in-residence.

Here, as well as developing her own work, she is teaching pottery and holding open days so the public can get their hands dirty and get a glimpse into what this craft involves.

“The work I make is mostly for food — my other love in life,” Helen explained. “I make pottery to be used in the kitchen, serving family and friends, especially my coffee pots which I can make to measure if you break your own.  

“I try to make pieces that fit into how you cook. My sister, for example, asked me to make her a small flat based bowl with a pouring spout for mixing marinades for her famous curry nights.

“I design with food in mind, whether it’s big flat bowls or coffee pots. I should have become a chef.

“I love reading food books. Darina Allen, Rachel Allen’s mother-in-law, is a favourite. When it comes to food, I like Asian and Mexican cooking.”

Helen’s work is characterised by its colourful glazes, with blue, lime green, peach, bright yellow and cream forming her colour scheme.

From Belfast, Helen trained in Contemporary Crafts at Manchester Metropolitan University before specialising in wheel thrown work at the Ceramics Design and Skills Course in Kilkenny.

Her time at Thomastown in Kilkenny, was aimed at improving the technical side of her work, and made her want to make a base back home in Ireland.

“Thomastown gradually worked it’s charm on me and I worked with several great potters over nearly seven years,” she said. “More recently I moved back to Northern Ireland to take part in the Making It Programme.  

“As part of the programme I was placed at South Eastern Regional College in Downpatrick for the first six months and then to Down Arts Centre for another 18 months.  

“Alongside the workshop space I take part in business training as well as working alongside seven other great crafts people.”

Pottery has had a media renaissance of late, with the BBC’s ‘The Great Pottery Throw Down’ putting ten home potters from around the country head-to-head in a quest to become ‘Top 

Potter’.

The impact of the famous potter’s wheel love scene in the 1990 film Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, is also still apparently having sway.

“We used to have a Ghost swear box for anyone who mentioned it,” said Helen. “But it certainly got pottery out there.”

In terms of how Helen became a potter herself, she says she enjoyed art at school, though has no particular memories of pottery. Instead she flicked open the UCAS careers book and it fatefully fell on pottery, giving pause for thought.

“I didn’t really see myself sitting in an office,” she explained. 

And despite it looking tricky, Helen is confident anyone can have a go.

“Very basically, when you break it down — you make your shape, you fire it,” she said. “Hand-building clay is a slower process. Throwing is very quick and immediate.”

To get to the end product, however, is a two week patient process.

There is weighing, throwing, drying until the clay is “cheese hard” and then a return to the wheel with a turning tool to carve the shape and add any extras such as handles. The shape is then ‘biscuit fired’, a term referring to its first time in the kiln, with ‘glaze fired’ being the final stage of the pottery.

For anyone wanting to try their hand, Helen is holding a number of classes at Down Arts Centre, where she is introducing pottery techniques such as hand-building, slab building and coiling as well as throwing on a potter’s wheel. She is also offering one-to-one pottery throwing lessons.

Based at Down Arts Centre until the end of March 2017, Helen would ultimately like to find her own workshop where she can run production and teach classes. Despite the uncertainties of the freelance art world, it appears to be worthwhile.

“I love what I do,” she said.“In Thomastown you were part of the community and l am looking forward to meeting people here.”

For details on Helen’s classes at Down Arts Centre contact the centre on 028 4461 0747. For details of one-to-one classes, email Helen directly at helenfaulknerceramics@gmail.com