Kate Lyons Miller

Gathering clay is very much a ‘thing’ at present. My wish is, as I said, is for people to do this carefully.

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In her own words…

Returning to further education in later life can be very challenging but I found the mature student experience wonderful. Especially at MA level, but I recognise that the BA experience was a necessary lead into the latter. I would not have begun to focus on my special areas of interest, then research, without the initial experimentation and breadth of learning accessed in the undergraduate course.

I was awarded a BA Hons in Ceramics at Plymouth College of Art in the summer of 2016, and I have now successfully completed my MA course in Ceramic Design at BathSpa University, School of Art and Design.

As a mature student I had learned to prioritise my time, and did not have the social distractions so necessarily a part of 18 year old university life away from home.

The IT was very challenging, but so worthwhile, an essential skill which my generation has had to learn on the hoof, with a need to know background, which leaves enormous gaps. We have been living through a technological revolution no less in societal impact than the industrial revolution, and I’m unashamedly playing catch-up.

At MA seminar and studio discussion with peers is a vital part of the course, I would advise prospective masters students to make enquiries about the size and make-up of the student cohort that they’ll join. It is an expensive exercise. I was so fortunate, an aunt totally unexpectedly left me a legacy, an opportunity to indulge myself, I’m so pleased that I did.

Previously I was working as a scenic artist which means that one is continually concerned with colour, texture and scale, all transferable skills. I worked in theatres all around Britain in that career. At the National Theatre, the most challenging and therefore satisfying production was ‘The Changeling’, designed by William Dudley, on the Lyttleton Stage; at Glyndebourne I helped to create ‘The Coronation of Poppea’, designed by John Bury, but the best theatre to work in, on many levels, was the Traverse, Edinburgh, in its old home in the Grassmarket, a small fringe company producing amazing new writing. I worked on ‘The Slab Boys’ trilogy there, written and designed by John Byrne. My last theatre work was at Plymouth Theatre Royal as Head Scenic Artist there for 19 years. And it brought me home to Devon.

Ash and copper

Five clays bowl interior

Teaching pays the bills, is rewarding and a two way process, I often talk of facilitation rather than teaching. Many of my students are longstanding regulars.

Fossicking with Millie the dog who also helps in the studio Gathering clay is very much a ‘thing’ at present. My wish is for people to do this carefully. I’ve signed up to a green maker initiative organised by a team from Plymouth Uni., I’m aiming to raw glaze and low temp fire in the interest of sustainability and economy. Both also very much a current thing. Essential here too, as we are off grid, using solar and a diesel fired generator.

Locally resourced clays and minerals are a method of connecting with the landscape, the geology informs the making of land and working on, moving around, climate of…Philip Rawson wrote, In the case of ceramics, we are brought everywhere face to face with the root. The landscape I live and work in is pared back, clear, simplified by erosion over millennia. There is evidence of human activity, but my feeling is that if people try to dominate this land it rejects them, I enjoy that sense of co-existence with the natural world.

The ball clay I often use is from the huge deposits in the Bovey Basin, kindly supplied to me in small quantities of raw clays, straight from the clay beds, by Imrey’s, New Bridge Quarry, Heathfield, Devon. I process it and experiment with additions and inclusions from my walks. Character, dynamism and unpredictability results, often failing, there are no textbooks or factory tech depts., sorting out the optimum ways to use the material.

Colour and texture made of the mineral elements of Dartmoor are evident. The granite derived from the moor has been the base material used by potters for thousands of years, ball clays here, and china clays in the west, together with minerals for colourants and glaze materials. I stress to all that gathering wild clays and minerals MUST be done with landowner permission and mindfulness of the sustainability of the flora and fauna, especially don’t gather where eggs or larvae might be.

Currently the studio is at Holwell, near widecombe in the Moor. At present she is exhibiting at The Studio at Makesouthwest in a show called Rippon.

I set up my first studio with a colleague in The Clay Factory, Ivybridge, Devon, and began teaching small groups there. Moving to our present home near Widecombe in the Moor I looked about for premises, and was thrilled to find a redundant butchery on the doorstep, with a farmer very willing to rent it. With my partner we ripped out freezer walls and cold store fittings, had roof lights and solar panels installed, re-instated the water supply and bought a generator to supplement the panels and batteries, not much solar up here in December. Most of the fittings have been built or adapted by us, found and recycled from local reclamation yards.