UNDERWATER VISIONS

Bolts from the blue

Here are two tales of transformation, says Emma Clegg –firstly Mary Jane Evans’ journey from physiotherapist to ceramic artist and secondly her use of porcelain and paper in hommage to the Dorset landscape of her childhood

It was like coming across a marine hideaway. Here were the colours and shapes of corroded and patinated metal, battered half spheres, layered three-dimensional lune forms, volcanic shards, rusty bolts stridently embellishing roughly hewn bowl forms, trailing strands of wire and jutting and grainy earth textures.The studio was stashed with the forms and creations of Mary-Jane Evans’ artistic career.

There was also a towering wall of books and sketchbooks bursting and jostling within the confines of a set of shelves. A large, shiny circular open-top kiln in the corner –through which all Mary-Jane’s work passes –exuded latent energy, and a light haze of plaster powder lingered on surfaces and hung in the air like fairy dust.

Mary-Jane was once a physiotherapist and worked in a community hospital for 18 years, so her transition to a three-dimensional artist as a mature student at the age of 49 was as dramatic as transitions come. Her interest in pottery started with an evening class, and then she won a prestigious City and Guilds competition in 1999 called Futures 100 where the prize was a bursary of £10,000, enabling Mary-Jane to buy a kiln and to take herself seriously as an artist. Her daughters both left home for university in 2001 and Mary-Jane packed her suitcases too, leaving behind her husband and her old life, and went on a new adventure to study Three Dimensional Design –Ceramics at The University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey, working in the evenings to fund her time there.

The adventure worked because three years later she graduated with first class honours, after which she became artist in residence at Kingswood School in Bath for two years. “My job was to encourage the students, teach them to break the rules, be creative and take chances,” Mary-Jane explains.

They definitely found the right person for this role, because MaryJane is an artist who specialises in breaking the rules. “Pushing materials to extremes is fundamental to my work. I use exciting and unpredictable techniques combining porcelain, slate, corrosive materials and minerals, using the kiln as a time machine to scar and erode my pieces.”

These ceramic sculptures have the textures and colours of the earth engrained within them, and appropriately so because it is the landscape of Mary-Jane’s Dorset birthplace that drives and charges her creations. “My work is inspired by landscape and particularly the Jurassic Coast, found objects, urban destruction, and architecture. My inspiration is also found in many unlikely places, a rusty piece of metal, a building, a painting, marks on a wall.”

Mary-Jane whose studio is at Bath Artists’ Studios on the Upper Bristol Road, specialises in porcelain paper clay, a versatile technique

Paper porcelain clay, which I make myself, is a wonderful ... medium to work with ❝

ABOVE: Shards, porcelain on slate

where organic fibres are mixed with a clay body to allow the creation of complex structures which allows you to sculpt with it at any stage, and oxides can also be added to the slip or wedged into the plastic clay. “Paper porcelain clay, which I make myself, is a wonderful, very versatile medium to work with. I add many layers of fragile wafer thin clay, but once fired to 1280º they fuse and become strong while retaining their fragile appearance. I also dip organic materials into liquid porcelain and add these to my sculptures.”

Her work is grouped within different types. I was particularly drawn to the Detritus series, slices of spherical forms with bolted attachments. There is also porcelain sculpture, more bleached in character but playing again with curved slices, bolts and wandering trails of wire; wall pieces mimicking the layers and textures of the Dorset coastline; bowls, platters and vessels, utilitarian in concept, but the rims are irregular and the pieces vibrate with energy, decorated with jazzy patterns and fresh zings of colour.

Mary-Jane’s work has had its fair share of awards, including the International Takifuji Art Award – Tokyo, resulting in an exhibition there in 2004, the Bristol Guild of Craftsmen prize for best 3D work at the Bath Society of Artists Annual Show at Victoria Art Gallery in 2010 and 2013, and the Pangolin Prize for Sculpture at The Royal West of England Academy Autumn Exhibition in 2016. Her work has also been widely exhibited in galleries throughout the UK, including The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Royal West of England Academy. She also has 16 years of experience of teaching and loves to share her passion and introduce others to the wonders of clay.

During lockdown Mary-Jane started making porcelain jewellery, giving her another string to her ceramic bow. I wonder how she manages to transition from one distinctive work type to another, from sculptural statements of clay and metal and flat engrained textures to smooth bowl shapes and fine jewellery, while still leaving you with the impression that they stem from the same creator. “At any one time I am usually working on two or three different pieces. My dyslexic head is somewhat chaotic and I go off on tangents all the time and while working on one piece another idea will come into my head.” The connection between these different ideas, I propose, is that all the ideas come from the earth and are created with it. n Mary-Jane wearing one of her porcelain necklaces

Mary Jane Evans is running Introduction to Handbuilding workshops on 17, 18, 24 July and 14 and 15 August. She is also exhibiting at Bath Contemporary Artists Fair on 8 August, 12 September, 10 October, 14 November and 12 December; maryjaneevansceramics.com