Local Artist - Clare Day

100 Trees

Recent times have allowed some of us to focus on our local environment, community and our creative selves, and to recognise the importance of this for our wellbeing.

During this time, new threads have emerged in my work. In the first lockdown, sensing a need to generate some soothing routines, I made a small tree each day; familiar forms that my hands knew well how to make, capturing the feeling of a tree in a simple handheld object. At the end of lockdown I had an installation of 100 trees, all similar but each an individual, like us.

A sense of nature and place has always been important in my work, having grown up in a wood with artist parents. Part of this has always included having a pocket full of found things: objects from nature that have been dug up, washed up, or fallen from a tree. Alphabet of Found Things is a project I have been thinking about for many years, noticing amongst my finds that some found objects have the feel of a particular letter. This has also evolved as a theme because of a recent discovery (quite late on in life) of being dyslexic in an organisational way. I understand things best when I feel them in my hands, this applies with nature but also words.

Alphabet of Found Things is available as limited edition giclee prints, mounted on mountboard and a floating mount ready for framing, at £75 each. My work can be viewed and purchased via my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/claredayceramics/ where you can send me a direct message if you are interested. I also have a website https://claredayceramics.com where you can contact me through the ‘contact’ page. I hope individual visits to my workshop may be possible later in December if lockdown ends.

Alphabet of found things - Touch