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Anna Whitehouse | Episode 537
Based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK, Anna Whitehouse’s work has evolved from growing up in the region and spending time outdoors. From scrambling over rocks in the Yorkshire Dales to scouring the beach for fossils near Whitby, a love of landscape, natural forms and exploration can be seen echoed in Anna’s work. Ultimately Anna aims to create beautiful and intriguing objects that awaken a childlike sense of wonder and appreciation of the natural world.
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One of the things you mentioned about looking down the road and seeing where others have been successful or at least where you want to be. What kind of things are you looking for when you observe people, are you looking at their work or are you looking at their process of how they got there? What are you thinking about?
I feel like that was something that I was doing when I was doing my business degree and so I was searching for ceramic artists that were doing the sort of shows I was interested in and looking at their work and sort of the same field in terms of sculptural and the same price range that I found that my work was heading at. Whereas now I kind of make work because I want to make it. If you concentrate too much on what other people are doing I don’t think you are quite as true to yourself and what it is you want to make. It is certainly good to look at people and the direction they are going in, but you can only go so far. You need to look at yourself and what you want to be creating and you put it out there and what happens happens.
Do questions become your friend at that time? Asking yourself question after question?
Yeah, I keep a journal. I will be sketching and writing questions all the time about which way this is going, do I try something else, playing with different textures. Constantly questioning why it is I am making the work that I am making, who I am, what am I doing, why is it I am producing this.Because I think if you can fundamentally pull down why you are driven to do certain things then I think you can have more focus in t he work you are producing.
Do you make some pieces just for the idea of exploring and that this piece is not going any where buy my studio?
That is what all of last year was, really. Have you seen my 100 bottle project that I did last year?
Yes!
So I made a bottle a day for 100 days, and that was when I decided I want to leave the previous work behind and explore and see where it took me. ANd I never thought that those pieces-that people would see them. I was putting them up on Instagram as a way of recording and as a way of being accountable, I was doing it everyday, but I never thought they would be exhibited, and I certainly didn’t think people would be buying them. That is what really shook me. That was really bizarre because to me I saw them as my weird daily little experiments. I see them like test tiles.
How are you testing now with your new direction?
So I looked at the work I had made during those 100 days and picked out the things that were my favorites and I was developing that. I’ve found more and more over the last few years questioning what I am trying to say with my work. I did a project 2 years ago about the decline of honey bees and looking at microscopic images of pollen grains and creating wall pieces to show the seasonal forage available to bees. And to highlight which plants people in the UK could grow quite easily in their gardens. Showing that work to people and people coming up and being intrigued by the work and it started to get them engaged in the conversation of honey bee decline and how people can help at home to increase foraging opportunities. It was the first time I had used my work to convey a message and to encourage positive behavioral change in people. And that was just so cool to see people coming up and say that they were going to start growing that they will not cut all their dandelions back , they were going to leave some. Through artwork!Through some porcelain studies that I have made.
Is it important to have a message with your work?
It is now. It certainly wasn’t that way when I first started making. I was just making what I wanted to make and it was landscape based. There is such a huge issue with the world we are living in. I look at the beauty and the joy in the natural world and how fascinating it is and trying to capture that curiosity that a child has when it sees something for the first time and you are just intrigued and awed by it. And seeing the way the world is going and all of these things are so beautiful and stunning and fascinating are slowly crumbling, it is the first time I have wanted to use my art work to provoke change, I suppose.
And has it?
It certainly had with the project with the bees. It was really, really cool. I have just been given some funding to develop my practice that way. It is a green arts and sustainability funding program for the next 2 years. So it is taking my work and going down that route and wanting to work more closely with scientists in particular with climate change issues. And whether or not an artist and a scientist can work together to increase public engagement with serious ecological issues that are facing all of us.
What is your favorite part of the journey in clay?
Realizing that there is nothing else I think I could do. When I think about it I don’t think there is anything else that I could see myself doing. This is just how I respond to the world around me and I love it. And teaching people as well and seeing the clay bug take hold and seeing how excited they get when they realize all the different things they can make. It is the joy and the excitement of life that I sort of capture in my work and that I like to see in my students, I suppose.
Book
Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel
Contact
Instagram: @annawhitehouseceramics