I think I fell in love with clay the first time I touched it in my first year at secondary school aged about 11. My first foray wasn’t overly successful, what was meant to be a pinch pot piggy bag turned into a rather saggy tortoise, however, I was not deterred and thus the learning curve which is ceramics began, the apex, is never quite reached.

Moving on I loved it through my teens and eventually had the extraordinary privilege of studying ceramics at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts 1979-82 under the tutalage of some of the titans of the ceramic world; Janice Tchalenko, Gillian Lowndes, Glenys Barton, Jaqui Poncelet, Colin Pearson, Ewen Henderson, Ian Auld and Peter Simpson….how lucky were we!

On graduation I had the usual pressures of trying to work, pay rent etc and the ceramics took a back seat, although three dimensional art was not completely abandoned. For many years i made mixed media, sculptural collages which kept me going.

I promised I would get back to the ceramics when I was sixty...I missed the target by a couple of years but now I’m back and attempting to create some new work which hopefully will excite people as much as it excites me.

I’m in love patterns and surface decoration, ceramics offers endless possibilities on that score and I intend to spend a lot of time exploring the rhythm, the movement and the sheer playfulness and whimsy of pattern making, the possibilities are unlimited.

malisa.sledmere@talk21.com