Artists at clay

YEAR OF CRAFT:They're masters of form and function, as well as creators of beautiful things. Ireland's ceramicists are among our most accomplished craft workers. DEIRDRE MCQUILLANmeets 11 of the best.

REATIVITY FLOURISHES AMONG Ireland’s potters and ceramic artists who, like alchemists, turn porcelain and stone into sculpture or kitchenware. Fire and ash, paint and glaze are their tools. We turn the spotlight on 11 distinguished practitioners who fuse the art and craft worlds together with different techniques, styles and inventions.

LOUIS MULCAHY

Known as the godfather of modern Irish craft, Louis Mulcahy started throwing pots nearly 40 years ago and still likes to experiment with firing techniques and glazes, which he makes himself. Based in Dingle, Co Kerry since 1975, his is the last of the big potteries operating exclusively in Ireland. What started as a small operation with his wife Lisbeth is now an employer of more than 40 people. In 2004 he became the first Irish craftsman to receive an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland in recognition of his artistry and the prosperity it has brought to his community. His pots have won an international reputation for their durability and rich, lustrous glazes.

COLM DE RÍS

Dubliner Colm De Rís’s love of pottery started at school, where he studied technique before going on to the National College of Art and Design and later honing his skills for a year on the pottery course in Thomastown. He worked in Kerry with Iveragh Ceramics and in Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow with Geoffrey Healy to further his experience before setting up on his own. His high-lustre pottery with reflective blue and green glazes have become his signature, but he has also started to experiment with gold. All of his pots are hand-thrown or hand-built and their strong colours match their strong shapes. They are made in a gas-fired kiln, and are dishwasher and microwave proof.

ISOBEL EGAN

One of Ireland’s brightest young ceramicists, Isobel Egan graduated from NCAD six years ago with a master’s degree in ceramics. Her work, fine porcelain box structures, are minuscule environments that explore issues of fragility, personal space and memory. “I am drawn to porcelain for its translucent pallor and delicacy,” she says. She combines nylon fibre with porcelain slips to make work that is thin and paper-like.

Her work has been acquired by the National Museum of Ireland, and she has won many awards including the Taylor Art award in 1999 and the Golden Fleece in 2006. She represented Ireland in a European ceramics exhibition in Denmark in 2006.

ADAM FREW

Click on to Adam Frew’s website and you get an insight into the sheer physicality of making a pot. His porcelain pieces with their inky cobalt drawings and images have an individual style and vivacity, particularly the totemic stacked bowls with matching lids. As an artist who likes to improvise, he prefers to throw on the wheel because of its speed and the possibility it gives to create new forms quickly. Chance conversations or fleeting images can inspire his work and fire his experiments with colour and pattern. “Flow in my work is important. If I lose it, I lose the energy. My work is an ongoing journey,” says this talented Derry-based potter.

SINÉAD LOUGH

Based in a scenic location in the west Kerry Gaeltacht, about four miles from Dingle, Sinéad Lough’s pretty cottage is home to her pottery and studio.

A graduate of NCAD and the Crafts Council Pottery Skills course in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, Lough makes functional and decorative hand-thrown pieces in white earthenware. She also works to commission. The pieces – teapot stands, pinch pots, jugs, beakers, vases and cereal bowls – with their colourful slips and glazes and variety of decorative surfaces are both functional and fun.

LUCY MEAGHER

Meagher, who is based in Dublin and is a graduate of NCAD, found that drawing and clay modelling and sculpture came naturally to her. Her love of animation drives her figurative ceramic work, which often recalls imagery from historical eras such as Venetian Commedia dell’Arte or marionette theatre. “I like life drawing and gesture,” she says. “Some are just fragments or metaphors of psychology. I call my current collection Pupa, which means chrysalis. It’s a theme of encasement, representing changes we can see in life and in children’s imagination – I get an idea in my head and I just start modelling,” she says.

NICHOLAS MOSSE

One of Ireland’s most distinguished and successful potters, Mosse hardly needs any introduction. His modern takes on traditional 18th-century Irish spongeware have established a distinctive style and following. This year he celebrates 25 years in business, having got underway in l976 after periods of training in England and Japan. Using local clay and kilns fired by hydropower from the river Nore, which runs in front of his premises, he set up his pottery in an old flour mill, using the inspiration of the landscape around him for his hand-finished decorations.

With a comprehensive range of patterns and shapes, his pottery, which is both beautiful and practical, is now sold all over the world from his base in Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny.

MARY NEESON

The work of Mary Neeson, who is skilled in both porcelain and bronze, may seem delicate and low-key, but is notable for a strength of purity and form. Her current collection of angels and lustrous wall pieces are typical of her style and her exploration of tonal and textural contrasts. Her porcelain pieces express the translucent, light-transmitting qualities of the material, but she has also developed a signature collection of bronze vessels and privately commissioned sculptural pieces. Her range of bronze bowls won her a major prize in the RDS National Crafts Competition in 2008 and she subsequently went on to exhibit in the prizewinners’ show in Kilkenny later that year. She is a graduate of the Crawford College of Art and Design.

GRÁINNE WATTS

Gráinne Watts, who is from Blackrock in Dublin, originally studied graphics, but changed to ceramics, and now works in stoneware and porcelain. Her porcelain vessels have an ethereal, tactile quality with relief detail that suggest the effect of time and erosion. “I think it’s because we are an island, and I have a massive library of images and information to work with, and I’m always collecting shells and bits of bone,” she says. She will be one of 30 ceramicists working in Ireland and abroad specially selected for the Transform exhibition, which is at Farmleigh from tomorrow, May 29th. Her Landfish series is, she says “a human take on Darwin’s theory of evolution and how we came out of the sea”, and features a fish in stoneware painted in vibrant blue, built up in five layers for chromatic intensity.

A graduate of NCAD, she also works part-time as a teacher in Newpark Comprehensive in Dublin.

SARA FLYNN

The curves and contours of her local landscape inspire Flynn, whose work is informed by her love of porcelain, the process of throwing and her fascination with the theme of vessel in both literal and abstract expression. Sketchbooks also feature heavily in the planning, structure and form of the pieces. She won the Peter Brennan Pioneering Award last year. Her refined, elegant pieces have become collectors’ items and are in many public collections at home and abroad, including the Office of Public Works and the National Museum of Ireland. In September she will travel to Fuping in China for a month-long residency with a group of Irish ceramic artists. Based in Leap, west Cork, she has been working exclusively with porcelain since establishing her own studio 11 years ago.

ANDREW LUDICK

Andrew Ludick, from Ohio, has a degree in Fine Art and Painting from Columbus College of Art and Design.He came to Ireland in 2001, met and married the potter Rosemarie Durr and they settled in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny. The exuberant colour and lively, handformed shapes of his work are inspired by the work of the late John ffrench who he met in Ireland.

“I love the way he hand built forms and then painted on them like a painter on canvas,” he says. “Up to then, my work was more minimalist, but meeting him released something in me that was there all along. That playfulness and being in touch with your inner child and childlike happiness is what I try to convey in my work too.” The ceramics have both a functional and sculptural quality in that they can be used but also hung up and displayed on a wall.