Narratives in Clay

The projects in this section represent the core of my MA practice at the University of Lancashire. While this is not the entirety of the work produced during my studies, each piece shown here is rooted in my overarching theme: Narratives in Clay. All of the stories and characters that inform this work are my own.

In 2020, I self-published an illustrated poetry book titled The Freakshow. The poems told the stories of a group of Victorian freakshow performers as their world slipped into decline. The characters were brought vividly to life by my friend and illustrator, Enya Koster. Hidden within every illustration was a skinny, bedraggled, flea-ridden black cat. He was never mentioned in the text, but for me, he quietly became a character in his own right.

That cat is Scrawny.

Since then, Scrawny has followed me across mediums into textiles, illustrations, poems, greeting cards, and now, most significantly, into clay. He has gathered companions along the way. His closest associate is Deaders, a late mouse and formidable character you’d be wise not to underestimate. Deaders serves as butler to Lady Delores Raphus-Schilling, an extinct dodo of questionable intellect who remains blissfully unaware that her devoted butler is, quite literally, dead.

The work presented here traces the evolution of Scrawny and his companions from the pages of The Freakshow into three-dimensional ceramic form. It documents a journey of material exploration, process development, character building, and the gradual shaping of a cohesive body of work.

This is where my ceramic version of The Freakshow is beginning to take form. And this is where we discover where Scrawny—and his friends—might end up next..