Personal statement

Claire is Programme Leader for MA Fine Art, Pathway Leader for MA Fine Art (Ceramics), and Lecturer on the Integrated Foundation in Art and Design.

She is an alumnus of Bath Spa University, having originally studied Graphic Design and Illustration. A switch to ceramics in the early 2000s, which led to a Ceramics MA at Cardiff Met, has been followed by two decades making figurative ceramic sculptures.

Her book The New Ceramics - Sculpting and Handbuilding was published by Bloomsbury in 2013. More recently – a transition away from object making, precipitated by lockdown and accelerated by the climate and ecological unravellings, plus training in horticulture, research into areas of Eco literacy and Critical Plant Studies has seen Claire close her ceramic studio.

Research strands

Her current multidisciplinary practice draws on the learnings and networks of Blooming Whiteway – a community growing project that Claire co-founded in 2017, the development of writing as a means to communicate ideas around climate, ecology and awe and a fascination with the practices of horticulture, familial and otherwise.

Clay remains in the work as a charismatic material, and a soil bound agent – plus the daily encounters with this material which blanket her adopted city.

Claire is working with the archive for the Land Settlement Assocation (LSA) – she was raised on one of the LSA small holdings in rural Cambridgeshire.

In 2023 her reflective chapter ‘Did the sky used to be full of birds?’ for the book Art and Creativity in an Era of Ecocide - Embodiment, Performance and Practice was published by Bloomsbury. 

Recent projects include Terracotta Toll which explored the role of terracotta as a mediator between the human and more than human in horticulture, the Multispecies Notice(ing) Board which had its first outing at a workshop delivered for the BSU Porthleven residency and Terminal – all computation is metabolic presented as part of Digital Ecologies 3. Claire is part of the Art and Technology Research Group which hosted DE3.

These days much of Claire’s work leads back to the garden – exploring the notion of the garden as an expanded rather than a discreet site. Claire is fascinated by the activity of gardening as creative practice and a radical act, along with the potential of growing as a collective act and what this offers for community, commoning and practices of care.

Academic qualifications

  • BA (Hons) Graphics and Illustration - Bath Spa University
  • MA Ceramics - Cardiff Met