My practice explores ways to express ideas of interconnectivity between individuals and values of care, respect and understanding. I am interested in other people’s views on these ideas and how they respond to my work.

I am inspired by line, shape, texture and colour. I like to work with textiles and ceramics, in combination or transferring marks made in one material to the other. I am drawn to patterns and repetition and see these as metaphorical for people and the connection between them; each mark in a pattern is like a person, part of the whole, but unique.

My current work for the Confirmation of Practice module has started from the point of exploring connection, but has grown through the experience of the pandemic and lockdown to ideas of hope, of looking beyond the time of crisis to possibilities for new ways of thinking and living. I have further been inspired by the designer, Li Edelkoort, who is planning a World Hope Forum, as an antidote to the World Economic Forum.

My starting point for this work was making connective marks with hand embroidery. I have experimented with transferring these to clay (not yet fired). As the theme of connection has morphed into ideas of hope and solution, I have been playing with the motif of a swallow as a widely recognised symbol of hope, not attached to a specific religion. I aim to test more techniques and forms before producing the final work for this module.