Human Ash Trees
Thanks to some lovely people who donated their family members ashes
In my 3rd year at CamberwellCollege of Arts I placed a wanted ad for some cremated human ashes to be used tomake a glaze for the five 6 foot tall ceramic trees I was making. The project is the last in a three year ceramicsdegree before I launched a career as a professional artist.
My work had been concerned with how things become layeredand how people saw things. For the ceramic glazes I was making, I looked for found minerals that might change the sculpture surface. I used london dust in a project about homelessness and then went on to explored places that held certain significances for me and having collected minerals from the beach at Sizewell B (where my parents used to take us swimming because the water was warmer there) I was interested to see that my fellow students attitudes to the sculpture totally changed when they thought the minerals I had used might be radioactive. This was very exciting and I started to wonder if rather than changing the surface I could change the way people looked at my sculptures based on what they thought they know about them.
A South London man was thefirst to come forward after hearing me on a local radio station and offerredthe ashes of his mother and father, Lili May Violet and John Alexander, whodied in 1993 and 1996. He said he thought it was a good use of his parents ashes and that they would be please to be of help to me. His mother had alwaysloved ceramics and he hadalways wanted to visit to college and see what was being made.
Thanks to some lovely people who donated their family members ashes
In my 3rd year at CamberwellCollege of Arts I placed a wanted ad for some cremated human ashes to be used tomake a glaze for the five 6 foot tall ceramic trees I was making. The project is the last in a three year ceramicsdegree before I launched a career as a professional artist.
My work had been concerned with how things become layeredand how people saw things. For the ceramic glazes I was making, I looked for found minerals that might change the sculpture surface. I used london dust in a project about homelessness and then went on to explored places that held certain significances for me and having collected minerals from the beach at Sizewell B (where my parents used to take us swimming because the water was warmer there) I was interested to see that my fellow students attitudes to the sculpture totally changed when they thought the minerals I had used might be radioactive. This was very exciting and I started to wonder if rather than changing the surface I could change the way people looked at my sculptures based on what they thought they know about them.
A South London man was thefirst to come forward after hearing me on a local radio station and offerredthe ashes of his mother and father, Lili May Violet and John Alexander, whodied in 1993 and 1996. He said he thought it was a good use of his parents ashes and that they would be please to be of help to me. His mother had alwaysloved ceramics and he hadalways wanted to visit to college and see what was being made.
Three of the trees at London Zoo as part of a recycled exhibition
