Helen Rebecca ceramics

Helen‘s ceramic work embraces the crossover space between art, craft and design. She makes objects that question our sense of what is familiar and what is functional.
She makes subtle, playful changes to familiar objects and styles creating surprising and curious pieces. Her work is tactile and sensory. It is about the surfaces, textures and shapes of everyday things: of displaced objects, their origins and stories. Molten and cooled glazes form the surfaces of objects. Glossy, satin, matte and dry glazes flow, fuse and compose imagery from chemistry. Glazes hint of aquascapes, or places where scale and form are less obvious and so the work gives way to an exploratory feel. Her current work explores the idea of what a vase form is through her slab built work.
Material process:
Working in clay is an absorbing process. It is a slow moving material that inspires patience and delicacy to bring it to its final state. The processes Helen uses are slip casting, hand building with slabs, inlaid and pressed textures. The glazes are applied by dipping or painting and layered onto other glazes to create unique results. Melting glazes has become a theme about capturing a moment in time. Like a rock or crystal structure that was cooled or compressed leaving it in that shape for millennia, a glaze melts and drips until the temperature drops in the kiln and the glaze stops on the pot.