Ceramic Spoon Workshop with Carole Griffiths

Carole Griffiths is fascinated by domestic objects, especially cutlery. Spoons are a recurring motif throughout her work and symbolise the reformation of herself as a child, mother and other.

Although spoons are objects, we encounter every day they can symbolise, sustenance and support. Carole’s workshop wants you to engage with the spoon as a sculptural vessel and explore manipulating clay to shape bodily expressive structures.

This workshop will enable you to create a clay Spoon sculpture that captures part body, part vessel creating an anthropomorphic form that comes in a variety of sizes and shapes.

What is included in the workshop:

The session will start with an open conversation about spoons, which could include spoons from your childhood, what a spoon means to you, or how you see the spoon in your daily life. After that, participants can share their personal spoons or spoon collections with the group.

Carole will then talk about some of her spoon sculptures and how the spoon has taken on new meaning as a human shape using a variety of clays and methods. Carole will next demonstrate how she brings her spoon to life with airdrying terracotta clay. Each participant will then create their own spoon sculpture and share their interpretation of the finished sculpture to take away with them.

Things to bring:

Spoons/Spoon Collections for inspiration.

Clay can be messy so please wear old clothes!

We will provide:

Refreshments: drinks and homemade cake

This workshop is part of our ‘Vessel’ workshop & exhibition season and is based on the themes of  Carole’s previous pop-up exhibition in the gallery, ‘Art House -Home of Dis/Content’.

Carole’s work depicts an open dialogue of object displacement and its uses, which feeds autobiographical depictions of her own domestic circumstances and echoes through narratives and introspective descriptions of production. The observed kitchen utensil sculptures emphasise the pleasures of making through a poetic reflection of both the method and the content, allowing the observer to perceive and depict the peculiar and intricate relationship between things, subjects, and words.