Hello there! Nice to meet you…

A bit more…

I’m fond of studios, community gardens + universities - and have made some of my dearest friends in those spaces. I initially trained in crafts and conservation in the UK, completing an NVQ in stonemasonry, a three-year Diploma in Woodcarving at City and Guilds of London Art School, and then worked on the architectural and sculptural details of old buildings, alongside an MSc in Architectural Conservation with the University of York. I then came to Japan as a Monbukagakusho Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science + Technology Scholar to Tokyo University of the Arts. Here, I spent the first couple of years as a Postgraduate Researcher at the Faculty of Crafts Department of Urushi Lacquer, and am now working towards an MFA in the Graduate School of Arts Global Art Practice program.

My university pursuits are currently workshop-based, making ceramic, lacquer, and paper artworks, installation, and performance - and in recent years these have won some prizes and shown in galleries, performance spaces and film festivals in the UK, France, Pakistan, Japan. So, I’m mainly pottering in the studio, and thinking up eye-rollingly bad pun names for projects - but I also like getting out and about to meet people...

With that in mind, I’m currently the Producer of the feature-length documentary, Plastic Love! working with my talented friend and Director of the film, photographer and filmmaker Sybilla Patrizia, and an awesome team. We’re taking a deep dive into the world of plastic - a journey sparked by studies in Japan’s original ‘plastic’, urushi. We’re currently connecting with people across the country as we get to grips with the material’s past, present and future, bridging science and art, with the hope of having a positive environmental impact. 

I’m also keen to connect with people around the world and to do this have begun compiling a Kintsuglopedia (kin-soo-glue-pea-dear) - a general musing on alternative sticky stuff that can be used for kintsugi-inspired repairs. This is largely just a way for me to follow a line of inquiry about the interesting materials nature has made for us - but I hope it may also be handy for me and for like-minded menders who would like to approach ceramic repairs with a kintsugi-style repair that suits their environment and circumstances. I think this might be a lifetime’s work, so I’d better get back to it - but if you haven’t already guessed, I’d be delighted to hear from you if you feel like chatting about materials, making and mending, or anything in between…

Website Photo Credits:

Thank you to the clever photographers who took the photos featured on the WORK pages of the site:

Photos relating to UNBROKEN and associated exhibitions: Sybilla Patrizia

Photos relating to Kintsugi - Memory of a Moment Exhibition: Hyunjoo Cho

Photos relating to Studio Next Door Artist Residency at Sanno School: Nakagawa