Jane Johnson in her garden with sculpture Bunny Girl Photo: Trevor Porter
THE third Cloth Road Arts Week takes place next month, celebrating the work of artists in Trowbridge, Bradford on Avon, Melksham and the surrounding villages.
In the weeks running up to the event, beginning May 3, the Wiltshire Times is running a series of features on some of the artists taking part. This week we meet ceramic artist Jane Johnson. Visit www.clothroadartists.com
JANE Johnson is an experienced ceramicist who has her own studio in her home village of Holt, situated between Bradford on Avon and Melksham.
The 35-year-old mum is one of the artists taking part in the 2008 Cloth Road Arts Week, beginning on May 3 and running until May 11.
With years of artistic study behind her, including an MA at Bath Spa University, Jane understands her chosen medium of ceramics implicitly and spends much of her time passing on her insight to children and adults in mobile clay workshops across Wiltshire.
This will be her first appearance at the Cloth Road Arts Week and besides showing off some of her own work she plans to open up her studio in Holt to anyone who wants to drop in and try working with clay for enjoyment.
Since graduating, she has not had much time to develop more of her own work and is instead dedicating long hours to community arts projects and mobile day workshops.
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She specialises in working with clay and describes it as her passion. Together with Wiltshire County Council and a collection of other artists she helps children and adults through the Participatory Art Work Scheme, which is available to everyone in Wiltshire.
Brought up in the Devonshire countryside, she says she is still influenced by the idyllic surroundings in which she was raised.
Jane prides herself on being able to find beauty in the unconventional and is fascinated by the factory works in Staverton as well as the beautiful countryside that surrounds it.
Speaking from her studio in Holt, she said: "My background is in figurative sculpture. I like to celebrate the imperfections in the clay rather than strive for smooth perfection, if there is such a thing.
"I can look at something and see beauty where others perhaps do not and in my work I expose the joins and the lumps because I think that is what makes the piece interesting and compelling."
Jane works with groups of all ages but it is with children that she says she obtains most nourishment for the soul.
She said: "What feeds me is working with children. I am constantly amazed and delighted by the work children produce in clay. Their ideas are fantastically obscure.
"My work has a naïve aspect to it so I really appreciate the children's honesty of expression."
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