Kirsty Prior     

Walking through the local countryside of the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains, and along the shoreline of Gower, Kirsty often finds the bones of dead, decaying animals. Through her tender, perceptive experiments with these bones, she explores the contrast of life and death, and the fascinating process of decay. As a dead sheep returns to its elements, Kirsty looks beyond its superficial goriness to note the beauty in looking at things closely and in detail. Her hare sculptures reflect her sadness at seeing road-kill, and suggest the idea of nature fighting back against humanity’s destruction of it. 

Dan Hutton

Dan’s beautiful, haunting porcelain vessels are inspired by the idea of the human soul. Emanating a diffuse, ethereal light as only porcelain can, these dignified sculptural forms are intended to be sited in places within Wales where people have died. One such place is Llansteffan castle. 

John Richie

John uses elements from disused buildings such as Carmarthen Infirmary and his local chapel, to create architectural sculptures that are beautiful and deeply moving. He combines casts of an intricately-carved ceiling rose with images of derelict or neglected buildings. In doing so, John powerfully questions the supposed housing shortage and how this contradicts with the vast amount of unused housing stock that is allowed to deteriorate until it is too dilapidated to be used. His work also laments the loss of traditional building skills.

Valerie Price-West

Valerie recently undertook the gruelling Celtic Challenge race, rowing throughout the night from Arklow, Ireland, back to Aberystwyth across the wild, pitch-black Irish Sea. Her sculptures capture the thrilling exhilaration of the waves, and the driving energy of racing as part of a team. Her work celebrates the underlying wilfulness of wild, natural things, and the sense of danger and unpredictability only just controlled.

‘Whether rowing, walking or riding my stallion, I observe my surroundings and feel such a part of it.             

Wales is beautiful and its extreme terrains are brilliantly 

challenging. I try to capture this in my sculptures which 

have been a real challenge to make’.

Its show time. Come and see the student work

Its assessment time at Coleg Sir Gar - Carmarthen and the BA2 and Part Time BA3 students have prepared the space for the BA3 shows in a couple of weeks. Its that mad and fun time of ripping the department apart and then building a gallery space. This year we are opening the space for friends and family to come in and view the work in progress for a  closing view Monday 5.30 - 7.00 14th May. The Royal Collage of art do a similar process of opening assessments out to the public to see the work a year before the graduation shows.

ICF is now on facebook, twitter etc so you might want to follow who is demonstrating at the 2013 festival! www.internationalceramicsfestival.org