In June and July, artist Verity Howard ran a series of ceramic workshops with Year 9 students from Fairfield High School that have chosen GCSE Art when they go into Year 10. These sessions were inspired by artwork created by Matthew Cornford and John Beck at No.1 Station Approach Hereford. Read this blog post written by Verity to see what they got up to in the session.

Matthew Cornford and John Beck were the second commissioned artists for Meadow Arts and Hereford College of Arts partnership project celebrating 170 years of creative education in Hereford. For this commission Beck and Cornford created a vibrant illuminated sign which was attached to the Hereford College of Arts Halls of residence. Utilising typefaces once used by Hereford College of Arts in its promotional literature, the word ‘ART’, in bold primary colours called attention to the identity and purpose of the building and marked out a place for art in the city. The commission also featured a billboard of collaged letters spelling out the word ‘ART’, sourced from photographs of art school buildings in the West Midlands. Through an ongoing series of exhibitions, publications, talks and events under the title ‘The Art School Project’, Beck and Cornford are exploring the history of Britain’s art school system, its regional variations, complex educational and political contexts, and vital cultural legacies. 

When beginning this project, I was especially inspired by Beck and Cornford’s research into regional social histories, local identities and a sense of place. I began to draw parallels between this research and my own ceramic practice which is routed in the landscape, history and culture in rural Herefordshire. I was also interested in Beck and Cornford’s use of words and font as, in my own practice, I use words as a starting point to inspire mark making, textures and prints on my ceramic forms.

Initially, I undertook a visit to Fairfield High School and had the chance to meet the staff, students and experience the school and its surroundings. We discussed exploring Beck and Cornford’s ‘The Art School Project’ and using processes from my ceramic practice as the starting point for the workshops. I proposed to focus on themes surrounding identity, creativity and a sense of place and hoped to guide the students on a creative journey, initially developing this concept, then using ceramic printing techniques and finally slab building vessel forms.

In the first session I introduced the students to the project and we discussed what Fairfield’s identity meant to them. We wrote down words based on this in our sketchbooks and then went outside around the school grounds drawing in response to this subject. As we worked three main themes emerged which were the rural surroundings, the people who are part of the school and the school values.

In the second session we started off by doing some timed drawing exercises from photos and natural objects collected when outside the previous week. I gave the students slabs of clay to work on and we rolled natural items into the clay. I then demonstrated how to monoprint onto the clay’s surface using coloured slips, a process that I use in my own work. The students then had the chance to create their own monoprinted drawings based on our earlier timed exercises. We created a wide variety of surfaces on the clay inspired by our ideas around Fairfield’s identity and we used a colour palette of slips that reflected Fairfield’s natural surroundings.

In the third session I started by giving a demonstration of how to slab build vessels, the method that I use to create my own sculptural ceramic forms. The students then cut up the slabs of clay with monoprinted surfaces created the previous week and started assembling these pieces together. We discussed what form our vessels should take and decided that we would aim to create curved, organic works to reflect the landscape surrounding Fairfield.

In the last session we added bases and refined the joins of our slab-built vessels. I demonstrated a final monoprinting process that can be used to create drawings with fine detail. The students then added their final monoprinted drawings onto the surface of the vessels and we reflected on the final results.

The works have been drying out over the summer holidays and will be fired in the next few weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working with the students at Fairfield High School and am really looking forward to seeing the fired vessels very soon.