Janet is a ceramicist who has continued her own practice while working in education for the past 25 years. Until recently her work, informed by place and materiality, has related to the vessel. Abstraction, allowing for enigmatic references, is key to her work. At present she is employing mixed media to express ideas of displacement and dis-belonging. Making with ceramics, wire and materials found in nature, she is creating built structures that resemble boundaries. These small-scale sculptures make references to the movements of people, homelessness and alienation.

In 1938 Lucie Rie, a Jewish emigrant, fled Nazi Austria for London. She brought with her a modernist approach from Europe which was to change the perception of what ceramics could be.

The small, porcelain vase by Rie chosen from the collection is decorated with simple vertical lines. ‘this delicate drawing was less decoration than a means of exposing the structure…. cages of sgraffito, a trellis that simultaneously defined and exposed the volume of Rie’s pots’ (Clarke, 171).

Responding to Rie’s use of sgraffito through a manganese glaze, Janet has ‘drawn’ on her structures a layering. Boundaries. Borders. Barriers. Barricades. 1939–1945.

https://janetlines.com 

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