Suki Stokes

I was one of those lucky people who were introduced to clay as an artistic medium at school. Fulston Manor in Sittingbourne was a brand new, state of the art school and even today has a reputation for having a good art department, when I attended it also had a dedicated ceramics department, which was run by the art teacher John Burley. John was very interested in ceramics and had a good but basic understanding of clay, but what he lacked in skill he made up for in his enthusiasm. At the time although I enjoyed the subject I never considered it as a career I was determined to be a zoologist and study whales. My education progressed towards this role until halfway through my A Levels it became clear to me that being a biologist often involved having a very callous attitude to animals, one that I would never be able to adopt. I finished my A Levels and simply jumped for the first course to accept me, a Pre- Foundation Art course in Thanet.

At Thanet College it soon became clear that I was never going to be able to draw and paint to the standard I would have wanted, I had always enjoyed art but frankly was only a middle of the road student.

I hated model making with a passion, so did extra pottery, after two lessons was asked to leave woodworking and told to see if there was anyone in the pottery.

After an incident in the fabrication room, where I set all the gas lines alight with a welding torch I was again sent for extra pottery lessons. In fact looking back at that year I seem to have been sent to the pottery room a lot! So at the end of the year it was no surprise I ended up applying to attend the BTEC at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, Rochester. Head of Centre at the time was Peter Phillips but the National Diploma was headed by Mike Spoor. It was Mike who took us for our first lesson, a two hour demonstration on how to push a stick into a lump of clay, luckily things got better after that.

Looking back at my four years at Medway I was more then lucky with the range and standard of teachers, in fact it was only much later I appreciated just how lucky I had been. My list of teacher reads like a who’s who of British pottery. Peter Phillips, Mike Spoor, Peter Beard, Colin Peterson, Mike Goddard, Dave White, David Barnes. After a very happy four years I was reluctant to quit learning about clay so moved on to a degree course at the Buckinghamshire College in High Wycombe. The highlight of my two years, after gaining my degree of course, was having the wonderful John Colbeck as a teacher. In my humble opinion however, no degree could ever match the ceramic education I had gained at Medway. My Fellow students included , Marie Prett, Ashley Howard, Sue Halls and Martin Lungly.

At some point I had to leave college and start earning a living, I was really lucky that my college education was paid for through grants and I did not have a huge debt to pay off in later life. No wonder courses like the BTEC at Medway have disappeared! I set up my studio in a large porta cabin in the garden and looked for paying work. My first job was at The Sittingbourne Adult Education centre, teaching evening classes and one of my first students was my old art teacher John Burley. This small income allowed me to really start producing my artwork and also eat. At the time I was making small glazed animals and large incised elephant dishes and I stuck with this style of work for some time. The reality of trying to support yourself with artwork work is a difficult one and if not for the help and support of my parents I would have had to get real work!

My Ceramic work was small; I used a hand building white stoneware and glazed with a mixture of raku glazes and brush on glazes, often then finished with enamel or luster. As time progressed I felt the need to increase the size to give the work a more dramatic statement. I kept to the same making process, which is small slabs of clay attached to a central cylinder. I push and press the clay outwards to give the feeling of mass. I have never been interested in producing real and accurate copies of the animals I am making but rather in capturing the essence. Also I really dislike most mass produced ceramic animals as they are often arranged in unnatural static poses, the exception to that rule being the Beswick animals, which are full of movement and character. It is this I hope shows in my work, the angle of the head, the subtle positioning of the ears, all telling a story, allowing the viewer to see or feel what the animal is thinking.