Hawthorndene, Adelaide

classes: Wheel Throwing • Clay Sculpture and Hand Building • Pottery

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Alison is a full-time studio potter and teacher living in the Adelaide Hills. She has been making pots for over 30 years but clay has been a part of her life from early childhood. Memories include hands in the sticky red ‘Murram’ mud in Kenya where she spent several years as a child, and at high school in the UK creating elaborate sculptural animals and Celtic inspired coil pots.

Alison began formal studies as soon as she came to live in Australia in 1999 gaining a BA at Adelaide Centre for the Arts. She then took up a place on the associate training scheme at the JamFactory in Adelaide and continued as a studio tenant. Before setting up her own studio she took up further study at the University of South Australia obtaining a Graduate Diploma in Arts and Cultural Management.

Alison has built up an extensive library of forming and decorating techniques and enjoys sharing these with students as well as using them to make and decorate pots from the functional to the whimsical. Drinking vessels, bowls, kitchenware are thrown on the wheel with practical simplicity or delicately formed by hand into ultra-fine porcelain objects. She relishes every part of the process of making from design stage and consideration of form and function to indulging in the elaborate, highly decorated whimsy of exhibition pieces.

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