Juliet Walters

Juliet Walters Ceramics is a Brighton-based ceramic artist working from her studio at Phoenix Art Space.

With encouragement from her tutor, Caroline Wyman, she completed a BTEC National Certificate in Art and Design (Ceramics), followed by a further year studying towards her HNC. After the birth of her daughter, she moved from London to Brighton and, in 2001, secured her first studio space with Red Herring Artists.

Her studio has always been a sanctuary — a place to inhabit her creative identity alongside being a mother. She feels privileged to work in Brighton, a city rich in artistic opportunity and supportive networks. She exhibits in selected shows throughout the year and locally during the Open Houses in May, and welcomes visitors to her studio at Phoenix Art Space by appointment.

Her practice is fundamentally concerned with the treatment of surface. She combines carving into clay with burnishing, bringing the two techniques into a coherent dialogue. Carving creates three-dimensional texture through varied depths and levels, disturbing the clay surface and encouraging the eye to move inward rather than glance away.

Burnishing and smoke firing further transform the clay body — sealing it, then introducing shifting areas of light and shade through carbonisation. Gold, silver or copper leaf is sometimes applied to the interior of forms after the final firing.

She is inspired by the belief, shared by Henry Moore and Ewen Henderson, that the material should take the lead and be pushed to its limits. The curvaceous, uncomplicated structures of Anish Kapoor and Barbara Hepworth, along with Gabriele Koch’s gourd-like burnished pots, reflect a mastery in uniting form and surface — an ambition she continues to pursue in her own work.