Kerry Hastings is a ceramic artist based in London and has been working with clay for over 25 years. Using the ancient technique of hand coiling with ropes of clay affords Kerry the opportunity to stretch and pull the clay up and out and guide it back in so that there comes a point during the making process that a certain trajectory is suggested and, in a sense, the artist and the material are co-creating. Forms that begin as personal to Kerry then inevitably become quite universal, they are just very human.

During this residency Kerry intends to explore the use of locally sourced crystalline rocks as an inclusion in ceramics. By the transformation of rock into ceramic Kerry will use the alchemy of pottery as way of connecting to and responding to the landscape of this area of Scotland. The residency will be a stepping stone to creating a new body of work that will seek not to replicate nature but to display the workings of nature such as growth, metamorphosis and fragmentation.

Image provided by the artist.