Emma Smith

I come from a working class family of five, the brick house I grew up in, a simple home with simple things inside. Boot scuffs on an old wooden floor, weathered paint where hundreds of fingerprints ran along the wall each day. A family recipe; the way my nose is just like my mother’s, and how my father’s stubbornness was not lost on me. It is these small parcels of time that I aim to explore and celebrate, using soft clay that shows process and touch. What better material to express the tenderness and resiliency of life than one which is equally malleable and solid. I fire my work in a wood burning kiln, decorated with stylized patterns from my day to day. The texture of fungi on a log, animal tracks in the snow, and the criss cross on the man hole cover at the end of my driveway are small intricacies that make up the world around me. They have made me too.