Potter Nancy Fuller reflects on a year of challenges and change
The Taiwanese-Scottish artist, who is making her Collect art fair debut, reveals how she adapted her practice to the pandemic
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‘Given the way the world has changed and slowed down in the last year, I wonder if there will be a growing audience for my work, which is very earthy and slowly made,’ says the Taiwanese-Scottish potter Nancy Fuller. For Collect art fair, Gallery Ten will be exhibiting her large kame pots, an elegant Japanese vessel form that, in times gone by, was used to store water (Fuller trained with master potters in Japan).
‘I made these in the peaceful early days of lockdown – it was an intense period of making,’ she recalls. ‘I called the piece I made Solace Kame. I’ve been working at my kitchen table here in Perthshire, then driving the unfired pieces to my kiln in the forests two hours away. I can only fire once a year because of the time it takes to build up enough pieces to fill the anagama kiln.’
There’s no doubt that hers is a lengthy making process. Fuller mixes her clay recipes from scratch, then hand-builds her pots through coiling, before paddling them into shape on a kick-wheel – no mechanised shortcuts here.
Finally, her pieces go through a four-day-long firing in a Japanese-style wood-fired anagama kiln, located in the forests of rural Aberdeenshire. ‘I can’t just put my pots in a kiln and press a button. This year highlighted to me how vulnerable I am as a wood-firing potter, what with preparing such huge quantities of wood and needing a team to fire with. A friend actually sailed over from Norway to help me.’
For Fuller, who has exhibited everywhere from the UK to Japan and Tasmania, this effort is always worth it. Each pot is dappled in a muted palette created by contact with the ash and flame of the firing.
Fuller unloading a kame pot
Working with this ancient technique creates a quiet aesthetic far removed from the hectic colour and noise that surrounds us in our contemporary lives – a welcome relief, we think.
Collect 2021 is now live on Artsy.net, with works on view and commissions available until 24 March. Over the weeks, we’ve been meeting the makers making their debut at the fair – explore more artist profiles online and follow the action on Instagram at @collectartfair and #collect2021.
