HANDBAGS...

    World © Geoff Wilkinson - All rights reserved

I love these handbags. We have them on show at the Gallery as part of The Wanstead Art Trail, they are the work of local artist Jola Spytkowska. The amazing thing is all these wonderful bags with such great faces are ceramic, they really are worth seeing. I prefer the picture above with the 'floating' shadows on the wall however, you can  see a more conventional view below. At the bottom of the page you can see Jola's biography.

                        World © Geoff Wilkinson - All rights reserved

Jola's bio:

I first studied for a Diploma in Ceramics at Braintree College which then led me to Goldsmiths College London where I gained a Post Graduate degree.

I currently work in 3 areas: my studio work, teaching and public and private commissions

I design and handbuild figures and beasts by slab building.  These are one offs and some limited editions and I sell my work through galleries, exhibitions and craft fairs.

My work is figurative.  I look for human and animal personalities in the everyday objects around me.  Through drawing I explore the images I have collected in my memory or with a camera or the objects I have found in a scrapyard, a kitchen or a tool shed.  I find that there is many a creature waiting to emerge from some of these objects  Looking at an old tape measure I might suddenly see a friendly dog looking back at me.  A round metal jug can have the potential for a bird- like creature.

Lately I have realised that handbags have personalities too!

From an early age portraits in pencil led to drawings of heads combined with mechanical elements 'Heath Robinson' fashion and were early hints of my later fascination with the ' mechanics' of objects.  A passion for scrap yards followed with photography focusing on the beauty of discarded materials with rich powers of association.  Collecting junk trained my eye to perceiving the potential human and /or animal element within the objects and drawing became the key to releasing them.