Alison Brown
Ghost Fish necklace
Hand-made porcelain fish tangled in a kumihimo braided nylon fishing line with sea twine found on local beaches. Unique piece. 41 x 9 x 1.5cm
Pipefish Trap
Waxed iron wire, porcelain. Unique piece. 52 x 19 x 7 cm
Making with meaning is fundamental to Alison; exploring the consequences of the human touch on our world. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose butterfly brain and bowerbird eye inform intuitive hands helping them play with those fluttering thoughts through ceramics, metal and textiles to create experimental sculpture and art jewellery.
Alison says: ‘When lockdown began last year, I was bereft and disorientated. Gradually, through experimentation; by stretching and pulling at ideas, I uncovered a new strand of work incorporating both my love of textiles and ceramics; knotting nets to catch fish remembering the exquisite woven bamboo and grass animal traps I’d seen in the Pitt Rivers ethnological Museum in Oxford. Entwining rusty wire into hand-held ‘containers’ for porcelain pipefish, soon grew into huggable sizes containing larger objects. The process of weaving became a meditative act as new ways of making emerged from isolation. But are these traps or cocoons for fish? and were we protected during lockdown or contained?
The Trapper Baskets evolved from these woven wire Fish Traps as handheld containers for walking; freeing up hands for collecting the overlooked and discarded on our local lockdown walks. Finding treasure in unlikely places - intriguing natural forms or a weather-worn manmade object - encouraging a new appreciation of beauty though a closer observation of our surroundings.’
Instagram: @alisonsheltonbrown
Images by Robin Shelton