The Maker
With her focus on simplicity and the beauty within colour, material and form, ceramicist Katie Lowe creates a range of artworks, often combining miniature and subtly slip cast ceramics with other complementary materials. From small decorative pieces to large scale installations, Katie strives to create a strong visual impact through clean lines, bold forms and graduated hues. The process of colouring slip and creating her subtle gradients is what she finds most exciting: enjoying the complexities of the technical process required to create each colour, experimenting to get different and new results.
The Object: Eleven, 2016
13 cm h x 50 cm w x 5 cm deep, including wooden boxed frame (individual pots fit inside). Parian clay slip, cobalt oxide, beechwood box frame. £375
The Making
Katie is inspired by many aspects of nature: this piece evokes the many natural shades of blue to be observed in both sea and sky, and how they merge with one another. The making process involves mould-making, colouring the slip, slip-casting, fettling, firing and sanding. Suppliers GJB Joinery make the wooden frames to Katie’s precise orders.
Accolades
“One to Watch”, Ceramic Review, July/August 2020
Katie Lowe on her Signature Style
‘I believe my USP is colour and composition.”‘Eleven” is the perfect example of my gradients and really shows the range of blues from soft pale shades to deep dark tones. This design also has one vessel peeking out underneath, playfully adding a further sense of movement, alongside the tessellating vessel shapes in various sizes. I feel this piece best shows my creative design, inspiration from the sea and showcases my love of precise colour gradients.’
Expert Eye
Katie’s repetition of forms in her miniature tableaux brings harmony and balance, using a gradation of colour based on nature. Preston Fitzgerald (curator and collector)