Tom Norris: “I’m always thinking about the potential of external planes in the forms while I’m sitting at the pottery wheel”

We asked three questions to Tom Norris, a talented multidisciplinary artist and teacher of the six-weeks course at Ceramics Classes London.

GREENS & TRIANGLES (2023)

Oil & acrylic on canvas

94cm x 100cm

Could you tell us about the process of making your pieces? Particularly in the transformative process of materials and the way you arrange and rearrange elements. You use collage, painting, and plenty of surface work. How does this process influence the meaning or poetics of your pieces?

TN: “I often throw works in a small series or make a couple of larger pieces in tandem. The larger works are thrown together, constructed in multiple parts, and brought together through joining and trimming. This method allows the forms to grow in scale but also pushes what is technically possible and expands the available surface to work with later on. I’m always thinking about the potential of external planes in the forms while I'm sitting at the pottery wheel. In this quiet, personal, and almost meditative space, I can find room to project my thoughts ahead to what this object might be. It’s a really exciting and commanding place to be as a maker.

I make a range of different forms on the wheel and have never properly settled for a favourite or staple form. Taller, flatter-sided collar pieces offer different opportunities than rounded, curved works. These are the types of considerations I’m making while working and thinking about different forms. Certain techniques, such as slip transfer, will work better on particular forms. The imagery, gestures, and colours operate in a sort of cyclical process between drawing, painting, collaging, and then throwing, making, and glazing. The second half of the cycle is rather permanent, so I find it good practice to limber up with inconsequential materials such as paper. 

Vessels, by definition, are objects that hold something; they have the ability to contain. This, for me, goes beyond a literal and function definition, gives the opportunity to explore the containment of meaning, and opens up the question of why vessels are so potent and recurrent in people’s homes and lives.”

Clay is a very elemental material that morphs from its raw state to ceramic in the kiln. It is essentially coming from earth and then getting immortalised by fire. Are any of these ideas and elemental processes relevant to your practice, and why?

TN: “I like the transformative processes of ceramic and clay. I think it’s fantastic for people generally to turn something so seemingly formless into a lump of clay and make something of it. It’s good for you! The transformative or metamorphosis aspect of the work is also interesting to me, as I like cycles and processes and changing seasons or landscapes, so perhaps it’s also another way of thinking through that idea.”

Could you delve deeper into your technique of mapping surfaces and how it relates to the intuitive nature of your practice? How do you think that surfaces inform sculptural shapes?

TN: “Each piece, for me, shares something in common with the last but also provides room for new relationships and ideas to be found. The idea of making two of the same or perfectly neutral forms has never been my thing. I like the energy of confronting the surface anew each time. This process is never really designed but intuited, and I like to think of it like the space found by abstract painters, or perhaps something like the marks of expressionist painters, or maybe both. That is where the potential of collage comes into play. The exciting and unknown parts of mapping the surfaces of my work come when a productivity or coalescence of form, image, and object comes to light. Style can be a subject.

Practically, this means unpacking how certain techniques are achieved in ceramics and making the most of these within my set of intentions for the work. There is so much to learn in the way of surface techniques, and knowing how to do them is only the beginning of how to use them for pieces. I combine slip trailing, sgraffito, underglaze painting, glazing, underglaze transfers, and overglaze transfers—not always and not all at the same time, but you see my point. The potential combinations and how these can express a certain idea for a piece are always the fuel for the next idea.”