Fenella Elms

Fenella Elms (1964, UK) worked for many years in mental health, being trained as occupational therapist and later on as psychoanalyst. She was however already interested in art at boarding school and also learned there how to throw. Turning 40, she further pursued this interest by joining Swindon College for a foundation course in Art & Design, followed a little later by a 2-year HNC Ceramics course. After her graduation in 2008 she decided to become a fulltime professional artist. Fenella’s work features in numerous publications and her most outstanding achievement so far has been winning the Ceramic Review Award 2011 for Exceptional, Innovative and Challenging work at Ceramic Art London. Her work is part of many private collections.

Porcelain slip is her material in which she takes great pleasure pouring, spreading and squeezing. All the components of her works are cast before building, waiting for the right stage of softness for them to work together. The making processes have developed in response to porcelain’s contradictory qualities of fragility and permanence, strength and delicacy, sharpness with a wavering softness in the kiln, before firing to a solid translucency. Her acclaimed signature work consists of fragile structures of slender ribbons and paper-thin leaves of porcelain turned into mobius and twisted helix sculptures and wall-hanging flows made of complex layers of tiny seed-like porcelain elements. Other innovative works are porcelain ribbon structures suspended in acrylic.