Oxfordshire Artweeks returns and we will be host to local artists, makers and designers and artists.
Just drop-in and explore for free.
Chat about painting, photography, textiles, sculpture and ceramics; discover woodworking, glass art, mosaics and jewellery, and be intrigued by contemporary installations and multidisciplinary practice.
Be inspired, entertained and surprised, and choose a treasure to take home with you!
Graham Lester OCG
Artform: Mixed Media, Paper, Sculpture, Wood
Paper sculpture is a medium I have worked with for some time to express creative ideas. I like the clear graphic effect that can be achieved with paper. My turned art is making something beautiful from discarded materials, turning old books into paper bowls and offcuts of Corian, acrylic and plywood, laminated then turned on the lathe into colourful decorative pieces.
Ewa Wawrzyniak
Artform: Ceramics, Glass, Sculpture
Ewa Wawrzyniak was born in Poland and trained in ceramics and glass at Middlesex Polytechnic and Surrey Institute of Art and Design in the UK. She completed her Master of Arts at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland, where her research explored the technical and expressive possibilities of sand casting glass.
Ewa’s work is inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s book ‘The Poetics of Space’ and deals with the perceptions of a house as a ‘private space’. Always content, sometimes contained, the house serves in her work as the portal to metaphors of imagination. We need houses to dream, in order to imagine. These dreamscape sculptures are about vulnerability and protection. She explores how we experience intimate places and to what extent our memories and experiences from childhood influence our need for this ‘dream place’. The symbols she uses are very personal and therefore more intuitive than logical. The ‘streets’ are journeys towards a safe place. Every ‘street’ represents a different atmosphere, creates a different environment, and reflects a mood or expectation to be found upon reaching the ‘dream house’
The method she uses to create her work is called sand-casting. It involves pouring hot glass into a mould made of special, damp casting sand. It is a fast, free, and immediate method of working with glass, requiring the creator’s significant physical and energetic involvement. Ewa has selected this method to create her pieces as it permits an unrestricted expression of an idea.
Since 1999 Ewa has been a Part-Time Lecturer in Open Studies in Ceramics & Glass at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, since 2003 she has been a regular Visiting Lecturer at the Faculty of Art & Design (Glass) University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK.
Her work is widely collected by museums and galleries including Broadfield House Glass Museum Kingswinford, UK, North Lands Creative Glass Lybster, Scotland, and BWA Ksiaz, Poland, as well as many private collections in the UK, Ireland, Scotland and the USA.
Her commissioned works include: the University of Cambridge Awards in 2021, Corrosion Institute Awards in 2021, Arts & Business East Awards and Art & Business South East Awards in 2007; Down Syndrome Ireland; Forfas Innovation Awards, Ireland; Royal Bank of Scotland; and various private commissions around the world.
Hilary Audus OCG
Artform: Sculpture
I work in stoneware ceramic. All my pieces are hand-built using the traditional coil technique. They are all based on The Natural World, especially that of birds. In some of my pieces I use the technique of sgraffito – drawing directly into the slip before the first firing.
