Local photographer JP Kavanagh, who has worked extensively with many of the Wobage Makers in previous years, has been collaborating again with Patia and Jeremy in developing a small body of framed work for the May exhibition.

The Wobage Gallery is delighted to celebrate Patia’s work in this year’s Summer exhibition, marking her 20th year as resident maker at Wobage. The Summer exhibition at Wobage begins on Saturday  28th May and continues every day until Sunday 5th June.

Kavanagh is collaborating with Jeremy Steward in the development of his own website, and also towards a joint exhibition with Jeremy at the Pop-Up Gallery of Cirencester Brewery Arts in the Summer of 2012. The working title for this show, ‘Salt on Salt’ will include a group of Kavanagh’s salt processed prints alongside Jeremy’s wood salt-fired pots. They will be showing alongside local artist friends Nigel Lambert and Mariette Voke.

Watch out, you saw it here first, the new look for the Wobage tutors for 2011!

Thank you to all Wobage students and Makers Gallery customers who have supported us in 2010. It has been a most rewarding and enjoyable year. Some great students and some inspirational fired pots to match, through the season of Summer courses and the full year of evening classes.

Here’s wishing you all a very Happy Christmas & New Year and our best wishes for a successful 2011. A reminder that Wobage Makers Gallery is officially closed for January and February. However, we shall all be grafting away at the Workshops through the harshest of inhospitable Winter conditions. Our greatest inspiration……. a recently insulated throwing studio and new wood-stove! So if you need to buy a gift or fancy a New Year treat for yourself from the newly refurbished gallery, please don’t hesitate to ring and make an appointment to visit.

….for the Wobage pottery christmas party, thank you to our hosts Graham and Linda at the Alma Inn in Linton.

“She’d an ankle like an antelope

and a foot like a deer

A voice like a blackbird

so mellow and clear

And her hair it hung in ringlets

so beautiful and long

And I thought that she loved me

but I found that I was wrong”

With Mick’s exhibition and book launch fast approaching, find attached the press release for the event.

Mick show press release

Marking a year of apprenticeship to Jeremy as part of the ‘Adopt a Potter’ trust scheme, Sheila Herring will be exhibiting her new body of wood-fired salt-glaze at the forthcoming Autumn Wobage show. In the way that Mick Casson supported and nurtured new young talent, it seems fitting that the exciting and spirited work that Sheila has been developing over recent months will be exhibited adjacent to Mick’s retrospective and book launch. The September exhibition forms part of ‘H’Art’, Herefordshire’s annual artweek. If you are out of county and considering a visit, rest assured that alongside the Wobage exhibitions, there is an abundance of artist’s open studios and galleries to visit. We open at Wobage on the evening of Friday 10th September with live jazz and refreshments, 6pm-9pm, then continuing until Sunday 19th, 10am – 5pm.

The planning for Mick’s retrospective exhibition this Autumn is now well under way at Wobage, touring from Ruthin Craft Centre, North Wales, which has also now published Mick’s biography written by Emmanuel Cooper and Amanda Fielding. The book will be available for sale at £20 from Wobage Makers Gallery. The biography is beautifully illustrated throughout,  and celebrates Mick’s life and work; from Arts school in 1945, to their first pottery in Marchmont St. London, then Prestwood and finally the move to Wobage in 1977. Amanda Fielding writes of Mick’s international influence, afterwords from Philip Hughes of Ruthin, Sheila and Ben Casson.

The exhibition will be held in the Wobage threshing barn, the ‘cathedral’ as Mick called it, featuring as part of Herefordshire Council’s Art Week, ‘H’Art’, opening evening of Friday 10th with live jazz and refreshments, and then until Sunday 19th September 2010, 10am – 5pm. We hope that you can join us in celebration.

The Wobage makers warmly invite you to join us for our exhibition this weekend. Beginning this Saturday 29th May and continuing every day until Sunday 6th June, 10am-5pm. Enjoy the sunshine, the Wobage lawns and Spring flowers, bring a picnic and relax with a glass of Wobage ‘Early Griffin’ perry and a slice of our delicious home-made cakes.

The Wobage makers will be around for most of the week.  If you’d like to meet one of us in particular, or talk about any one of the many forthcoming courses this Summer and Autumn, please e-mail or telephone to check we are at Wobage to meet you. We all really look forward to seeing you over the nine days of exhibition.

The Wobage team has been busy this week preparing Sheila’s birthday retrospective of pots, including a ‘for sale’ display of her current salt-fired stoneware and porcelain which has just been unpacked from the gas-salt kiln. Some wonderful mature surfaces, particularly the rich blue-blacks. The exhibition is being set up in the entrance of the magnificent threshing barn.

The small wood-salt kiln was fired Tuesday 25th and will be unpacked later today, nothing like the smell of a smouldering exhibition plinth! The kiln was crash-cooled and basted just after midnight, and the draw rings looked very promising indeed. Jeremy was assisted over the 20 hour firing by apprentice Sheila Herring, Josh Redman and local potter and cider-maker John Teiser. The kiln pack was dominated by Jeremy’s pots, but with mugs of Sheila’s and a shelf-full of Josh’s porcelain. We shall be serving John Teiser’s highly reputed farmhouse perry during the exhibition, made using the rare pear variety, ‘Early Griffin’ collected from the Wobage perry orchard in 2009.

Wobage exhibition, including an 80th Birthday retrospective of Sheila Casson’s work opens Saturday 29th May and continues until Sunday June 6th.

Hot from the kiln and ready for our forthcoming exhibition this weekend, Patia is rattling through several firings of both her porcelain and earthenware ranges. Some fantastic new square slip-decorated dishes which have proved very popular indeed, alongside the fresh greens of her yew-ash glazed, reduction-fired porcelain. (see pics) For the first time, she’ll also be exhibiting a new range of screw top jars.