Amy Cooper

I spent much of my youth with my nose in rock pools in Cornwall where I grew up. After spending time in Canada and Europe and a series of menial jobs I attended Falmouth School of Art for their foundation course. Ceramics reared its head as part of the course and I became fascinated by the infinite properties of clay and the myriad techniques that go with it.

After graduating from Falmouth, I went on to the University of Wolverhampton and studied for a B.A. in Art and Design (ceramics and sculpture) where I explored my creative passions via two contrasting bodies of work. Delicate porcelain lamps and large scale brick sculpture. Graduating with a first class honours degree in the summer of 2002, my career got off to a good start with a successful degree show and I haven't looked back. I show regularly at craft design shows and major ceramics events as well as supplying a host of galleries both at home and internationally.

Though my porcelain work I seek to examine scale and energy. My work is largely inspired by the natural spaces I have spent time in. I am a coast dweller by choice and have gathered visual information from the precious things the sea flings back at us, from the minutia we can't usually see to the drama of an ocean ravaged cliff-face. The brooding mystery of the north Cornish coast which inspired my work from an early age has now been exchanged for the soaring, dazzling chalk and flint of Sussex. My porcelain lamps are slipcast and then manipulated when they are soft out of the mould so that no two pieces are the same. I use a combination of glazes and slips to create unexpected surfaces which compliment the organic forms.

 I am currently a member of Red Herring Studios which is a mixed discipline group based in Hove, East Sussex.