Jane Adams

Jane's work is inspired by her own busy household of cats and a childhood home where the family cat had his own place at the Christmas dinner table (there is a photograph to prove it!). She currently has four cats - three of which came from the Cats Protection, and a 20 year old Burmese who is lord of all he surveys.
She was self-taught at first, and subsequently trained in ceramics at Loughborough University, becoming a full time ceramic artist in 1998.
Her work has a gentle sense of humour and does not try to be accurately representational. She seeks to capture the character and spirit of the animals she makes, and says she actively avoids the 'cute'. Her range of work is wide, and can be seen at Melbourne Contemporary Arts, the South Derbyshire gallery she set up with her partner, photographer Philip Harris, in 2003.
The work is handmade in a sandy, heavily textured, stoneware crank clay, and modelled using a technique somewhere between slabbing and coiling, leaving many of the making marks visible. Many of her pieces have a simple oxide finish, but she is increasingly exploring glazes, particularly on her English Bull Terriers and abstract, fragmented pieces. She fires in her three electric kilns and works from her canal-side cottage in Derbyshire, often working outside in the summer.
Her most recent work has a 'darker' feel to it, evoking the wild landscapes of the Peak District where she grew up.