Bio & Statement

Artist Bio

Carmel is a New Zealand ceramic artist whose practice draws on a background in spatial design and an upbringing shaped by her family’s fibreglass boat-building business. This heritage reflects a transmission of craft across three generations, providing a foundation of technical knowledge and material understanding that she transforms into a contemporary, material-led ceramic practice.

Working primarily with vessel forms, Carmel explores how inherited skills and ways of thinking can be adapted and reinterpreted through new materials and contexts. Her work bridges industrial making and contemporary craft, creating a dialogue between tradition and innovation while demonstrating how knowledge evolves as it passes from one generation to the next.

Artist Statement

Each piece mirrors the sequence of marine engineering, using a hand-carved plug draped with patterned nerikomi clay slabs, much like fibreglass cloth laid over a mould.

I use opposing forces to create tension. While the underlying form provides structure and control, the nerikomi process introduces chance through a more intuitive approach. I often incorporate reclaimed studio clay and layered coloured clays, creating variables that cannot be fully predicted. The clay palette evolves naturally over time, with traces of previous work becoming embedded in the next.

After firing, the surfaces begin as quiet, almost monochromatic fields. The complexity of the work emerges through a rigorous sanding process, where the outer surface is removed to reveal intricate veins and hidden formations within the clay body.

Each vessel has a contiguous finish that invites touch. Through smooth, taut curves, the work draws on a shared language between maritime hulls and ceramic forms, exploring how memory, chance, and engineering become permanently embedded within the material.