Caroline Gray feels the same sense of wonder in ceramics that she did as a child. The London-based designer got her start in textile design and worked in trend forecasting before pursuing a Master of Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, but it wasn’t until the last decade that she found her true calling. “About eight years ago, I was working in sculpture, and as soon as I discovered ceramics—quite accidentally, without having had a particular interest in it before—I thought, ‘This is what I should have been doing all my life,’” she tells Business of Home. “Growing up, my mother always made our own clothes, and there were always patterns and things laying around. I kind of absorbed it, and I would make doll’s clothes. I was always making things as a child; and working with clay in the way that I do, it’s a direct continuation of that: making three-dimensional objects from flat pieces.”
Compared with the large sculptures and installations she had been working on before, the manageable scale and versatility of the material offered her a wide range of possibilities. “As soon as I started working with clay, it just felt like this is the right medium for me,” says Gray. “I can use all my skills, not just my trained artist skills, but the skills that I’ve developed since childhood. It’s also very absorbing, and it’s a very contemplative process, which I really enjoy.”
Unlike other artists, she doesn’t work from drawing or paper templates—she refers to her extemporaneous process as “confident risk-taking.” Gray explains, “I start with a vague idea of a form that I want to make, and I have a whole library of random [flat slab] templates that I’ve used for other pieces. I might pull one of those out and put pieces [of clay] together, look at it, think about how it’s going. It may not feel like it’s working at all, and then I’ll do something like take a risk and make a cut, change an angle or a plane. And then suddenly, a whole new language will emerge out of that step into the unknown.”
Gray’s unique approach shines in her upcoming “Colour Assembly” exhibition at Studio Tashtego in Cold Spring, New York—a show that features lamps, sconces, candleholders and bookends that are all crafted with colorful terra sigillata (“stamped clay”). “There’s one lamp base that has these curved planes on it, and I arrived at that completely by accident,” she says. “I’d made something else, and it just wasn’t working. I just kept looking at it, and then I thought, ‘I’m just going to slide it down.’ I did it all freehand, without measurements and things—and it just created this wonderful form that there is no way I could have imagined in my head. Visual intuition is what keeps it interesting. Because, I think, ‘Oh God, am I ever going to be able to make another different form with this process?’ And then suddenly you do, and it’s fantastic. And then that takes you somewhere else.”
The show came about in a similarly improvisational way. Studio Tashtego founder Julia Caldwell reached out to Gray on Instagram with a simple question. “In our first conversation, she asked me if I had ever made lamp bases. ‘No, but I’m sure I could.’ It was fantastic. Suddenly that gave my sculptural pieces this functional element. I was able to use all my sculptural direction thoughts and put them into something which would be used as an object,” says the artist. “It’s really pushed me to develop into other areas of what I would call functional sculpture. I’ve made bookends, which I’m really excited about. They’re quite beautiful sculptural objects, but they also have a place in the home.”
Looking ahead, Gray doesn’t plan to grow her one-woman studio, preferring to focus instead on her experience creating the art she loves. “Success for me is making good work that satisfies me,” she says. “I don’t have an assistant, and I don’t want to expand. I really like working in the kind of bespoke way that I am now, and that’s how I think it’s continuing. I like the balance that I have.”
