Not Just a lump of Clay - Artist Profile, Claire Bryers

Clay creations of Mercury Bay artist

“You are only limited by your imagination,” says Claire, and there is nothing more inspiring for her than a lump of clay.

Claire is exhibiting in the Whitianga Lions Club Art Expo at King’s Birthday Weekend. The list of what she’ll have available stretches from starfish and mussels to hearts and decorative bowls – each a unique piece of art with patterns reflecting Claire’s thoughts and glazed with colours she has made from scratch. Blue and green are her favourite colours. They are the colours of our coastal environment where Claire is very much at home walking on the beach.

Take her mussel shells. They are a horse mussel form that allows Claire the space to add in intricate detailed creatures and crustaceans of the sea and in doing so take the viewer down to the water’s edge to find such a treasure of fossicking.

Inspiration from everywhere 

“I was born in Auckland by the beach and I never realised how much I missed it until I came back and I get a lot of my inspiration from the beach, just shells and bits of glass and bits of seaweed. I always try and take home an offering for the kiln from the beach when I fire the kiln. So I put that underneath or in the kiln.”

I get inspiration from anywhere. I love music. It picks me up and puts me in a certain mood and I get in the zone and something will just come to me. I love colour. Some colour will spark me off on a different track. It’s just anything. That’s why I love to travel as well.  

- Claire Bryers, Artist

For many years she lived away from the sea until 14 years ago when with her husband they decided to move to Kaimarama, near Whitianga.

Her journey into the world of pottery began when as a young mother in 1981 she started a hobby course in pottery and ceramics.

“I had a young daughter and a husband who worked at the paper mill in Tokoroa and I needed something else. I did ceramics for a while and then I worked out I liked to just start with a lump of clay and make something from it… I liked the fact that you started with nothing.”

Claire began working with stoneware clay, mostly producing domestic ware, casseroles, oven dishes and that type of thing.

“We started up like a cooperative and I started selling there in the late 80s-early 90s and then I branched out a bit and I used to go through to an art gallery in Taihape. I’d met a lady in Taupo and she moved to Taihape and she liked my stuff, so I’d periodically trot down there. Then I supplied to Whakatane, Rotorua. But now it’s mostly Whitianga, Hahei, Cambridge and Tauranga.

Creative workspace

Today when the inspiration takes her, Claire will tuck herself away in her workspace in the garage to create and then, once dry, her pottery heads to a shed shared with her husband, that is set up with her electric kiln to fire, glaze and do the final firing. “I’m pretty lucky really.”

Claire had experimented with a salt kiln and raku and had previously used a gas kiln until a couple of years ago when she bought an electric kiln.

“I love my electric kiln because I can just turn it on and it’s absolutely fabulous. You have a certain idea what you get out but it’s never exactly what you think and it can still surprise you, which is really lovely.”

June Art Expo

The Art Expo is being held in the Whitianga Town Hall from opening night, Friday May 31 until Monday, June 3 with money raised, from a percentage of the art sold, along with raffles and donations all going to Project Mammogram.