S9E2
· 17:35
Jane Sheppard's Ancestors exhibition at Salisbury Museum is deeply moving and absolutely wonderful. I was so excited to talk with her about her relationship with nature. Our conversation delves into our body's responses to materials and environment, water dowsing, and her presence in her fantastic work. This is an incredibly thoughtful and thought provoking podcast. I'm certain you're going to love it.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I'm a ceramic artist. I've worked with clay for over thirty years, but always coiling and largely smoke firing as well, always low impact ways of working.
Estelle Phillips:When did you make the decision to go low impact? Almost immediately. I didn't expect to become a ceramicist at all,
Rev Jane Sheppard:I was more graphics and always interested in religion and ways of being. And I came across ceramics by accident. It was coming up at college. I was absolutely terrified because I thought I'm gonna be hopeless at this. So I did an evening class and the coiling was the first thing they taught me.
Rev Jane Sheppard:And I made this pot that was about 18 inches high in one session and absolutely fell in love with it and knew that I wanted to do that. So it's a really strange beginning. But immediately, I knew I wanted to coil. And I glazed that first pot, but it was a very rudimentary covering. So basically, I was just I put a bit of brush glaze on it, but not covering the whole thing, just a gestural covering.
Rev Jane Sheppard:So when that came out, and it was a lilac y color, I remember, but it bled at the edges. But the color of the clay was the dominant thing, and that was what was exciting. But I also realized that I wanted the clay to breathe, and that was really interesting how stronger response that was. I didn't want to cover it with anything at all. I needed it to to breathe and be alive in the world, even though it had been fired.
Rev Jane Sheppard:So I glazed a couple of pieces after that, but you know, very quickly, just thought no, absolutely not. I'm not going to use glazes.
Estelle Phillips:So there's a lot there that's fascinating, but one of the things is that you said you wanted it to be alive. Yes. What were you feeling?
Rev Jane Sheppard:I I know where that stems from Yeah. And it doesn't stem from clay, But when I was young, I won a bottle of nail varnish in a like a village fete. And it was the first time I'd ever applied nail varnish on. And I can remember how curious that was because I loved it. It's this beautiful color.
Rev Jane Sheppard:But my fingernail felt really strange, and I realized that my fingernails kind of breathed. And it just felt that the clay was such a it felt a very animate material, like it had a very definite presence, and I it felt the same. There was a link between those two things, and I thought I don't I don't want this to interfere. It was very, very strong. I
Estelle Phillips:feel that the the nail varnish Yeah. Is a sort of like evidence rather than the thing.
Rev Jane Sheppard:Say more?
Estelle Phillips:So like the strength of the emotion with which you're describing the desire to let the clay breathe. Mhmm. And here we are surrounded by your work, and it's all breathing. Mhmm. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:And I've just seen your amazing exhibition in Salisbury, again, it was breathing. So it's an enormous thing in your work. Yeah. It is actually. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:And it feels to someone looking at your work, it feels so big that it can't have come just from the nail varnish, but more that there was something in you, a feeling in you that made you respond to the nail varnish in that way. That nail varnish can't be responsible for all of these. No.
Rev Jane Sheppard:But there's something about it as an indicator. Yes. Yes. So it was an early indicator of how things, different materials can still be you know, I never thought of fingernails as being, you know, I think of them as being like dead cells almost things that have grown and been discarded. But I never really thought about them and I realized how different materials have different qualities.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I haven't really talked about this much with people. There was also at the time when I was very young, I was very interested in things like dowsing
Estelle Phillips:and Water dowsing. And people who've
Rev Jane Sheppard:dowsed with stone. So a lot of a lot of early work that was done with stone and how stone records as a time and energy. A bit like, you know, when you get an energetic sense in a space when you walk in you go, oh, this feels nice. Yeah. You know, that sort of thing and how that can be translated and created in sacred spaces particularly.
Rev Jane Sheppard:Yeah. So I'm very aware of that and how different materials kind of foster that and how they can be worked with with that. There's a lot there's a lot in that I
Estelle Phillips:I realize. Feels like what I'm seeing. Mhmm. When you say you're very aware of that, can you tell me a little bit about how the stones record and hold this information?
Rev Jane Sheppard:I don't know how. Yeah. And in a way, I think that's important.
Estelle Phillips:What is important to you about that? What's important to me
Rev Jane Sheppard:about that is that it's not I think, you know, I'm reticent in talking about
Estelle Phillips:it I don't want you to
Rev Jane Sheppard:No, no. But it's it's important.
Estelle Phillips:It seems to me that it's the thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Rev Jane Sheppard:And it's really interesting that you pick up on that. And maybe now it's not where was I? The yes. There was something in that in the different materials and I think I like spaces. I like interior spaces.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I've always been drawn to that Like, you think how would I inhabit this space a lot? And there is something in those different qualities that I think I can I I pick up
Estelle Phillips:on it a lot?
Rev Jane Sheppard:And I think probably a lot of us pick up on it a lot, but we're not taught to even recognize those. So it's a kind of something that we completely bypass. But that's what I think is important now that we start to reawaken to how our bodies respond to materials and environments because we're so surrounded with materials that are manufactured and and mass produced and don't have an intention or a sort of let's say indigenous, but a localized kind of presence. So I think it's particularly important that we actually pay attention to that and sort of relearn how our bodies respond because I think that's something that will be useful to us.
Estelle Phillips:How do you respond to the clays that you're working with? So for example, we've just seen some of your honestly incredible work and they're in different clays. Yeah. I saw the whiter clay and then the grey clay. Mhmm.
Estelle Phillips:Was that because you were having a different response to the different clays? White clay was something I enjoyed because I could work
Rev Jane Sheppard:with the markings Yeah. Of the smoke. So it was really helpful for that and there's something bare about it that's suggestive of bone and it does bring those associations I guess, kind of more mental associations. Working with the black clay was completely different because black clay has a much higher grogged aspect to it.
Estelle Phillips:What does that mean?
Rev Jane Sheppard:That's pre fired bits of clay. So it looks a bit like sand has been added to it but it's not sand, it's pre fired clay bits that are that give it strength and texture. Yeah. Kills my thumbs when I'm working with Must do. Yeah.
Rev Jane Sheppard:So it's challenging to work with, but it's also quite plastic. I can it's it's got such a strength that I can build quite quickly with it. But there's something about the robustness of it that brings that robustness in me. The forms I made with that clay you've seen are quite different. It's enabled a whole a different sort of visual language to come stronger and that's really exciting because I didn't intentionally do that but it was brought about by the play.
Rev Jane Sheppard:And again, was almost accidental, but it's just what that play does and it's so it's just sort of tapping me and going, come on, be robust.
Estelle Phillips:You know, it's almost as clear as that. It sounds like you're having a closer internal relationship with the darker clay. Yes. Yes. It's it's more raw, it's more primal.
Estelle Phillips:Oh, but the thing is, right, that this is such an exciting thing. Yeah. Because the darker pieces that I've seen, they all look like they should be standing in the landscape. Right. And to me,
Rev Jane Sheppard:when
Estelle Phillips:I see them, I don't see them as I mean, there's one there that's really fantastic, but when I'm looking at it, I'm seeing it in the land. Okay. Yeah. And also, to to me Mhmm. But I'm not an art critic at all, but to me they are a really definitive, not necessarily human, but they're very lively.
Estelle Phillips:Okay. They're very lively being full of life, whereas the pots are very potty. Yes. Yes. That's that excites me.
Estelle Phillips:That's I feel like the pots
Rev Jane Sheppard:are done Yeah. At this point, you know, the pots are done and this is the more energetic and it has more life to it if I stick with it.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. And that goes back to what you were saying earlier about the dowsing. Yes. Yes. When were you thinking about that?
Estelle Phillips:When when you started working with the grey clay, when were you thinking about?
Rev Jane Sheppard:I wasn't thinking about it.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah.
Rev Jane Sheppard:The awareness of that came later when I started to kind of think what's Yeah. You know what So I always had to backtrack because I think I work instinctively. Yeah. And then afterwards it's like, oh hang on, what just happened there? Yeah.
Rev Jane Sheppard:You know, especially when I look at stuff collectively or I see it starting to grow. So like this piece, I made the top section which looks more like an icon figure that belongs to some distant age.
Estelle Phillips:That's yeah.
Rev Jane Sheppard:But then I put I made the other parts, and then it became more figurative as a result. I mean, it's a very rudimentary, very abstract, minimal kind of figurative. For me, that makes it more alive. It's just like it's waiting for me to catch up a bit and make them bigger and bolder. I
Estelle Phillips:can't remember where we started. We were talking about how how you sort of came, not exactly to understand, but I asked you about the war here and The dowsing. Yeah. Yeah. In the context of the the great great pieces.
Estelle Phillips:Is it okay?
Rev Jane Sheppard:Well, I think it's like that there is something about them. A material will sort of dictate by its material is what happens. But I think there is an energetic something Yeah. That happens when you are involved in something particularly for a long time. And I am involved in it for a long time.
Rev Jane Sheppard:And partly the processes for this, because I'm coiling and it's a repetitive and you know, a circular thing.
Estelle Phillips:Mhmm.
Rev Jane Sheppard:It's all those kind of emotions that are associated with a more meditative engagement. Sustained meditative engagement. And it does allow a certain meditative presence so that I can sort of empty. And then I think I am more responsive to the material and then I just do whatever's what comes up.
Estelle Phillips:And then when you're responding to the material Yeah. In that way, how much of that response is driven by do you think the fact that it comes out of the earth?
Rev Jane Sheppard:Well, that's a good question. Do know, I don't know. I don't
Estelle Phillips:know. Because it does, right?
Rev Jane Sheppard:It it does, but it also comes from deep in us. But I guess there's a relationship between the two, you know, because we are we live on this planet and although you know, you and I haven't been here all that long, as a species we have and we have a material engagement with it and a material kind of relationship with it. So I think there is something that connects with all all of that. So there's something kind of right in the core of us and I think that process just working with that material with the how the material yields and it has that robust nature to it. That it just is receptive to certain forms.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I don't know it's all a bit it sounds very ambiguous and it's hard to hard to explain but I think there is a fundamental we have a relationship with materials. And with the dowsing I don't know but I think that woke woke up ideas and thoughts when I was very young. Thinking this might not be true that people can basically dowse and ask questions of a material and it can give you basically yes or no answers. But but if it but it probably does record information, you know, and all the old stories about ghosts and place and all the folklore. You know, maybe there is a a structural element of that that's just kind of about energetic imprint.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I don't know. I mean, that's who knows? You know, I'm not there I'm not there to say yes or or no about something. But it is really nice to be in a position where I can explore a material and then find forms that are responsive to it. It's interesting when you let go of intellect when I'm working.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I do feel feel very privileged that I can do that. I can let go of intellect and then work very responsibly.
Estelle Phillips:How do you do that? I just let myself. Does that mean that your work is more closely engaged to your inner workings? So these things that we've been talking about are perhaps having an influence on the ultimate shape of what you're creating. Well
Rev Jane Sheppard:I wonder. Yeah. I wonder too. I'm not sure because I can't disrupt that process in order to investigate it. No.
Estelle Phillips:Would be pointless, wouldn't it? You know. It would
Rev Jane Sheppard:be pointless. Yeah. And I'd be down a completely different route. Yeah. And it's not that I suspend any kind of artistic judgments or decisions, you know.
Rev Jane Sheppard:There's definitely those decisions, but all but what I also always go back to is does it feel right? And I think the material does dictate that because it is something about a response. It also is very odd when when these things are coming out of my mouth, know, but there is something in that. I don't know, maybe if I'm doing it for another twenty years, maybe I'll have more of a handle on what it is, you know, how it how it works directly. And it'd be interesting to work with other types of clay.
Rev Jane Sheppard:I'd love to
Estelle Phillips:work with cob and knot fire work
Rev Jane Sheppard:but I think the dowsing was perhaps the first thing that gave me an indication that maybe there is something in that that materials hold a certain something and that we relate to different materials in different ways and maybe that that can teach us things.
Estelle Phillips:Thank you. Absolutely fantastic. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. Oh, no.
Estelle Phillips:That's that's a pleasure. Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds, and landscape. Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four, and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.
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