Stephanie Phillips
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Stephanie Phillips’s ceramic work is bold, textural, architectural, and always sculptural. She playfully manipulates negative space in and around each piece, making forms that are abstract and jaunty while at the same time monumental. Texture is vital and is achieved by leaving the fired clay in its natural state or with her meticulously developed, signature sandy glaze. The forms, strong colours and surface texture interact harmoniously.
Ideas for new forms might spring from nature but many also come from those who came before her. She is a lover of design and technique through history and across cultures. Inspiration strikes anywhere from an Ikebana arrangement in Japan, to the marvellous concrete structures of Edward James’s Surrealist “Las Pozas” rainforest garden in Mexico. In her pursuit of new shapes she will often create forms and then deconstruct them.
Her life of creativity was encouraged and inspired by both of her extraordinary grandmothers, one a craftswoman and the other a nature conservationist. Blissful childhood days were spent drawing, painting, exploring the bush or observing the wondrous inhabitants of rock pools. Seedpods, plants and animal horns are some of her many muses and their forms are often suggested in Stephanie’s work.
With a background in Visual Merchandising and Set Dressing, she has always worked with her hands and clay has been her main passion for the past decade. Once she learnt coiling, she steered away from the wheel and the notion that pottery should be functional. She has great fun attempting to defy gravity with her deceptively light hand-built pieces. Her largest works are over half a meter tall and she also creates more petite “Mini” incarnations.
Fans of Stephanie’s work can be found at home and abroad and include Zoe Foster Blake and Hamish Blake. Jacquemus purchased several of her pieces at Paris Design week in 2019 for his restaurant, “Oursin.”