National Centre for Craft and Design

For Part C of my silver arts award, I visited The National Centre for Craft & Design (NCCD) in Sleaford on the 13th May 2017 to look at the exhibition of work done by Charlotte Mary Pack.

Charlotte is a ceramic artist who works with clay in many different scales, creating models of a variety animals which came from her love of wildlife. From a young age, she travelled around Southern and Eastern Africa which made nature a key inspiration for her work during courses and studies. She got a first-class honours degree in Ceramic design in 2013 from Saint Martins College in London and used her skills to start an ongoing project called 'No time for tea'. This is where she made detailed, miniature models of endangered animals around objects like pots. Each of the models are marked on the bottom with their species and why it is under threat to make people aware of them. Some of the models are displayed in the NCCD which I chose to look at because I am interested in animals and I thought the miniature models would be amazing.

My favourite clay model was of the San-Jose Brush Rabbit. I like the pink pastel colour choice and how it was placed inside the pot. I also like the miniature model of the Asian Elephant because of the way it looks as if its taking a step forward. I find it impressive how Charlotte added so much detail into something so small and made it look very realistic.

I don't really like the Red Wolf as it's not very detailed and it seems a bit plain. Charlotte could have given it a different pose like turned its head to the side to make it more interesting. I also dislike like the Vincent Bush Squirrel because I find it a bit strange how it is standing and I don't really like the colour of the clay she chose because it is too pale.

Although I went to see the work done by Charlotte Mary Pack, there were lots of exhibitions on at the NCCD which I also viewed. There was on the theme of 3D printing which was also great, however the one of Charlotte Mary Pack's work was my favourite. I have not been to an exhibition like this one before as most artistic work displayed is of paintings and drawings, but I found this one interesting because of what it was about. I would recommend the exhibition to other people as it was fun and I learnt more about endangered animals as well as how much detail can improve your work. It was free to go to look at the exhibition, but from Charlotte's website which is; https://www.charlottemarypack.com/, you can buy one of the models and 15% of the money made from it goes to a wildlife conservation of Charlottes choice.