ARTISTS
Information on Urban Cow's Artists and Designers
Urban Cow Studio stocks the work of over 100 South Australian artist and designers.
Ceramics
Elodie Barker
- Born in Adelaide in 1973, Elodie Barker grew up in Adelaide. After
winning the Year 12 Art Award, she completed the Certificate of Visual
Art at O'Halloran Hill TAFE before obtaining a degree in Ceramic and
Glass Design at the University of South Australia. In 1992 she was
accepted into the JamFactory's Career Development Scheme and since then
she has established her own business. She has won the People's Choice
award in the Hahndorf Montessori Craft Exhibition twice and three
sculptures were purchased for display at the Star City Casino in
Sydney. Her work can be found in galleries across Australia.
Over the last decade I have created
a range of ceramic sculpture and tableware that continues to give me
enjoyment and keep the public entertained. Chickens, cats, dogs and
Australian native animals are the main themes for my work. As a young
child, I particularly enjoyed watching animated cartoons on television
and caring for the many pets that my family owned, which is why I have
developed a love of all animals. I currently work between my studio in
Port Noarlunga and the JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design Inc. I
exhibit in Adelaide and interstate and enjoy learning new pottery
techniques and experimenting with colours and glaze materials.
Handblown Glass
Randall Sach
– Randall is a South Australian Plastic Surgeon who has been
creating and exhibiting hot glass sculpture since he became a jam
factory access tenant in 1999. As a specialist in hand reconstruction,
Randall has a complex understanding of anatomy that is evident in his
often figurative works. During May 2005 Randall's first solo exhibition
‘Hot Glass Sculpture' was held in the Urban Cow Gallery, and also
participated in the 2005 Urban Cow Christmas Show ‘All I want for Christmas…'
Tim Shaw -
Tim Shaw has three degrees in Glassblowing. After attaining his BA
(Hons) from North Staffordshire Polytechnic in the UK in the early
80's, he went on to study at the avant-garde Gerrit Rietveld Academie
in Amsterdam where he continued to develop and experiment creating a
unique style of art glass. In the mid 80's, Tim established a glass
workshop in the Crystal Palace area of London where he continued his
artistic practice. His creative talent was recognized by his peers, and
he was invited to undertake his second MA at the prestigious Royal
College of Art in London. Here he further refined and honed his
glassmaking skills whilst pushing the boundaries of his artistic
expression. Since leaving full-time education Tim has pursued his
career as a professional glass artist. He was awarded a scholarship to
the Pilchuck Glass School in the USA and a fellowship to attend the
Creative Glass Centre of America.He has received invitations to teach
and demonstrate around the world, including Fraunau Glass Summer School
in Germany, University of Hawaii, Palomar College in San Diego, High
Wycombe and Wrexham Colleges in the UK, as well as the University of
South Australia and the Sydney College of the Arts. Tim has continued
to maintain his professional profile through exhibiting in the UK,
Europe, USA, Asia and Australia. Tim is a member of G.A.S. and is a
Board Member of Ausglass. Recent Exhibitions include ‘Mitsukoshi'
(Taiwan 2002), S.O.F.A. 2002 (Chicago, USA), ‘Sensorium'
(Australia 2002), ‘Conflux' ( Australia, 2003),
‘Artlantis'(Australia 2003), S.O.F.A. (Chicago 2004),
‘Reves De Vases'(Paris 2005). For the past 5 years Tim has
resided in Australia and owns and operates his own hotglass. Tim Shaw's
art glass is seductive and alluring. His love of colour, surface
decoration and texture captures the viewer and fires the imagination.
Tim's art is versatile and exciting. His technical talents and artistic
flair combine to create unique masterpieces.
Jewellery
Ken Baker - Originally from New South Wales, Ken Baker
has become (almost overnight) one of Adelaide 's oldest emerging
artists. He enjoys “old black and white movies, anodising, and
family stuff”. Ken is currently Urban Cow Studio's most popular
jeweler, appealing to customers who love bright colours and are looking
for something that is both striking and durable.
‘I was thinking about juju
from the point of view of one aspect of a fetish – an object of
unreasonably excessive attention or reverence…. in other words
obsession. And it is true that I am definitely obsessed with anodised
aluminum. Anodised aluminum is truly magical stuff! In fact, if you
look at the anodized substance for long enough you can see tiny
creatures in there getting up to all sorts of tricks. This supernatural
substance is most probably aluminum juju.'
Charlotte Guidolin – Adelaide
based Jeweller/ Designer Charlotte Guidolin turned her focus towards
visual arts, jewellery when her interest in getting back to the
handmade object overshadowed her studies in graphic design.
In 2004 she completed her Bachelor of
Visual Arts with a major in Jewellery design and minor in printmaking.
Since then she has established her arts practise, designing and making
jewellery.
She has since exhibited jewellery in a number of group exhibitions, Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition 2005, Objects and Images 2005, Opus 13 2004, Revival 2004 and exhibited etchings in Background 2005 and All-sortsa-Stuff 2005.
Working predominantly in textured
silver, new designs show her exploration into other materials and
techniques such as fabric, wood, plastic, thread, colourful sublimated
aluminuim and raised, embossed designs using repousse and the rolling
mill.
“Childhood memories, past
experiences, my cultural upbringing and traditions, provide the main
foundation of developing a concept or design. Designing and making
jewellery is a ‘preservation' of these memories."
I loosely borrow techniques from the
textile industry such as binding, stitching, and weaving to combine
soft materials against hard metal. Fabric and lace, leaves, ferns, bark
and pods, are elements from the natural and man-made worlds that have
provided a great source of inspiration for my practise.”
Joanne Haifawi – Joanne
(Juju) Haifawi is a young contemporary jeweller who is relatively new
in the art of jewellery making. In December 2002 she completed a
Bachelor of Industrial Design and participated in a graduate exhibition
titled ‘Simplexity' where she exhibited her solar powered
streetlight titled ‘Solar Petal'. Her concept for this solar
light is now being implemented around Adelaide city. After university
she taught at an Industrial Design Studio for one year, before
enrolling in the Jewellery Certificate IV offered at AIT Arts. In
December 2004 she participated in a student exhibition of non-metal
Jewellery work at the Jam Factory.
Juju now works from her own jewellery
workshop in Spire Studios, a new collaborative studio space in
Adelaide. In February this year Juju had her first solo exhibition ‘Amulets of the West' at Urban Cow Studio, which was generously
funded by the South Australian Youth Arts Board. The exhibition
showcased a series of wearable pieces made from wood, silver and resin,
created to offer protection and good will to the intended wearer.
“My most peaceful state of
mind is when I am immersed in the process of creation. I love the idea
that I can take an image from my mind and work with materials until it
becomes a real part of this world. Over the years I have developed a
style of working that is very natural and experimental, in form and
materials. I am working to bring meaning back into wearable objects
rather than just giving them aesthetic appeal. Like the ancients, I
would like my pieces to have some effect on the wearer and on the
world, not only through their intention but through beauty.”
Christine Pyman
– Christine Pyman has taken a graphic design background mixed
with a thourough grounding in traditional jewellery skills and merged
this with her own style to create unique ranges of wearable,
contemporary jewellery and objects. Christine has exhibited widely
throughout Australia, Asia, Europe, and the USA, including at The
Munich International Craft Fair, Germany ; The Australia-Korea
Foundation's 10 th Anniversary Festival, Seoul; and the Australain
Designer Jewellery Exhibition which traveled throughout Hong Kong and
China.
“My work is designed to
express the celebration and sheer exhuberance of joy. I like to depict
the more whimsical side of life, showing that joy is found in a variety
of everyday thoughts and activities, and that it will manifest itself
in every small way possible until it builds up into a total rush of
joyous energy. I always feel that this “joyous explosion” that I try to show in my pieces will pass on to the wearers, with the
very act of wearing the pieces being a confirmation of the right to
express pure joy.”
Kim Thomson – “A
fundamental and valuable function of my jewellery practice is to
cherish the notion of personal identity through the creation of
handmade symbolic pieces that celebrate the existence of the wearer on
this very special earth. It is imperitive to the ethical and social
responsibilities of my core business to use design that is both
ecologically and socially sustainable. This is achieved by making
jewellery from mostly reused materials, and by creating potential
talismans for personal reflection and nurture. ”
Simone Walsh - Simone
Walsh has been a practicing jewellery and object artist since 1992. She
has studied her craft and received high grades for her work at both
TAFE SA and Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Simone
has shown a wide variety of exhibition work around Australia and has
twice been selected to show work in the biannual Contemporary
Wearables exhibition.
Katrina Weber
- Katrina has been making jewellery from Adelaide's Gray Street
Workshop since 2001 and has been involved in many exhibitions including
the Dame Nancy Buttfield Award For decorative Arts 2003, From Seed To
Bloom (1st prize) 2003, The Forestry SA Wood Sculpture Award (emerging
Artist Prize) 2004. Katrina received an Arts SA Grant for a six month
mentorship with the members of Gray Street Workshop 2004, and is a
founding member of CONCERTINA art group, established in 2000. Katrina
has exhibited in the Urban Cow Studio's Gallery on three occasions
since 2001, most recently in 2005 with her first role as curator in the
very successful We Don't Do Diamonds group exhibition. In 2005 Katrina taught jewellery at Adelaide Centre for the Arts.
Kiln Formed Glass
Julie Pritchard -
Julie has always had a very strong interest in painting, drawing, in
fact anything creative, and in 1990 returned to full-time tertiary
study at Uni SA, where she gained a BA (Visual Art). It was during this
four-year course that Julie was introduced to the art of glass firing
and slumping.
She was immediately drawn to the
process, and because her interest focussed more on the decorative
aspects, she began to try and develop a technique that allowed her to
paint and fire designs on to the glass. Glass is not a receptive
surface for paint, and it was only through perseverance and trial and
error that she developed the unique method that is now used to decorate
her glass pieces.
Working from a home-based studio, Julie
is constantly inspired to create new images. As well as creating
one-off ‘collector' pieces, she enjoys making vibrant limited
edition production artwork.
Each glass dish is hand cut and
edge-worked before being individually hand painted, then kiln fired at
over 800ºc. This enables the paint to actually melt into the
surface of the glass, giving a brilliant gloss and permanency.
“Glass is a wonderfully
exciting medium to work in", Julie says. "I always get a great amount
of pleasure when I open the kilns and see the jewel like colours that
have enlivened what was once just a plain piece of clear flat
glass”.
Textiles
Persuede – Persuede products are fashioned and designed in Australia by Tina Mavromatis.
“Shapes and texture are
important for me as they give meaning and structure to the colours we
experience. Contrasts allow us to explore these relations and their
forms. I create with purpose; I want my designs to evoke uplifting and
inspirational sensations, possessions that instill confidence and
warmth.”
