Jan Howlin Ceramics

Exhibited at Saint Cloche Gallery, Paddington in October 2017, this series of works resulted from a desire to allude to living things in a different way - from the inside out. From an initial focus on the internal architecture of life forms, drawing a parallel between the inner workings of plants and the blood that flows in our veins, it developed into a collection of 'heartworks' and 'organisms.'

Show of Care was created during my MFA Degree and exhibited at Sydney College of the Arts, Rozelle, in 2010.
The installation, which contained seven separate works with multiple objects in each, was made for my mother.
In exploring a number of the domestic activities, tasks and rituals that were fundamental to the experience of ‘home’ she created for us, I hoped to highlight the profound value of care, loving and giving in everyday life.

The Tree Series was inspired by the wonderful stands of trees that make strong, dark marks across the windswept coastal landscape of south–western Victoria. While the windbreak could almost be a logo for nature being put to use for human ends, in its strength and solidarity it came to represent to me the human struggle also. You have quite a lot of time to think when you're pushing clay around and I found this parallel between tree and man strangely comforting, a commendation of our better nature over the side too often seen.

These works developed in the wake of the Tree Series, as at the time a series of ICAC hearings were underway in NSW and the corruption scandal that resulted was big news. As details emerged about the self-serving machinations and multi-million dollar deals being carried out by various infamous pollies and big-name businessmen, the better side of human nature seemed like a sad joke. The image of tiny minds with insatiable appetites stayed with me and resulted in this series of 'Top Blokes.'

I find cactus both highly appealing and repellent. Its forms are fabulous, its menace is palpable. In approaching the life-size cactus chair I made for my MFA show, I tested clays, glazes and other surface finishes, and various building techniques, and in the process made a number of cactus hands, a few cactus bowls and then a maquette for the chair.

This work was made in response to the phenomenal amount of waste our consumer society produces - the plastic and paper bags, boxes and wrappers that we use and discard, often without a thought.
What we miss, then, is the fleeting and accidental beauty of the forms these materials take on, their brief moments of sensational form.

These small cups have been made from an alphabet of curvaceous letter forms, which were first exhibited together as a cloud. But the letters also became building blocks, their various shapes, as they were folded into cups while the clay was still soft, determining the subtle differences between them. 

It is a process that both obliterates and embeds the original alphabetic identity of each letter, alluding in this way to meanings hidden and things unspoken.

change change……../../, made for my BVA degree, came from an exploration of black line. Soft stained black clay sandwiched with plain clay was rolled, cut, spliced and pushed around generally, in an attempt to capture the movement and drama of the process. Some turned into landscapes of sorts, some wanted to be black picket fences.

Watching my mother's physical decline in the last year of her life I was all too aware, not only of the fragility of her body, but also of the porosity – how breath and life, fluids and feelings were moving in and out in a hesitantt flow, her body acting merely as a flimsy framework allowing these movements to pass.

Tools of Engagement II is a collection of objects presented in a range of camouflage patterns to reflect household interiors, captured as if in mid-trajectory. It alludes, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to the differences that almost inevitably arise in our personal relationships through the passage of everyday life. While domestic drama is the tell-all material of soap opera, I discovered from a particular personal experience that for many (perhaps good) reasons, the tensions that trouble our home lives are largely kept hidden. For me, as this work developed, it came to represent both conflict and concealment, but also more importantly, that the idea of domestic tension is neither a source of shame nor a reality to be denied but an everyday reality.