About Frances
Leith-based artist Frances graduated from Edinburgh Art College
in 1999 with a 1st class honours degree and postgraduate diploma in
ceramics.
Since then her work has been shown across the UK, and in
many different countries including America, Denmark, Italy, Japan
and Korea, and she has undertaken residencies in Thailand and
Scotland. Her work is included in a number of UK collections
including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum
and the National Museum of Scotland.
It was during her travels in Japan, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia
that she conceived the ideas for her ‘Gifts & Occupations’
collection, an expanded version of which she has created specially
for Meet Your Maker.
Frances regularly works on educational projects across Scotland
in schools, colleges, arts centres, museums and galleries. She
is co-founder of HEATWORKS, a project that
delivers creative ceramic workshops for corporate team building
events and away days and continuing professional development
workshops for primary and secondary school teachers.
Frances’ vision
Gifts & Occupations is an ongoing body of work that explores
Fran’s experiences of pattern and ornament encountered during her
travels. As an outsider and tourist, she uses the language of
ornament as a means of understanding a particular place or culture
and expressing her identity in relation to it. The objects that
make up this ongoing and growing collection are intended to act as
open-ended conversations about the universal language of ornament
and our relationship to it.
She is also interested in using craft processes as a tool for
thinking. Her collection is designed to be handled, examined,
grouped, compared and composed, thus endowing the objects with an
ongoing life, beyond the studio and the gallery space, and
exploring the role of audience and ownership in the evolution of
their meaning.
Photo gallery
Photography by Shannon Tofts.