A joint exhibition by artists Brenda and Chris Lawrence attracted a large number of persons to the opening of the exhibits on Saturday March 6. Brenda is showing her pottery and jewelry and Chris his “Constructions of Found Objects.”

Brenda and Chris Lawrence

The recent pottery by Brenda is inspired by her love of nature and in particular the organic shapes and forms found in nature. She is a potter who uses the tradition of hand-building and each piece is unique and sculpted by combinations of pinch, slab and coils. Her work include plates, bowls, trays, vases, dishes, spoons, wall pockets, wall pieces and jugs, and are finished mainly in shades of green and brown.

She is well-known in Anguilla for her pottery as it has been sold at the Devonish Gallery for the past five years. Her work has also been shown and sold throughout the USA for the past thirty years.

Chris, although having produced the same type of work for the past 45 years in his spare time, is showing it in public for the first time.

His work uses everything that has been discarded and he transforms pieces of wood, stones, metal, driftwood, shells and anything else he can find, into artistic pieces. He uses the human figure in most of his work and says it is concerned with depicting the human condition and is philosophical, implying that the waste of man and the decay of nature is intrinsically beautiful. His career was as a set builder/designer for the film and television industry and he had his own company for many years.

Brenda has loved working with clay since childhood and in the late 1970s studied pottery making in earnest in Woodstock, New York. She learned all aspects of running a professional ceramic studio while working as an apprentice with Sophia Fenton, and also deepened her passion for clay work. She founded Chicken Coop Pottery, with a friend, that functioned for many years as a clay studio and teaching facility for people of all ages in a community in upstate New York.

Brenda and Chris have now retired to Anguilla after visiting for many years and have a home and studio here. They still spend some of their time in High Falls, New York.

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