Carol McNicoll

Artist Statement

In an age of information technology, making things by hand is a supremely anachronistic occupation. The first world has relegated the unglamorous and unprofitable activity of production to the third world, reserving the cleaner and more lucrative manipulation of information for itself. The capacity for making things has always seemed to me to be a defining human characteristic. I now realise that its expression is a great luxury which is only available to the very poor, the very rich or the very foolish. I count myself as one of the very foolish, still believing it is possible to make a living as a potter, while the rest of the first world is engaged in e-commerce. The home, a context the cutting edge of the Art World abandoned sometime around 1945, is the context I find the most intriguing. I am entertained by making functional objects which are both richly patterned and comment on the strange world we have created for ourselves.