Kinsale Pottery and Art Centre

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Up the hill and down a few country lanes you'll find this art center and the home of Adrian Wistreich.

Adrian is a transplanted Brit who says he finds Ireland a much more relaxing place than his native England. I spent several days here attending workshops, lectures, artist demonstrations, and eating fabulous lunches in a spacious room with an expansive view of an ocean inlet, hills and fields.

The first workshop was with local artist, Sarah Roberts. Sarah creates wall reliefs out of porcelain inspired by the sea and coastline of Ireland. Her work has evolved from realistic depictions of the sea to increasingly abstract impressions of waves and shore, but has always been very involved with texture.

Our first assignment as to create a clay relief that responds to the famous poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree. We each got a square slab of porcelain clay and some tips about making textures with simple tools that might be used for rock, waves, sand, etc. I chose to include images from the poem including a linnet, a cabin and a man in a very familiar Irish landscape. I fussed around a lot with these details trying to create a realistic dimensional scene on a fairly flat surface.

In the afternoon our assignment was to create a land or seascape using our own or her photo. I had brought one of a scene along the Maine coast that I had taken at Haystack two summers ago. I enjoyed trying to show the different textures of spruce trees, rocks and ground plants in porcelain. The clay was very manipulative and easy to experiment with.

We left the pieces to be fired by Sarah, to be glazed by us later. Meanwhile we had a workshop with Adrian using white and colored paper clay.

The clay Adrian gave us to use was porcelain clay mixed with flax fibers. We have not seen it available in the United States. Adrian loves the stuff and after working with it, I too became very fond of the material. The thing about paper clay is that it is very strong and can be made quite thin and still hold together. 

We first were asked to make a sculptural form with plain white paper clay and then, after a demo on layering colors to make blocks that can be sliced to create patterns, we made as many different pieces as we had time or energy for that day. People made plates, pots, sculptures, and especially tea light holders, thin enough to be translucent when illuminated.

There were many creative responses in decoration from simple stripes and spirals to very ornate layering of colors laid onto the white clay. Again our pieces were left for firing and Adrian will also glaze them with clear glaze before we see them again. It was a productive day, and everyone seemed enthusiastic about what was for most, an unfamiliar material.