Artist Features........................................................................4 Kitty Mills

Process image of Hob being returned to the Earth (2022) 55 x 24 cm Foraged clay

Kitty Mills

Vessels (2022) Approx 60 x 90 cm Foraged clay

Kitty Mills is a ceramics artist, who creates vessels embedded with meaning. She recently took part in a residency at Caro in Bruton, Somerset, where she worked with purely with foraged materials.

She states ‘I remember how I used to see, I carry my childhood around with me. I am blessed to still know the ways of play.

The land, I feel, is an entity. It knows and welcomes me. We observe each other quietly attempting to figure out if we are separate or the same.

It has taken me a while to figure out in words why I do what I do. To me the sculpture is a playful enactment of remembering, a form born of losing myself in my imagination. These characters emerge from the child’s mind, amongst bracken dens and vast fields. We were equals and I was a part of their world. In listening and noticing I welcome the trace of memory.

The instinctual movement in the hands brings process into focus, I am mindful about how I forage and process the material of the land. The gathering is thoughtful and quiet. On walks I am also collecting sounds, curating them into a soundscape.

Material is gathered from this local land and that of my own, clay that is dug from the sea on opposite shores, married with the earth of Bruton’s woodland. It’s important to me to take only what is needed. And after it will be returned.’