our story so far
Seatree is an on-going experiment into living creatively. We make things from clay: pots, pictures, sculptures. Most of our work uses original poetry. As well as collaborating on many of our pieces, we have developed our individual practice too, and as such seatree includes Michaela’s white stoneware pieces and Chris’s darker clay, often fired in a raku kiln.
Seatree began in 2016 when we decided to pursue a different kind of life; simpler, more sustainable and more creative. We had both worked in stressful jobs (Chris as social worker/manager of mental health services, Michaela as a community worker) and had the usual financial pressures, but a window of opportunity opened and it felt like ‘now or never’.
‘for a while, the room will become the universe and it will be possible to believe in starlight.’
Why?
Life can be hard sometimes, but with the gift of space and time, many of us look for meaning. It is this pursuit that we seek to explore through our work, which seeks to make the process of meaning making – sometimes called poesis – at the centre of our being. What we make is an ordinary response to this process.
As might be implied in the sentence above, for us, art and spirituality are interwoven concepts. The process of creation is one in which we seek to share in the great unfolding we are part of, so as to seek connection with the great ‘am-ness’ at the heart of everything.
who we are
We are inspired by the area we live in, surrounded by hills and water.
Michaela creates ceramic art, marking the clay with lines and textures that reflect the beautiful shores, trees and mountains of Argyll. She uses the poetry written by Chris, a published poet. The pieces bring together the beauty of words and spaces.
Chris makes shapes and forms using rougher ‘crank’ clay, which is better able to create the organic forms he loves and can survive the harsh processes of pit firing and raku. Michaela adds the poetry to each piece.
Michaela’s ceramic work brings together her interests in words, colour and form. She has developed her ceramics through a mixture of self-teaching and attending workshops, learning hand-building techniques and developing skills in glazing. She is also learning through networking with other potters in the area and online.
Chris has always been a wordsmith and has been funded to work on his own fiction and poetry as well as to curate books of unpublished poetry. He has had a number of poetry books published as well as poems in journals and articles in magazines, exploring themes of spirituality, wilderness and social justice. His own ceramic journey started more recently, almost reluctantly, but then he discovered alternative methods that were perhaps a better fit with his personality, and allowed him to explore a direct connection to the earth, using totally different clays, glazes and processes typically used in other seatree work.
What still connects it all however, are the words, which still remain a feature of almost all of our ceramic art.
Chris and Michaela make and sell their ceramics under the name seatree – working together to create unique pieces using clay and poetry – selling in shops across the UK as well as online and at occasional selected ceramics and makers fairs.
More recently they have started to use ‘seatree elemental’ to describe raku and pit-fired work.
As well as being a response to our beautiful location, our work often explores the human conditions, perhaps in part arising from our previous work with people – Michaela as a community worker/counsellor and Chris as a mental health specialist.
The mixed media nature of our work, which arises from a partnership of different skills, means that seatree produces unique art which we hope has the capacity to inspire and emotionally engage. Chris and Michaela describe this as emerging from their own search for truth and meaning, and as such they regard their work as a spiritual practice.
Sharing our love of poetry and pottery:
Although we make and sell, much of our time is spent in sharing what we do. We run workshops in the community for family groups or for community and voluntary organisations. We have provided classes for a wide range of people – children with autism, adults with dementia, young carers, school children, people faced with homelessness, low income groups through the local arts centre, and so on. We love to help people express their own creativity with individual work, but also enjoy working together with groups to create collective art.
what we’ve done
Education:
Both Chris and Michaela are degree-educated and have achieved further qualifications in counselling and therapy. Both are self-taught artists and writers.
Selected exhibitions – We have been part of many group exhibitions, for example-
The Velvet Easel Gallery in Portobello, the Barony in West Kilbride, the Dancing Light Gallery in East Kilbride and other joint exhibitions at Tig Gallery.
Solo exhibition – Where the streams come from (March 2018)
An exhibition of our ceramics with poetry at the Tighnabruaich Gallery in Argyll. This exhibition explored the themes of origins, becoming and life cycles. It was successful both commercially and from feedback. The curator commented specifically on the visible emotional impact of the exhibition on those who experienced it.
Commissions:
We have produced a number of commissions including particular scenes and poetry for wedding gifts, ceramic art pieces for new births and requests for certain landscapes in ceramics. Our pieces bring together the beauty of words and spaces and it is wonderful when people approach us to create something just for them.
Curating experience:
Both Chris and Michaela have a background in working with people and have a passion for social justice arising from work with disadvantaged groups. They have participated in and led community art projects and have had experience of joint curation.
Chris and Michaela were founder members of ‘aoradh’ a faith and arts community who are no longer active, but had a long track record of setting up innovative community art events, including labyrinths, mediation and poetry trails and interactive art experiences outdoors, as well as installations at festivals.
why seatree?
By the way, the name seatree comes from a poem that Chris wrote a few years ago.
High on the shore line
Above the storm berm
The winter sea gave out a pilgrim trunk
It was thrown up the beach
Like you or I might flick a pebble
The corpse of the old tree
Has been gnarled and shaped
By encounters with deep reefs
Where it rolled and shoaled with the fish
And bore the barnacles and wracks
Of the deep blue sea
Now it lies here
Like bone of leviathan
It has taken on the colours of the deep-
Sea green
Shadow black
Red like the eye of a shark
Grey like the dripping tail of a whale
All faded a little by the blown sand
But jewelled instead by salt crystals
Drawn out in the low sun
Who knows where its roots are
Or what of its seed
Still remains
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