Artists

Helene Olivia Smith

Helene’s wide-ranging art practice included painting, flax weaving, jewellery design and black-smithing, before becoming completely and utterly obsessed with creating ceramic art.

Working from her home studio beside Lake Wairewa, Birdlings Flat, immersed in a landscape of shifting stones, big southern seas and eroding volcanic hills, where the earthy elemental act of hand-building with clay and the unpredictable transformation from glaze and fire, lends itself to her often experimental and organic aesthetic.

Helene gathers wild sourced clays, sand and stones to incorporate into the stoneware body and glaze to connect form with place, producing geologically inspired vessels and sculptural works, that sit as comfortably in the landscape, as they do on the table.