Dawn Youll

Anodyne Adventure, Dawn Youll

A different way of looking at everyday stuff  - Dawn Youll's ceramic work is a delightful reflection on things that seem commonplace.  Anodyne Adventure is one of my favourites.  As a devoted camper I both scorn those little home from homes that you find on campsites everywhere ( I so prefer back-ache; I suffer! I must be a real outdoors person!), and I really quite like them too - the way everything is smaller than real-size and designed to fit so snugly together. I see Dawn's work as both a critique of our very domestic love of adventure that has a tiny bit of an appreciation for it too. I've loved her work for sometime and was delighted to see it on the cover of this month's Crafts Magazine (see 'National Trust' below).  I don't know Dawn's explanation of this piece - if indeed she has one - but it makes me think of the Black Horse of one of our national banks - one has abused the national trust (us, that is, not the National Trust of oak-leaf fame). It has a bit of a poke at it, mixing it us with a lovely orange road cone that doesn't make sense and yet does, don't ask me how.  It is a graceful piece too, with a statuesque beauty.  Glancing at her interview in crafts I gather that she likes to leave her work open-ended; it hints at things rather than illustrates.  It's a kind of visual poetry that we lack sometimes in the craft world - having the courage to leave things open and not explain too much. 

National Trust, Dawn Youll

Jump to Dawn Youll's website
Jump to Victoria Scholes's website.

Oh, and I joined Facebook too.  Don't know if I really want to, but I'm giving it a go.  Have a go at finding my page here (you don't need to sign up for Facebook in order to see it.  At least that's the idea.)