The CPA Governing Council
The CPA’s governing body has up to nine Selected and Fellow member councilors, who are proposed and voted for by the membership to serve for a term of three years. The honorary officers of Chair, Vice chair, Treasurer and Secretary are appointed by Council to serve for one year at the first meeting after the AGM. Occasionally Council may co-opt members from outside the membership, who might bring in specific expertise.
The Associate membership is represented on Council by a non voting councilor. Council is responsible for the selection of new members, and for all the activities of the association and it’s companies through their respective sub committees and boards. Council is also supported by the Members and Associates Advisory Committee(MAAC), which organises lectures, studio visits, workshops and other activities. MAAC is mainly composed of volunteer Associate members.
Billy Adams
Council Member
Billy was born in Northern Ireland and spent his youth roaming the hills of Donegal, exploring the landscape. He completed an MA in Ceramics at Cardiff Institute of Higher Education in the late 1980s and he has been living and working in Wales ever since.
His work is influenced by landscape settings, especially the wild, rugged beauty of Connemara and Donegal, and the dramatic West Wales coastline. He incorporates geological elements, natural colours, as well as the marks of human activity on the landscape into his vessels. He is interested in addressing the relationship we have with the landscape. Billy’s work is collected and exhibited widely in the UK, Europe and the USA.
Jenny Alexander
Treasurer of the CPA
Jenny is the Treasurer of the Craft Potters Association and is a chartered accountant. She is also a ceramics and pottery enthusiast and makes pots in her spare time.
http://www.jennyalexander-ceramics.co.uk/
Peter Beard
Council member
Peter studied a degree in industrial design and furniture design at Ravensbourne College of Art. Later he helped set up a pottery workshop in Scotland making thrown domestic stoneware. Peter opened his first studio in Kent in 1975, making sculptural pieces. He currently lives and works Leamington Spa. See examples of Peters work: www.peterbeard.co.uk
Fiona Booy
Associates Representative
Fiona is a ceramic artist and pottery teacher based in Hertfordshire. Her creations play with bold forms and geological processes, through a mix of handbuilding and throwing, blending clays and colours. Her functional work echoes her sculptural creations.
She is a member of London Potters, Dacorum & Chiltern Potters Guild, a Fellow at Digswell Arts Trust in Letchworth and has a home studio called St Albans Pottery.
Jo Davies
Council Member
Jo specialises in wheel-thrown porcelain and works from her studio in Hackney, East London. Her practice includes hand-making a fine porcelain design range, lighting and unique objects. Her individual approach to wheel-thrown ceramics, where high-fired porcelain often appears paradoxically to be fresh off the wheel, balances softness with rigidity, smoothness with weight and tactility.
As a Royal College of Art MA graduate, she exhibits internationally and has worked with, amongst others, the National Portrait Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Hepworth Wakefield, Somerset House, Heals and the National Trust. Her practice has been supported by the Crafts Council and Arts Council England.
Rachel Holian
Council Member
I have worked with porcelain since graduating from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2005. I used to produce functional yet decorative tea utensils. However, my work has now become much more concerned with the production of ‘applied arts’ and ‘installation pieces’. I make miniature porcelain vessels, ‘installations’ that are hand thrown, turned, stamped and glazed or sometimes left unglazed and simply high fired, which sit on slab rolled porcelain bases. Celebrating the handmade and delicate, moveable qualities of porcelain. These collections of porcelain vessels are grouped in a specific way to give meaning to a particular collection. I work as a ceramicist from my home studio in Llangollen, and also teach at Further Education College in Wrexham.
Victoria Jardine
Council Member
Victoria Jardine is a Studio Ceramicist with a particular interest in Applied Art Theory and the ‘Language of Things’. Alongside teaching Museum Studies at London Metropolitan University, she set up her own Ceramics practice in 2001 and has been a Selected Member of the CPA since 2003. Now living and working in Dorset she has been a founding member of ‘Making Dorset’ as well as sitting on the Board of Trustees for Dorset Visual Arts.
Anna Lambert
Membership Secretary of the CPA
Anna makes hand built earthenware ceramics. After studying at Bath Academy of Art (Corsham) she set up her first studio in Gloucestershire in 1980.
She now shares a studio near Skipton, North Yorkshire with her artist husband and teaches part-time on the MA Ceramics course at UcLan. Examples of her work can be seen here: www.junctionworkshop.co.uk/
Lara Scobie
Council member
I have been making ceramics since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts 28 years ago. In this time, I also taught ceramics and design at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee, where I have developed a broad experience of ceramics and the principles of design and expression. Through my teaching, I was involved with many aspects of student engagement and guidance that included facilitating interdisciplinary projects, curating and designing exhibitions and sitting on various committees as a member of academic staff. I have exhibited widely and have given many workshops and presentations about my work and the work of students.
Irena Sibrijns
Council Member
Irena Sibrijns has been a potter for over thirty years. Inspired by an avid interest in 20th century English decorative arts tradition, Irena creates exquisite, and entirely unique, ornamental and functional pieces with equal enthusiasm.
First trained in Wiltshire, Irena moved to work in the South of France before returning to the UK in 2001 to establish her workshop in Suffolk, where she still lives and works today. Often inspired by locations, including the Suffolk coast, Irena references Charleston House and Farleys House and Gallery as places that have had a great impact on her work.
Peter Snowden
Chair of the CPA Council
Peter Snowden has been a maker for over 45 years, alongside a career in agricultural and horticultural plant breeding and seeds. Within the plant breeding industry Peter was CEO of UK companies employing up to 250 staff, and held senior positions in companies in the Netherlands and France including Group Limagrain. He was also board or council member for a number of trade bodies including the Agricultural Industries Confederation, the Processors and Growers Research Organisation and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany.
In semi-retirement Peter is a commercial maker of mostly stoneware tableware, and a collector.
Contact Peter here: petersnowdenceramics@outlook.
Moyra Stewart
Council member
I have worked in clay for more than 40 years in U.K. and Canada. Teaching and bringing pottery to a larger audience has been a big part of my practice including public events, community pottery and residencies. More recently I have been inspired by the process of Naked Raku.