Katherine Glenday is an artist and a craftsperson based in Kalk Bay, South Africa:

I have worked with porcelain as my medium since I graduated in ceramics in 1983. It has been an enduring passion.

In 2007 I created a new studio and exhibition space in Kalk Bay.

I love working with translucency and light. There is an alchemical process which happens in the firing, resulting in surprising transformations.

In the nineties I started working consciously with symbols from my dreams and with symbolic and archetypal imagery. By 2001 the content was not so much 'painted' on the surfaces - but the whole vessel began to bear the marks of my explorations.  I worked with colour in the vessel walls and the element of spinning transformed my gestures with clay and oxides into something new.  I still explored psychological themes such the continuum between the genders, and other social considerations - but my work increasingly has become occupied with the natural realm and how we inhabit our bodies and the earth.

I have always picked up flora and fauna and brought beautiful things to my studio and having surrounded myself with these things, (which often go by unnoticed) a subtle osmosis seems to take place.  It is my 'conversation' with the natural realm.
In 2006 my work seems to have progressed into new territory. I have been working in collaboration with other artists, dancers and musicians resulting in new explorations of movement and sound in my own work. 

April 2007 saw me settling into a new and light-filled working studio and exhibition space. The renovations were finally completed and a new passage of learning to inhabit and share this environment began. The building was originally a blacksmith's forge at the turn of the century - and during the renovations we found many wonderful pieces of old rusted steel, hundreds of discarded horse shoes and other intriguing pieces of old equipment in the soil. I love the fact that perhaps in another hundred year's time remnants of porcelain and glass will be found here too.

The Forge is where I teach porcelain classes, in addition to all the other practises, concerts and workshops which other people facilitate. My own working studio is at the back of the building and I can work here on my own exhibition work and enjoy the fact that there are other people in a dance class or a poetry reading in the large space, deriving the same joy and meaning which creativity, music and human interactions bring. The large space is also perfect for exhibiting in, and when the dust has settled … I will be doing just that with my work.

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