Ali Gane is a Yorkshire-based ceramicist who creates work that has a sense of place, a feeling of connection and familiarity
Ali’s ceramics training started in the 1980s at Ripon College in North Yorkshire where she studied for a BA (Hons) in Geography and Art. Under the tutelage of Victor Priem and Peter Clough, she specialised in big, classically shaped and meticulously constructed coil pots that were simply glazed and mostly fired in a gas kiln under reduction.
After graduating in 1986, several years later Ali joined the creative and supportive ceramics community of practice at Harrogate College where she started to explore exciting new ways to work with clay that were adventurous and authentic. She is now studying for an MA in Creative Practice and is loving the opportunity to experiment and develop her ceramics practice further.
Ali is primarily a hand builder and her work is informed by the patterns, textures, form and colours of the natural environment. She combines white earthstone and red earthenware clays to create a unique patchwork of strata-like patterned clay that is applied to formers and moulds. After bisque firing, each piece is glazed in a painterly fashion using multiple glazes, including volcanic silicon carbide, to produce distinctive ceramic pieces.