Lesley Anne Greene
by Angie Boyer
It was a particularly special day in Lesley Greene’s house when Paul and I visited, as her daughter Jessica, only recently returned from a visit to China, was delighted to find out that she had been allocated the accommodation she had really hoped for at University. Lesley’s own ‘special day’ had happened earlier in the year, in April, when we gave her our Highly Commended Newcomer Award at bctf in Harrogate. Her characterful camels in particular had attracted a great deal of attention at the show and, along with her other original figurative ceramic sculptures, caught the eye of buyers who appreciated the great expressions, humour and animation in each piece. We had seen Lesley’s ceramics the previous year at Potfest in the Pens in Penrith. “I sort of ‘grew up’ with Potfest,” she said, referring to the pottery and ceramics events held in Cumbria each year in both the Pens and the Park. “It has always been an important source of public feedback for me as well as a place to make contact with gallery buyers.” As she spoke about Potfest, Lesley showed us her elegantly stylised ‘Geisha lady’ a piece she made especially for the Potfest themed competition one year, and her ‘mole bowl’, a substantial pot with a lid featuring a mole digging down into it, bottom up on the outside, head revealed inside, just as she had seen in real life when a mole made a hasty retreat in the lane outside her house. Potfest is organised by Chris and Geoff Cox, “I admire Geoff’s philosophy that it’s an event for everybody, regardless of status or experience. It certainly afforded me the opportunity to show my work and test the market.” Lesley studied at Cardiff in the late seventies, gaining a BA Hons. In 3DDesign/Ceramics, following it up with a Post Grad Art Teachers Certificate at Cardiff and then a Teachers Supplementary Certificate in Craft, Design and Technology in Crewe. “At the time I did not feel that there were as many opportunities as there are now to run your own business and I had always aspired towards a career in teaching. I taught Art for eight years in a state secondary school, introducing ceramics onto the syllabus.” With support and encouragement from family and friends, the chance to run her own business finally presented itself when Lesley’s son, William, started school and she was accepted onto the Enterprise Allowance Scheme in South Cheshire for six months. “That really helped me to focus, I had to go to business seminars once a month where I learnt about costing and promoting my work, the need for appropriate insurance and so on. It gave me a real insight into the business aspect of everything. I didn’t really cover any of that at college so this experience gave me the confidence and determination to explore the commercial potential of my work.” Lesley and her family were living in Crewe at that time, where she followed up one piece of advice that she was given at the Enterprise seminars, to go to her local newspaper and tell them about he rwork. “I thought they’d tell me to push off,” she laughed, “but they were really interested and actually followed me home to take some photographs of my work!” Around this time Lesley became a member of the Northern Potters Association, which over the years gave her the opportunity to enter for group exhibitions at venues including Durham Light Infantry Museum and Art Gallery, York City Art Gallery, The Mercer Gallery in Harrogate, Cliffe Castle Keighley and Tullie House Museum in Carlisle.
Although Lesley’s ceramics have matured and developed, the early influences are still recognisable and today’s work has strong echoes of her earlier pieces. She has developed different ranges of animals over the years, but is perhaps best known now for her cats and camels. “My Degree work was partly influenced by stone carvings and the figurative imagery found in churches, but with a contemporary twist, and I have a great interest in Egyptian artefacts. I suppose it began when I was a child visiting local museums in Yorkshire. My Dad was in the Navy when I was little and brought me a little leather camelback from his travels. That interest has just grown - to the extent that I actually visited Luxor and the Valley of the Kings in September 2004 and had a camel ride in a sandstorm on holiday in the Tunisian Sahara this year!” As I try to capture the movement in my pieces this was ‘dedicated research’, camels roll!!!” This Egyptian influence is evident in Lesley’s early work, spurred on by a very successful two person show in Durham in 1997. Her tall, strikingly elegant cats sit on shelves in her home alongside more recent pieces of her work waiting for despatch. “As I’ve informed myself more, I’ve gone back and revisited things,” she explained. “I particularly like the narrative in stone carving, the type of work you see in museums and books from the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Asian and South American cultures. I like to create the feeling of the ceremonial in some of my pieces, but with a bit of cheek or humour coming through, so as not to become too serious.” Whatever her own preferences, Lesley is acutely aware of the need to design and make to appeal to her buyers as well. “I feel it is important, in order to keep my work fresh, to provide a range of different designs and a variety of prices,” she told me. Hopefully there is something to suit most budgets. “The costliest element of my work is the time spent on modelling each piece and I price the work accordingly, also taking into account my business overheads. I’m reluctant to set a ‘recommended selling price’ for I have found that gallery commissions vary quite a lot and I trust in their expertise to know that their commission is right for their costs and clientele.” Lesley says that one thing she has really learnt from and stuck by from the Enterprise Allowance Scheme was simply being told that it’s important to get paid what she needs to stay in business. I asked her about the frequently discussed topic of supplying galleries on a sale or return basis, whether she thought this was a realistic option for makers. “It was natural in the early days to do sale or return to get my work out in front of people, but there are other options as the work becomes recognised. Some venues/events only operate on a sale or return basis, e.g. Holmfirth Artweek; I was awarded the John B Shaw memorial prize in 2000 and have been invited to show a small group of pieces every year since and am pleased to be asked to show at what is a hugely supported, prestigious charity event. It can be very time consuming checking up on sale or return pieces, cataloguing and checking sales and cash flow can be slow. I think there are advantages in taking a flexible approach and consider each opportunity as it presents itself.” In a typically astute way, Lesley has worked out a pricing structure based on the type of sale she agrees with the buyer. “The slightly higher price for sale or return orders, if I do agree to them, covers the cost of my extra administration amongst other things. This will hopefully create an incentive to purchase and is fairer to those galleries who are already prepared to buy pro forma.” Lesley also enjoys the freedom of working on specially commissioned private pieces, at the moment she is working on an order for a leopard. “I quite like commission work as it presents a different challenge and the opportunity to liaise with the person who is purchasing the piece.” All of this happens from her workshop set out in the cellar of he rhome in Ilkley.
“When we lived in Crewe, I worked in the garage, which was not ideal, very little natural light and no running water.” That’s all been put to rights at the house in Ilkley, where the cellar door opens out into space at the back of the house, where pots and ceramic creations sit on steps and alongside the garden path. There is running water, space and seclusion in her workspace now, a place where she not only hand builds and fires her pieces, but also takes her own photographs of the work, using the images to produce entirely professional promotional material, postcards and such like. Although she has an obviously popular and successful product, Lesley says that she doesn’t consider herself to be a craftsperson in the traditional sense of the word. “And I certainly don’t consider myself to be a ‘proper’ potter, I just love the immediacy, the flow and plasticity of clay as a means for modelling and expression. I suppose if I have to have a label, you could take your pick from these - ‘creative ceramicartist’ (for grand days and business cards) or ‘player in clay’, in the sense that each piece reflects a performance with its own sense of fun and drama.”
Lesley Anne Greene 137 Leeds Road, Ilkley, LS29 8JX
T: 01943 431823
www.lagreeneceramics.co.uk
