Jan O’Highway
by Naomi Ruthven
Behind an unassuming iron door amongst a group of rickety outbuildings on a farm near Totnes, I recently had the pleasure of meeting craftswoman Jan O’Highway amidst her cavern of glittering ‘junk and jewels’. Sliding back the squeaky bolt, she ushered me inside, plonked me down in her workshop next to the calor-gas heater and armed me against the cold with a steaming mug of tea before regaling me with an epic of how, through various twists and turns, she had finally found herself following her chosen path as a maker after more than one or two adventures along the way. Jan’s studio space, which might best be described as a multi-coloured Tardis, was crammed floor to high ceiling with boxes of every shape and size containing a bizarre array of found objects and bought artist’s materials. Here in this magpie’s paradise, broken toys, beach finds and beads vie for space with the glass tesserae from which Jan creates her eclectic mosaics for both public art commissions and more personal, private pieces. Says Jan: "My commissioned, public art pieces are usually figurative and easily read, whilst my personal work tends more to abstraction. In both I enjoy the luscious colours and tactile qualities of clay and glass and found objects of all kinds." It was not without difficulty that Jan found her way into Art College in the late 1950s when she enrolled at Guildford School of Art for an NDD (National Diploma of Design) between 1957 and 1961. Having a father in the RAF had hitherto dictated a very nomadic lifestyle, with the family moving from place to place every year, never settling long enough for Jan to develop any educational continuity. "I went to countless schools and was never a very receptive pupil. In fact, the only thing that I found I always enjoyed was art. And yet there was a distinct lack of self belief. I certainly didn’t believe that I was any good at it, maybe because I never stayed anywhere long enough; I could not put down any roots and none of the staff got to know me to the extent where they could encourage me and follow my interest through."
However, in 1955, when she attended Plymouth School for Girls, Jan began taking her art studies more seriously. Then, half way through the school year, she found herself transplanted to Guildford. "Here the only place that I could study A Level Art was at the art school itself. The teaching was fantastic and for the first time in my life I felt happy in education." With the help of some very supportive tutors, Jan finally convinced her less than keen parents to allow her to continue her studies at Guildford into further education and the NDD. "There was a pervasive belief that this was not a very respectable path to take - the prejudice in those days was pretty severe - but maybe also in part because no one had been expecting me to go to university anyway, I was able to enrol. "Guildford gave me four marvellous years of study and we did a great deal of very solid training in drawing which does not happen so much now, but which suited me down to the ground because, although at that stage I had little confidence in my imaginative ability, I did find that I had a fairly accurate eye for such things as life drawing."
Migrating from Art College to teacher training at the end of her NDD, Jan spent time at Brighton College of Art ‘doing the sensible thing’ and getting a teaching qualification under her belt. But far from reining her back from her developing artistic confidence, this course gave Jan a further perspective. "It was a fun time because we did things like potato cuts and fabric printing, and I also started doing photography. The year really broadened me out as I had never done much in the way of three-dimensional work before, apart from a few weeks in the sculpture department."
It was at Brighton that Jan made her first foray into clay, which she has always since found to be the perfect – and, importantly, fun, antidote to fine art. "Whereas my experience of fine art has always been very rigorous and quite intellectual, working with clay is a real release. For me, enjoying using this medium does not depend on it being ‘good’ or not, but is rather a very grounding experience, rather like baking a cake! It is an area where I feel more relaxed and not so pressured. It was also something which I could still enjoy when my children were young, because I could do pottery for an hour or two and then simply wrap it in polythene and return to it later."
Despite this, Jan certainly found that marriage and children to a large extent placed art on the back burner. Marrying her college sweetheart, a composer, in 1962, she went on to have Hannah and Matthew in 1965 and 1967 respectively. Sadly, Jan later divorced and went to live in North Wales where she taught parttime in the local school and the children grew up just outside Croesor village near Snowdon. "It was a wonderful place for them to roam free and although life was a bit tough with no washing machine or mod cons for much of our time there, the freedom was terrific. I carried on painting, drawing and potting as a hobby but did not think of myself as an artist at all. I knew that I would not be able to do so until they grew up." The North Wales chapter was followed by something quite different, when Jan - by this time in love with a film maker called Nick - took herself and the children off to live in a commune called Redfield near Milton Keynes. The need for good secondary education had influenced the move and as Nick was already living at Redfield and near good schools, it seemed a logical step to take. "The children and I moved into our own apartment in the commune, together with a horse, a dog and a motorbike - and had a very interesting time of it!" Living in a commune had many lifestyle implications, including, importantly for Jan, more time to herself. "I no longer had to do all of the cooking and cleaning so I had more time and set up a workshop there. In addition, I found that Milton Keynes had some fantastic facilities which hardly anyone used. I was driving Matthew to school on a regular basis so I would pop in and use the Coffee Hall Workshop where I had access to big wheels, a gas kiln and plenty of space - all for something like 25 pence per day! "Not only that, but I had an arts community to slot into. I was certainly not making a living at art, but by now I had begun to sell pieces intermittently, many of them tile-based. I received a very nice career-development grant from the Milton Keynes Foundation for ceramics materials (blank tiles and glazes) and began to experiment properly with colour and earthenware glazes."
After leaving the commune, Jan remained in Milton Keynes, where she contended with a serious case of cancer, during which ceramics - or the more ‘fun’ side of art - temporarily took a back seat, giving way to a more serious phase of fine art. "Somewhere along the educational path I had picked up the idea that painting and drawing were a very serious matter. I had got out of the habit of long periods of concentration when Matthew and Hannah were children, but now this returned."
Through her illness and facing the very real possibility of death, Jan tried to confront her disease through photography, writing and painting. "It took about a year to get sorted and I was mightily relieved to be alive and to have the chance to do what I liked."
Far from being granted a peaceful period in which to get back into her ceramics, however, Jan then received the news that her father had Alzheimer’s. In 1990 she moved down to Portsmouth to help her mother care for him.
"I hated living in the crowded city, but I did have the great good fortune to join the Artspace Studio Group. I do love to do collective things. When they are harmonious they are very pleasant; you really learn something from this kind of working. Whereas living in the commune had taught me so much in terms of a broader, more political view of the world, how to argue academically, how to discuss and how to live with other people (notwithstanding passionate rows on such topics as where to plant the mint or how to farm the land!), Artspace finally taught me how to be a professional artist. "The people were terrific and here I did all sorts of things - everything from environmental artwork out on the beaches, through running community art projects, to teaching art to immigrants in Haslar Holding Centre!" All the while, Jan maintained her interest and central focus on ceramics, making tiles and doing interior design work for private commissions. Then one day, at an environmental art conference run by Ian Hunter’s company ‘Projects Environment’, Jan met landscape architect Paul Best. "Paul put me forward for doing some public art projects and said that he wanted me to do a model of the solar system for Oxtall Meadow Ecology Park in Gosport. I did explain that I had never actually translated my ceramics into mosaics before, but he seemed pretty unbothered. He liked my work and was convinced that we should just go for it!"
Jan’s solar system was completed in situ over a period of four years, with the bases of each planet formed as drainage rings. "They had to be very strong as children could climb on them so it was quite a challenge. As well as being my first mosaic, it was also my first proper public art project, but it seemed to work because others soon followed." Next Jan was asked to produce a seat at a sensory garden in partnership with artist blacksmith Richard Bent. The piece was made to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Gosport becoming a borough and the formation of the Hampshire Association for the Care of the Blind (hence the sensory garden). "The piece was very much about the place, with a map of Bemister Lane in Gosport on one side, on part of which the garden now stands, with numbers relating to the tithe map and tiles to coordinate with activities that took place at each property - a goose for the poulterer and so on. "The lovely thing is that the seat has never been vandalised; in fact none of my pieces have. I think that this may well be because I always make sure that people can understand the imagery. I keep my more problematic work for galleries and try to make my public art accessible."
More public art followed, with pieces such as a waymarker at Havant, Hampshire, as part of the Urban Regeneration Scheme, and a millennium sign for Purbrook, again made in conjunction with Richard Bent. This stands up on the Downs behind Portsmouth and is formed in the shape of an arch echoing that in the big Victorian fort built by Palmerstone.
Moving to Devon in 2002 - where Hannah was working as a social worker and Matthew as a film maker - Jan set up shop just outside Totnes. When I went to meet her she had just completed work on a series of heads created completely from recycled, found materials and formed on second-hand bowling balls! This was for her contribution to an exhibition inspired by the beautiful Roman floor depicting the four seasons in the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. Around 20 artists were selected to make mosaics using the seasons as their inspiration. "Whilst browsing on the internet, I had come across some people using bowling balls in America for their mosaics and these seemed eminently suitable for the four heads which I had decided to make. My choice of found objects to use on the balls was dictated by the colouring. Obviously the commission presented many challenges - not least in terms of the timing, due to the pressure of other work, there was just three weeks to complete from start to finish - but the greatest pleasure of it was that it was something which provided me with enormous fun!"
For more information please visit
www.janohighway.com
and
www.richardbentblacksmith.co.uk
