NO.5 PRUE PIPER : Up Our Street - 8 Holland Street's neighbours, near and far

ON A VISIT TO ARTIST PRUE PIPER’S HOME AND STUDIO, WE ARE REMINDED THAT THINGS WILL GET BRIGHTER…

The air in artist Prue Piper’s home and studio is thick with otherworldliness that she bats away as if mundane. We wanted to gain insight into Prue’s world, and into her process that creates some of our most loved ceramics. Prue spends her days making clay into folkloric shapes - green men and dancing figures and mousies and frogs. As she shows and tells us, we become a bit too shrill about the cuteness, and sense a furrowed brow forming in genuine confusion. Prue is not like the dancing figure of her vessels; Prue is waiting for the weather to clear to spread dung on her land, fell a tree and move the sheep with no names in her ‘just’ eleven acres of woodland.

We ask if she gets distracted in the day, does she ever procrastinate? No, I just get on with it, she says.  We try to delve a little deeper to understand her process. Inspiration? Google in fine. Listening to anything? A very dull CD. And yet, not one thing is dull about Prue’s life or work. Her house and studio were once the laundry for Marston House in Somerset. The oolite limestone of the laundry has wriggled itself into the land and allowed wild strawberries to take over and a generous fig tree to rest. Elsewhere, sprouts, chard, kale, marrows, squash, chicory allow Prue to be almost entirely self-sufficient.

Within the house, Prue’s shelves are from a felled Beech tree, paintings are by both her late husband Edward Piper and father-in-law John, sculptures are from her son and neighbour Henry, and heat comes from a log burning stove. Prue may say that Google is a good source, but one can’t help but think that it is amongst the sprouts, and in the chickens feathers and within the forest where inspiration comes. Prue later tells us, that she also spends days in museums ‘getting in the way’ by sketching. Pitt Rivers’ archaeological and anthropological finds are a key inspiration. Prue enjoys the eccentricity of the man and the museum in Oxford that he founded. Nothing too curated, for it sanitises and loses the narrative behind the pieces on display.

It could seem contrary to her whimsical ceramics, that Prue is straight down the line, practically dogmatic in her art. However, it is this which creates her unfettered artistic genius. This complete inhibition, that may mean that in fact, Prue is exactly as her ceramics are. This is her reality. Whilst my normality is the 52 bus and an oat latte, Prues is Peruvian beasts. Oh, Prue has a PHD in Biochemistry. We found that out on Google, so it’s not through scrolling that Prue truly gets inspired even if most of us truly, sadly do. Prue has a deeper understanding about the natural world.

So, there may be something in Prue’s furrowed brow. It’s not otherworldliness that surrounds her work, but a world that so many of us are disconnected from. Prue, in her forest of self-sufficiency knows the green man, and the sheep and the chickens. Prue is UP OUR STREET because she reminds us of the bigger picture outside, behind, off, above and below the street. And right now, Prue Piper reminds us that things will get brighter.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY OLLIE TOMLINSON

WRITTEN BY ALEX MASTERS