NO.18 DITTE BLOHM: UP OUR STREET - 8 Holland Street's neighbours, near and far

Ditte Blohm shares her East London studio with other ceramicists, although it would be fair to say she has a few more feathers to her cap - she is a sculptor, lighting designer and tableware extraordinaire too. Having studied Fine Art at university in Denmark, where she hails from, Ditte began her career making large interactive sculptural pieces that the viewer could really get involved with, influencing their senses: sight, smell, sound...

Fast forward to the present and Ditte's work is still very much influenced by the human condition, its limits and perameters. Amidst the calm shapes she creates, there can be a hectic adventurousness in her forms, that crackle with glazed spikes and shards. In tandem with this notion though, Ditte herself ensures that she takes the time to go on silent retreats where she removes herself from external influences and recalibrates - usually by the sea, reminding her of her homeland. 

The work Ditte produces varies according to function. Her simple tableware - some plain, some adorned with her signature spikes - was born from a practical need for plates at home. Her sculpture however, always serves to work with memories of the sensory and of feelings - good and bad - created intuitively rather than rigidly referring to sketches of drawings; the result is abstracted and impactful.