On the morning we speak, artist Emma Carlow is already at her table. “I’m having a very TOAST day,” she says. “I made some elderflower cordial earlier and I’m making pots.” She works from home, in a terraced house in Lewes, East Sussex. Downstairs is one open space, with the kitchen at one end, the sitting room at the other, and the dining room in the middle. It is here, at a large table, that most of Emma’s projects begin. “The dining room is where I work,” she says. “So everybody just lives in my studio.” In the evenings, the table returns to its other use. During the day, it holds clay, paper, or whatever is underway. She has recently brought in drawers and shelves to help the room reset with less interruption. “In theory, I can put things away more quickly.”
Behind her, a wall is pinned with inspiration: images, postcards, paper studies. A small mobile hangs in place with white cutout shapes, made as a maquette for a larger piece she is building for TOAST. “I’m making a massive mobile,” she says. “It’s exciting.” Alongside it is a photograph of a recent fascination. “I’ve become besotted with Japanese haniwa,” she says, speaking of the terracotta clay figures made for ritual use during the Kofun period. She recently “splashed out and bought an amazing book” on them, and pinned up a few images as she read.
Lewes offers Emma the balance she wants. Near the Bloomsbury Group’s Charleston House, the town is known for its connection to folk traditions, with large celebrations around Garland Day and Bonfire Night. She can walk into town quickly, and step into open land just as easily. “I’m nicely on the edge of both,” she says. “If you walk to the end of my street, there’s a big pond that leads onto a river that leads out into a huge valley.” She moved from London and saw a future in the place. “I thought I could stay here forever.” She speaks about the pleasure of proximity, and of a life built around people. “Everything’s nearby,” she says. She lives minutes away from Pells Pool, Britain’s oldest continuously operating freshwater public swimming pool, and swims there in the mornings during the warmer months.
Folk art is a long thread through her practice. Emma’s mother lived in Japan when Emma was in her twenties, and she remembers becoming absorbed by local objects. “All over Japan, each sort of area has its own toy,” she says. During lockdown, that interest deepened into daily study, particularly of the collection held by the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. “They have a great online collection,” she says. “ I researched it every day.” She set herself a simple aim. “I decided to make something that I would like to find in their shop if I ever went there.”
One object that she returns to is a tree of life candelabrum, made by Herón Martínez Mendoza in Mexico around the 1960s. Crafted from slip-coated clay and patterned with vibrant paint, the piece has the fantastical form of a seated man with arms forming branches. Emma describes how the symbol of the tree of life shifted over time. “When the Spanish invaded, they got hold of the tree of life and made it a religious thing,” she says. “So it might be depicting Adam and Eve or the nativity.” The one she loves feels more evocative of “the circus or music”. Her response to the piece was practical. “I can’t afford one of the real things,” she says. “So I made a wooden flat pack version of it. So you could build it yourself, but you could paint it how you wanted to paint it.”
Natural motifs, particularly animals and birds, appear across her work. “What fascinates me is the human response to and interaction with nature.” She mentions Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long, two of the most renowned British figures in the global Land Art movement, and the feeling of nature and human gesture held together. Emma speaks about her practice as a way of teaching herself. The source material often decides what comes next. “I know quite a lot now about the medieval era because I’m obsessed with Norman Romanesque carvings,” she says. That interest leads her towards clay: “If it’s carvings, then I work with clay. I’m not going to get my hands on any stone.” She keeps different projects running at different scales, following what holds her attention and letting one line of enquiry sit beside another.
Whistles are another form Emma returns to. She researched pieces in the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, as well as the “extraordinary collections” at the V&A and British Museum. “I realised that actually every culture has a whistle,” she says. She started making them in a weekly pottery session with a friend. “I go to pottery every Wednesday,” she says. The first night, she made seven, and committed to making a new one each day for a year. “I would advise anyone to do something for 365 days,” she says. “It does change your life.”
Alongside clay, Emma also works with paper. She sketches, but finds drawing slows down her pace. “If I want to be quick and fluid,” she says, “then I’ll always use paper and scissors.” A few years ago she began experimenting with making cyanotypes, coating fabric with a photographic solution and placing paper cut-outs on top. Then she let the conditions of the day take part. “Because the wind would blow and the sun moves, it gave life to the images that were left on the fabric.”
These paper works led to cut-out bird and tree-of-life motifs for the TOAST Autumn Winter collection, screen-printed using a method which removes or "discharges" the original colour of the fabric to create the pattern. To celebrate the pieces, Emma is creating a large version of her motifs in paper, which will be set against a vivid blue linen backdrop that echoes the collection colours. In her home, one mobile has already taken over the room. “It’s literally floor to ceiling,” she says. “It’s as tall as I am.” Movement matters to her, and she traces that back to the long-standing influence of Alexander Calder, the American artist known for his kinetic sculptures.
Making has always been central to Emma’s life. She remembers a photograph her father gave to her husband on their wedding day: Emma in a pinnie, paint everywhere. “I think I’ve always known I wanted to do this,” she says. “There was never any question that I would do anything else.” She describes making as a way of solving problems, of learning through doing. “You have to get stuck in,” she says. “I’m always making. I cannot sit still.”
Words by Alice Simkins Vyce.
Photography by James Bannister.
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