In conversation with Catherine Hammerton
We’re so excited to welcome Catherine Hammerton to Emerald Gallery! Known for her stunning floral sculptures - imaginative paper artistry, and one-of-a-kind letterpress work, Cath brings a world of unique creations to our space.
To give you a closer look at the heart behind the art, we sat down for a relaxed conversation about her creative journey, what inspires her process, and the stories that bloom within this solo exhibtion.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and where your artistic journey began?
Since I was child I have always used my hands. Making drawings, collages (with a pretty dubious homemade flour and water glue!) layering fuzzy felts or building small worlds in plasticine. My very best gift every Christmas for many years, £1 at the local cheap shop went a long way on plasticine in a million colours!
At school I studied Textiles, rather than art, which allowed me to play between colour, pattern and materiality. It fed and enhanced all of those early years at our family dining table.
This led to me studying a BA in Textiles and Surface Design just down the road in High Wycombe, at what was Buckinghamshire Chilterns University, before an MA in Constructed – Mixed Media – Textiles at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London.
When did you first realise you wanted to be an artist?
I have only come to call myself an artist in the last few years – I think it comes with age and a smidge of confidence? It wasn’t a career destination, in fact I don’t think the careers advisor quite knew what to do with me at school, but I’m glad I went with my heart rather than my head when making these pivotal choices.
After the RCA my early career was rooted in design, creating interior wallpapers and textile accessories for site specific projects and beautiful shops and department stores around the world. It taught me tons about commercial product, small batch production in the UK (before it was cool and mainstream) and really focussed my personal values as part of that brand vision.
Somewhere along my journey I sidestepped into Higher Education, supporting the next gen of brilliant Designers, Makers and Artists to chase their dreams and ambitions. I have loved being able to share my enthusiasm and experience to allow other talented creatives to grow, it’s an absolute privilege and a career highlight so far.
Hiraeth
Materials: paper, wire and found blackbirds nest.
Who or what has been the biggest influence on your creative path?
My Mum has been my biggest champion and influence on my everything when I think about. From the hours and hours sat beside me, cutting and shaping those plasticine worlds, to watching her make our costumes for the school play, village carnival and fetes. Making cheese straws and plate pasties with squishy pastry leaves and floral sprigs on a Sunday afternoon, to drawing on paper bags or making rudimental kites from plastic bags. Her time, patience, love and ability to make something from nothing were quite astounding when I come to think about it.
How has living/working in your hometown shaped your art?
After the Royal College we lived in London for almost a decade before moving out to Hertfordshire for four – just to make sure we were country folk. My partner is from our hometown and we got to an age where we would rather spend more time with our families than be so far away to be near-ish to the city.
Coming home to Wales aligned to a teaching opportunity for me, buying our first home with the garden we had long dreamed about and gave us the space to start our own family, by the sea.
Becoming a Mother changed me. The pandemic refocussed our priorities, making us so much more aware of small wonders, tiny moments of joy and time well spent. Our slower, quiet pace of life, and our close connectivity to family changed everything in terms of practice and the work that I am making now.
Cath Hammerton at Emerald Gallery
How would you describe your artistic style to someone who hasn’t seen your work before?
I am a Maker creating small botanical paper sculptures and letter pressed texts. Everyday heirlooms derived from overlooked blooms and snippets of conversations gathered from my most beloved places and spaces.
What materials, techniques, or processes do you most enjoy working with, and why?
I love paper – I always have. I spent much of my Textiles degree sourcing cloth that looked and behaved like paper, which is a bit mad when I think about it.
I love paper because its abundant, comes in so many weights, colours and finishes. That it can be made of so many combinations of materials (including textiles) but can be changed so easily. It can be expensive but is often deemed disposable, quietly following us throughout our lifetime in a myriad of ways that document and celebrate some of our best (and worst) memories. A silent observer or life.
Do you have a favourite subject or recurring theme in your artwork?
My current work is closely connected to nature and the common lands that I have grown up around. Using wild flora as visual metaphors for my matrilineality alongside the notion of what it is to be common, what it is to belong – hiraeth – and the plant lore traditionally shared by women.
I’ve recently learned how to letterpress and am so excited! Excited by the slow, methodical rhythm of the process and how the written word might accompany my 3D works.
I have four new letter pressed prints that I will be sharing for the first time at Emerald Frames, available to buy as prints but with some of the texts spliced into new sculptures. Something for everyone (I hope!)
What does a typical day in your studio look like?
My studio sits on top of a hill, in the medieval village of Llantrisant, overlooking the Welsh valley. I honestly have the best views, even on the greyest of days. We are a building full of artists, designers and makers and I’m lucky to share the third floor with such a bunch of lovely people – there’s a real sense of community amongst us all.
I usually get there after the school run and the first thing I do is make a strong coffee while I pop a podcast on and busy myself with making work. I often take our pup Sunny with me, so she ensures we have a good walk around the common lands that surround the village.
I purposely don’t have WIFI at the studio, as for me it is a making space without distractions – a place for creating with my hands and quiet thinking. I love it there.
Where do your ideas usually come from?
My ideas derive from lived experiences – moments from memory or times that I am trying to hold onto, to keep still in my hands, like a big pause in the busyness of modern living.
I walk a lot along the common lands and coastlines near to me, often returning to the same places again and again to see things anew. The changes in season, in the light, and how I am perhaps changed in these places again and again.
I adore flea markets and junkshops, treasure hunting for something past to reimagine in my work present. Revaluing things that have been lost to time, asking my audience to look again.
I recently went flea marketing shopping with two very dear, old friends, who were astounded by the “old junk” I had a carefully found and selected and much of which has become new work. Looking beyond the discarded to see something beautiful.
How do you overcome creative blocks or moments of doubt?
I walk away from creative blocks – literally – often downing tools to get out and walk the land. To catch my breath and to re-centre. The inner critic can often be drowned out when its blowing a gale on a hill of cliff top!
Is there any creative that doesn’t have moments of self-doubt? I have had so many moments of what-on-earth-am-I-doing when making this new body of work, which is how some of the smaller pieces on show have come to be. Made for fun, to run away from the larger works on the days when it all felt a bit big and too much, ironically these are some of my favourite pieces in the exhibition, as is often the case!
Letterpress Love Notes
Is there a particular artwork (your own or by another artist) that you hold especially close to your heart?
I collect lots of things (my OH calls it hoarding, I call it loving the world) that hold memoric rather than monetary value.
I have an ageing toilet roll tube with googly eyes and some dusty feathers glued to it, made by my now-22-year-old niece when she was a small child, besides my gardening books.
A million and one shells collected from holiday spots that have quietly sat in my pockets at different times across a decade that now sit inside a printers’ tray, like a tiny museum of moments. Besides a Cleo Mussi pointing finger (a birthday gift to me love me!) and a Buddug Humphreys enamel plate (a gift from my daughter when she was very tiny).
All of these things are special memories that I surround our home with and I suppose an extension of how my work is informed and evolves.
Kin
Materials: paper, wire and vintage wooden leading tool
‘The Love You Leave"‘
What story or message do you hope visitors will take away from your exhibition here at Emerald gallery?
It is often the smallest of gestures made in the tiniest of moments that the greatest impacts can be made. A kind word gifted at just the right time. A willing smile to say, you can do this – keep going. A tiny posy of hand-picked flowers because I thought of you, right there and right then in the fields.
The love you leave is a gathering of ideas, objects and letter pressed texts that explore the indelible mark that love leaves. Love and care bestowed without agenda, suspended in time. It is a body of work deeply rooted to family, and dedicated to my Mum and Dad, who taught me how to leave love in the world.
I hope guests and visitors will take these sentiments away with them, the idea that all we truly leave (without all of the material stuff) if we are really really lucky are the traces of love.
Pieces Of You + Me
Beautiful edition of 49 vintage hinged tobacco tins lined with cyanotype collage and home to delicate paper daisies.
Is there a piece in this show that feels especially significant to you? If so, why?
There are so many works in the exhibition that I fall quietly in and out of love with (as every creative will understand), but I am proud of the love note post-it prints that I have produced.
They derive from my own post-it-note love letters to my own dear Mum that we have exchanged since I was 19 years old. Back then I would hide them around our family home between visits and holidays, from me to her, and likewise would find them tucked into my luggage and notebooks, from her to me. Occasionally my Dad would hop on the post-it-note bandwagon too, but mostly it was a quiet and constant conversation between Mum and me.
I have so many of these tiny faded squares; their capacity to hold so little and yet say so very much. Small moments of time taken to remind me that I am loved. To keep going. To enjoy the week ahead. To take good care. That I will be missed at Sunday lunch that week.
Moments that I wanted to share and celebrate with others, in ambiguity, to honour all of our often unspoken words. Simple sentences that are made to be shared and quietly tucked into a jacket pocket or slipped under the sill of a door. Casually posted from here to there. A tiny moment of love, care and wonder, hand pressed onto beautiful papers by me.
How does this exhibition fit within the wider journey of your artistic career?
The exhibition at Emerald has come at a time when I am closing one chapter and beginning another. I recently decided to take voluntary redundancy from my teaching role at University – a huge leap of faith after almost ten years, to spend more time in my studio making work.
The love you leave is an outpouring of ideas that I have been dreaming of for a long time and I am so grateful to have the courage, time and space to make them a reality.
Flower Chains
Wall or table-top flower sculptures in vintage tabacoo tins
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
If I could choose right now, I think it would be a beautiful paper mill like James Cropper, Paper Foundation or something similar. I’d love to learn more about the making of paper and how it could be shaped and moulded as part of its production, that really would be a fabulous collab!
But I likely wouldn’t say no to any collaboration in truth – conversation and exchange is so important to my creativity, its often where the gold-dust-stuff comes from… I remember being told when I was a student that the very best ideas are born in the bar!
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve ever found inspiration?
I think inspiration is like a leaky tap, its constantly just being drip fed into your creativity by the ways in which you interact with the world. Often hidden in plain sight, I think it’s always a bit of a surprise when you look back and realise the things that have been feeding your creativity were always there it’s just your awareness changed direction and you finally noticed them when you were meant to.
Outside of art, what brings you joy or fuels your creativity?
Early morning walks with Sunny, rain or shine, the rhythm of rising early and being in the world before much of it wakes really centres me and reminds me to be here now. To be present and to be grateful for all of the small things that can sometimes be missed in the busy.
Family gatherings and Sunday lunches with my favourite people – there must be plenty of gravy – good conversation and a beautiful glass of wine. I will take the cheese board over pudding every single time (unless there’s a scone involved).
West wales, just us four, walking beaches, seeking seals and gathering sea weed specimens to identify. Sandy toes, shells in pockets, simple pleasures and sea salt hair. Crepes, gelato and ancient DVDs from my childhood to hers.
If your art had a soundtrack, what kind of music would it play?
In the studio I waver between country, folk and Kate Bush with my tweens love of pop (and the Pink Pony Club) seeping in between. Much like my artwork, I think my soundtrack would be eclectic, but soulful with a sprinkle of upbeat here and there – anything goes!
‘Sisters’ and ‘I Love You’
Materials: paper, wire, letterpresses text and inlay wooden box
“The Love You Leave” exhibition is open until 11th of October - Tuesday to Saturday 9 to 5, So there’s still plenty of time to pop in and explore before it wraps up.
We’d love to welcome you, so don’t miss the chance to visit. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post—we hope to see you at the exhibition soon!