• Measuring out the piece
  • Halima mapping out the design
  • Halima sketching designs
  • chain sawing a large wood sculpture
  • sculptors tools
  • Halima carving a design
  • Halima Cassell and Martyn Eastwood

Process and Methodology

When working in clay, I use heavily grogged clay that allows me to work on a large scale and use relatively thick surfaces to carve to my desired depth. I also concentrate on simple forms as the basis of my work in order to intensify the effect of the complex surface pattern combined with sharply contrasting contours.

Whilst creating my work, I go through processes, each of which require a different approach. I start by hand-building, and/or using a former to create the basis of a shape for my structure. The next phase involves exploring numerous possible design outcomes.

Now, I shut out all external stimuli which allows my mind to run free, ignoring any technical problems that may occur at the construction stage, as this may affect my freedom to think during this part of the creative process. Then I work out the mathematics of the pattern and the surface area of the form so that they work well together.

Finally, when the clay is at the right consistency, (in between leather-hard and stone-dry), I intuitively work out which way to carve each section of the design. Subsequently, this informs the remaining pattern of the overall form without having to map it out on paper.

Each piece takes between 100 and 500 hours, depending on the size and complexity of the pattern. The work is slowly dried over several weeks/months, to ensure a steady drying process. The pieces are fired at temperatures depending on the clay type.

Over the last few years I have worked with diverse materials exploring their potential. When working with other materials such as stone, wood and plaster, the processes and methodology are very similar; the only differences are the tools and the material behaviour and properties.

 

  • The most inspiring ceramic work I have seen in thirty years! Beautiful, mesmerising, powerful and thoughtful. Genius! Love, love, love this work.
    – Judith Ramsgate, 53 years old

  • While working, Cassell becomes deeply involved in each piece to the point where she is unaware of her surroundings even watching her work on a piece for a few minutes, it is obvious that the process commands all her attention
    – Emmanuel Cooper

  • She was sketching constantly and continually sought to transpose her drawings into sculptural forms. The surface as well as the shapes emerged together in sculpture which often combined enormous complexity with simplicity and unity.
    – Helaine Blumenfeld OBE FRBS Dlitt

  • I love this artist’s work. How she keeps her molten flowing themes through different media – stone, concrete, wood and even glass. Long to touch them. What a unique eye and hand she has. Wonderful.
    – Maureen Lepman

  • I find her work uplifting, I would never consider buying it solely as an investment
    – Eric Knowles (Ceramics Expert)

  • The work is of a high standard and creates an interesting contrast to the Da Vinci drawing. Can see the evolution of the process and the sculptures convey different ideas and theories. An excellent artist.
    – Jina

  • It is not easy to put into words the effect that Halima Cassell’s remarkable ceramic sculptures have on you when you first encounter a well displayed section of her work
    – Zachary Kingdom

  • …Although Cassell is creating in different media – and respecting the unique characteristics of her material while doing so – she is also intent on discerning just how bronze, glass, marble and clay can ‘speak the same language
    – Ian Wilson

  • Working mostly with ‘naked clay’, that is without the use of glaze or slip, Cassell first carefully carves and then smoothes and burnishes to remove any blemishes, so virtually making the surface ‘ disappear’, leaving the form clean and prominent
    – Emmanuel Cooper

  • Her main preoccupation and sculptural impulse is to penetrate beneath the skin of the form to reveal the structure within – the crystalline seed of the stone, or the skeleton-like armature she perceives within the clay. She does not carve exteriors but reveals interiors – the folded abstract inner landscapes of her singular and highly imaginative vision.
    – Andrew Lambirth, Art Critic - Spectator Magazine