“About six years ago upon my return to Trinidad , clay found me !” These words summed up the turning point in the life of Danielle Gibson who began working on jewellery in Trinidad before moving to California and later on to London, where she was born.

During that time she earned her livelihood in secretarial jobs as well as selling handcrafts in the markets.

I interviewed Gibson, a local ceramicist, last week at her home/studio in St Ann's and I immediately thought of Art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy's definition of art - “the well-making of what needs making”.

It seemed an apt description of Danielle's work and her focus on making the thing that is necessary and making it well. She works in a world which increasingly disregards the impact of the work of the hands on the eye, ear, and mind, and in general, the human element.

As artists, we work in a world full of imagery but sometimes empty of content in the persistent quest to keep pace with the “New”. In this setting where word and theory are very large, Danielle's passion for art is tempered with the need to live in a way that reflects her experiences. Her work, rooted in her reality, presents a counter balance to the growing effects of technology in craft.

Danielle has acknowledged the presence of God in her life and in her art-making. This working with her hands has helped in the challenges faced in re-settling in Trinidad , after living away from home for many years, and in her search for the meaning of her life.

Danielle Gibson

Chalice

Crosses

Rosary

Her formal training in clay began at See Rique Ceramics in Carenage. Here she worked with raw clay and learnt various techniques such as coiling (common in the works of Native American Indians), glazing and making moulds. Her brother who lived abroad sent many books for her to reference.

Books are a vital part of art education and development. With the shortage of reference material in Trinidad bookstores, her brother's contribution proved invaluable.

Danielle has had four solo shows of her clay works, her last being in December 2005 at the Trinidad Country Club.

The craft of ceramics involves making objects from clay, a natural raw material. Danielle creates objects that surround us. She is presently working on crucifixes and rosaries.

However, she had a variety of other works at her studio. There were wine vessels, vases, bowls, figurines, necklaces, earrings and bracelets.

One aspect of Danielle's success in this popular medium has been her willingness to experiment with it.

The other being that she has moved away from the overly commercialised coconut tree and fig leaf imagery.

When Danielle set up her studio at home her first works were vases and figurines which covered themes of mother and child, angels, lovers and women.

Nearly every culture we know of has practised the craft of ceramics e.g. Mesoamerica, Egypt, Asia Minor, Europe and the Indus Valley. Civilisations in the Middle East understood the basic techniques as early as 5000 BC, creating vessels and figurines.

In the works on display at her studio, I thought of Greece , Turkey and the Moors. I later found out she had friends from Turkey . There is a distinct Mediterranean/Middle-Eastern flair to her work, a region geographically and historically important to Catholicism. For those who saw Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven last year, Danielle's work could have easily fit into the film set in Jerusalem.

This style presented itself very distinctly in her crucifixes, bowls and her colour palette. She has an affinity for green, blue and gold at the moment.

Her work takes on a metallic finish and in some cases the clay resembles blown glass. She also incorporated painted crocus bags on the surface of a vase and beads and wire on her crucifixes.

Her salad bowls are made up of individually coiled clay. They looked as if they could have been unearthed from under the Parthenon in Athens.

A consistent motif in her works is leaf designs. These appear on vases and in her jewellery. Her wine vessels are like those we read of in fairytales, as she has added a vine onto the stem of the vessel. One of her necklace and chain sets is made out of gold leaves and looked like a Roman laurel wreath.

Very interesting too were her beaded necklaces, bracelets and earrings. These are individually rolled beads, which are coloured, glazed and then strung together, same as with her rosary beads. “I just come down in my studio and really enjoy working and rolling my beads”.

We still describe as “well-crafted” anything finely made, including a chair, a car, a house, even sometimes painting or sculpture. The specific connotation of craft, however, is an object made by hand, not by machine. What then separates the craft object from the art object?

There is no definite line, nor should there be one. Labels are a convenience for talking about art, but they should not force artworks into pigeonholes. Danielle's Clay-Art survives and even flourishes almost independently of the gallery system.

The practice of her art tells of the rigour and concentration in the creation of her work. She experiments with the tangibility and stuff of everyday life to get to the essence of beauty in clay.