Jess Samuelson is a Boorloo/Perth-based artist with a passion for making captivating ceramics. Combining nature with texture and mark making, her pieces serve as a junction between beauty and function, transforming the everyday.

Jess grew up in Western Australia, loving visual arts and design throughout her school years. With her mother running a well-known Perth art gallery and her grandmother a seamstress and avid potter, Jess was always surrounded by creativity and the Arts.

“My grandmother taught me to sew and we were always doing arts and crafts, painting, and hand building little clay creations.”

After high school, Jess began studying nursing in Fremantle. During this time, she studied abroad in the United States. There, Jess explored her creative passions in metalsmithing and metalwork, photography, and ceramics. After the completion of her degree, Jess returned to the States to work as a nurse for several years. Moving back to Australia in 2012, Jess was looking for a creative outlet and started ceramics lessons once again. With a close friend, they began hand building in her home before joining Studio P together, a community space for beginner and experienced potters in Leederville. It was here that Jess stepped back into wheel work and fell in love with the method. Jess is currently furthering her studies in ceramics at North Metro TAFE with the intent of achieving a Diploma of Ceramics.

Now, Jess splits her process between her home studio where she does her wheel work, Studio P where she glazes, and TAFE where she experiments. Spreading her work in this way allows Jess to be inspired by and grow in different settings, learning from instructors and other creatives. Speaking further on her process, Jess mentioned that she gathers her inspiration from the world around her: exploring the ocean with her children, on bush walks, and noticing intricate patterns in nature.

“Logs and trees, reefs, seaweeds, barks, plants… they’re all inspirations.”

When starting a piece, Jess first thinks about the form she intends to make and what shapes she wants to achieve within this. From there, she decides how she is going to incorporate texture, whether it be carving into the surface of the clay or inlaying a pattern from something found in nature such as seaweed or coral.

“I have actually always found seaweed a bit disgusting and stinky, and tried to avoid it until a few years ago. But, then I realised whilst snorkelling that seaweed was really beautiful under the ocean.”

Wanting to harness this beauty out of the water, Jess began to press seaweed in a flower press, finding the process deeply satisfying. Taking these pressed pieces, she experimented with translating these patterns directly onto the clay, and her process developed from there. Such pieces, developed using this signature texture making method with ocean materials, can be found in Store.

Since beginning her seaweed collecting journey whilst “seaweed hunting” for these projects, Jess has been fascinated by the volume and variety of seaweed there is to discover on our coast.

“You can find it everywhere, but I love collecting best when I’m on holidays around Western Australia.”

Jess noted that what started as an experimental way to decorate and add texture to her pieces has now transformed into a vessel for communicating ocean preservation.

“Perth is such a great place to live, with the access to nature – the beach, the bush, the forests – unbeatable… My work now has a commentary on our marine environment and the importance of protecting these spaces.”

Images courtesy of Jess Samuelson.