Sawpit Studios

Joey Burns and Helen Daley started their ceramic and print studio, Sawpit Studios, at their home in Gundaroo.
Helens practice is print-based, using collagraph plates, which she seals with resin obtained from the grass trees on the property. Helen cuts, tears and carves the collagraph plates, which she then inks and puts through a high pressure etching press. Helens prints are emotional narratives about her experience of the environment in which she lives.
Joey Burns makes works which are a simple reflection of his surroundings, either influenced by the people and cityscapes of the cities he has lived, places he’s visited, or landscapes from the rural area he grew up in and now lives. Joey  incorporates a sense of character and personality into his pieces, which he gathers from interactions with people, animals and architecture.
The malleable nature of clay allows joey to spontaneously create abstracted gestures of these visual, tactile and aural influences.
Joey fires his work in wood burning kilns as he can achieve a non-contrived reference to the colours and surface textures from the original inspiration behind the forms.