MELISSA Cole is a blacksmith. She does not fit the typical image some might expect but she has considerable ability, as she proved when she won the international competition to design the Town Bridge in Chippenham.
She is as keen to work with people as she is to work with metal and pioneered the Chippenham Community Art Project which raised £7,000 and has led to the close involvement of schools, colleges and other community groups in a multitude of projects.
She graduated in Art Education with honours from Cardiff, where her studies included work on ceramics and fabrics but she missed metalworking.
She now divides her efforts between her permanent forge at Puthall Farm, Marlborough, and a more portable forge which she takes to schools and on other community projects.
Kate Gale, from Church Farm, Mildenhall, has always loved fabric and knew before she started her art course at Winchester College of Art that she wanted to do constructive textiles, which meant either knitting or weaving.
Most of her work uses cotton threads which she dyes herself, partly for the range of colours she can achieve some rich and vibrant others more muted and subtle, and partly for the chance of what she calls happy accidents, colours and gradients which, while not planned or intended, add to the effects she can achieve.
The loom she is showing for Open Studios is small compared with her main workhorse some nine feet tall and able to produce fabric 38 inches wide.
Three artists are to be found in the Clay and Glass Studio in Wagon Yard, in Marlborough.
Claire McKnight, a painter of considerable skill, has retired from teaching and has recently conquered the wheel.
She now mixes disciplines to fascinating effect and is showing examples of what is in effect a printing process from the same collagraph plates made up from any variety of textures on to both clay and wetted paper.
While the paper images exist in colour, the indented clay, when fired, requires hand-painting with oxides.
Susan Preston's paintings create an immense feeling of space, which, while many include some form of grid or structure, are more about emotional space than perspective.
Her studio is dotted with discarded man-made objects; a twisted pair of sunglasses, pieces of wood, fragments of almost anything which has had an earlier life, shaped by man. And just as these have a life beyond their origins, so her pictures have a life beyond the grid.
A career in fashion design, has left Andre Hansen with a strong feeling for texture which is apparent in much of her work in clay.
While she produces both wheel-thrown and hand-built work it is the latter which carries the texture; ragged edges and the impressions of fabric in the clay are enhanced by glazes and raku firing.
The studios are open this weekend from 11am to 5pm.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article