MARCH TECHNICAL CHALLENGE WINNER
Ceramics Art QLD is excited to announce the winner of the March Technical Challenge, Fabric – Fragility.
Lorraine Dean – pictured below, making porcelain.
The March challenge required participants to explore the delicate, cloth‑like qualities of porcelain through thinness, translucency, and movement.
Lorraine Dean Porcelain Fabric
Interview with Lorraine Dean
Congratulations on your winning piece—can you share a little about your creative process and how you approached interpreting the theme of “Fragility” through porcelain fabric?
The work comes from fusing porcelain directly with fabric, letting the textile lead the form. I build it up through layers and folds, so the structure feels grown rather than constructed. The fabric holds the movement, and the porcelain captures it in place. For me, “Fragility” sits in that tension—the softness of cloth translated into something fixed and breakable. It’s about holding that quiet balance between delicacy and strength.
Your work has such a delicate, almost ethereal quality. What techniques or challenges did you encounter when working with porcelain to achieve this sense of softness and movement?
To get that softness, I work the porcelain very thin and let the fabric do a lot of the shaping. It’s a balance of control and letting go—too much handling and it loses that natural movement, not enough and it can collapse. Managing moisture and drying is key, as everything is quite vulnerable at that stage. Cracking or thin porcelain is always a risk, but I tend to accept that as part of the process rather than trying to eliminate it completely.
For other ceramic artists exploring similar ideas, what insights or advice would you offer about embracing fragility—both as a material quality and as a conceptual theme in their work?
I think it’s about learning to trust the material and not overworking it. Porcelain will show you where its limits are, so testing and patience are important. Let fragility exist in the making, not just the outcome—allow for risk, and don’t be afraid of things not going to plan. Often the most resolved pieces come from moments where I have had to respond rather than control.
The March challenge required participants to explore the delicate, cloth‑like qualities of porcelain through thinness, translucency, and movement.
Lorraine Dean Porcelain Fabric
March Judge – Jo Norton
Judges Comments: The focus of this challenge was to explore the delicate, cloth – like qualities of porcelain — through thinness, translucency, and movement — and to really evoke that softness of fabric or drapery. Even though it was not a large response it was great to see a range of responses and a genuine engagement with the material. A lot of the work touched on aspects of the brief, but there ’ s definitely room to push further into that sense of delicacy. In many cases the pieces felt a bit too solid or static, rather than soft and fluid. Translucency, which is such a strength of porcelain, was there at times but could be explored more to really bring that fabric – like quality to life. It ’ s also worth saying that s o much of this process is judged from photographs alone, so how the work is documented really matters. The photography should do the work justice — capturing those subtle shifts in surface, light, and thinness. In some cases, stronger images would have reall y helped the work land. The pieces that stood out were the ones where everything came together — a clear response to the brief, strong technical handling, creativity, and a sense of resolution. These works had a real lightness to them and felt considered and confident in how they held that balance between fragility and control. Lorraine ’ s work really stood out. There ’ s a beautiful sensitivity in the way the material is handled — it feels light, resolved, and completely in tune with the brief.