Introducing Mitch and Nickii from Clay Create. Where every item is handmade!! From their studio in the Bass Coast, Victoria, Mitch and Nickii make all of their ceramics with lots of love in every piece.
Find out why Mitch and Nickii started creating and why they are so passionate about the value of handmade.
Tell us about your creations and your handmade process.
We're a clay-loving duo! Mitch is all about sculpting and hand-building, his work is moulded by hand, carved, and meticulously refined, often drawing on natural textures and marine forms. Nickii, on the other hand, spends most of her time at the pottery wheel, crafting beautiful, and not your usual functional pieces like mugs, plates, bowls!
She likes to create other functional pieces for everyday use, think garlic graters, butter bells/keepers, citrus juicers, salt cellars, soap dispensers & more that make a home feel more special. And she is releasing quite a few new additions to her collections this week! She also dips into slab-building and a little sculpting now and then.
Every piece we create is handmade with love, care, and a good dose of clay-covered laughter.
Each piece of clay is wedged and either shaped for sculpting or throwing on the pottery wheel. Once a piece is created it is left to set up (firm up) for a period before being fine-tuned or trimmed on the pottery wheel. Then the piece is covered to dry slowly so not to cause cracking. Once the piece is dry enough it will go into the kiln for its bisque firing where it is fired to just over 1000*c for approximately 8 hours. It is usually a 3 day process of placing pieces into the kiln, firing and then the waiting until it is cool enough to open. After they have been bisque fired they can then be decorated and glazed before they go into the last glaze firing to 1200+*c. It is always exciting to open the kiln after a glaze firing (it's like Christmas morning as you never know what you will get as sometimes the glazes have a mind of their own).
Tell us a bit about your journey to becoming a handmade artist.
We've both been creative for most of our lives and that's probably why we got together.
Nickii's father loved drawing. Her Great Uncle John Trebilco is a well-established painter and inspired her to pick up a pencil and brush from an early age. She has always been creating something and constantly trying new mediums.
Mitch has maintained a lifelong passion for art and creativity with interests in all forms of art and crafts like drawing and painting.
Whenever something new caught our eye, we'd dive in headfirst, sometimes sinking, sometimes swimming! Pottery was always on the radar, but living rurally meant no local studios or classes, until we moved to Queensland and discovered the MIAC Arts Complex. That was the moment everything changed, and clay officially stole our hearts.
What is your inspiration or where do you find inspiration?
The ocean has always been a big part of our lives, we were both scuba divers in the past and forever fascinated by the sea. Mitch's work is almost entirely inspired by marine life, you'll see shells, creatures, and coastal textures woven into his sculptural pieces.
Nickii also dips into ocean-inspired designs now and then, but her main creations are about the home and gets inspired by so many different things, nature, textures, colours and loves the challenge of designing something new and figuring out how to make it. She loves crafting functional wares that become part of daily rituals, your morning coffee, cooking family dinners, washing your hands, or having a special vessel to put that beautiful flower in.
Where did you learn your craft?
After relocating to Queensland for a few years, we stumbled across MIAC, and as soon as we saw "Pottery Classes," we looked at each other and said, "We have to do this!" We still laugh about how often we say the exact same thing at the same time, we are both Librans, not sure if that has anything to do with it. That first class was a little rough, let's just say our early pieces were more 'unique' than 'refined', but we were instantly hooked. We had an amazing teacher named Sherill who is a wealth of knowledge. We took every workshop we could find, researched like crazy, and practiced nonstop. Eventually, we were selling our work in the gallery and at markets. Five years later, we are based on the Bass Coast in Victoria and we're now teaching others to fall in love with clay too!
Why is handmade artistry so important to you?
There's just something truly special about handmade. Each piece carries the energy of the maker, the thought, the intention, the mistakes, the triumphs. It's a slow process full of heart and story, not like something made by a machine that looks exactly the same each time and has nothing unique about it. We've always valued handcrafted things, which is why we ran our own artisan retail boutique for three years on the Mornington Peninsula, representing over 45 incredible local artists. It was a beautiful, creative space. These days, we're proud members of the MadeIt community, surrounded by kind, soulful people who love handmade just as much as we do.
Mitch and Nickii are much loved members of the Madeit Collective, posting regularly in our Facebook Group ~ The Handmade Marketplace of Australia ~ and sharing their new creations as they are released. If you haven't connected with Clay Create, make sure you join our FB Group and say hi !
