Laurie Jeanne
Laurie Jeanne is a ceramic artist based in Sussex, working at the intersection of autobiographical practice, site-responsive making, and biological systems thinking.
Her framework, Autobiographical Objecthood — in which vessel and artist undergo the same event, developing parallel biographies through shared encounter — proposes a new understanding of what an object can be and do. The practice began as a vision: herself in the water, tumbling — and then, in her place, a clay ball, receiving the same forces.
Before establishing her ceramic practice, she held a Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Francis Crick Institute.
lauriejeanne.co.uk
Workshop: Body of Clay: Palm-Sized Pilgrims of Embodied Knowledge
Body of Clay is an embodied, place-led workshop in which participants shape small, palm-sized pilgrims from wild clay — forms based on their own bodies, drawing from the lineage of Upper Palaeolithic Venus figurines.
These ancient forms — among them the Venus Dolní Věstonice, made 29,000 years ago — are understood as some of the earliest images humans made of themselves: tools for teaching, remembering, and sharing knowledge about bodies across life stages.
A child's fingerprint is pressed into the clay of the Dolní Věstonice figurine before firing. It was found broken, in ash. Someone made a form of their own body, in a communal space, with a child present.
This workshop continues that lineage. Participants shape a small, abstracted torso — encouraged to hold real likeness: the weight, softness, asymmetry, or strength that feels true to the maker. Head and limbs are intentionally obscured.
Participants may work by looking at their own body, using a mirror, or from inner sense and memory. Each mode produces a distinct kind of knowing. The resulting forms are unfired