Artist Focus - Anja Penger-Onyett

Anja Penger-Onyett

One of our featured artists this month is Anja Penger-Onyett. You can visit Anja's Feature window at the Wynd Gallery from 5 - 18 October and find out more about Anja and her work below.

The Wynd Gallery is a co-operative art gallery run by local artists.

The gallery offers an ever-changing exhibition of contemporary prints, paintings, sculpture, jewellery, photography, ceramics and textiles.

The gallery promotes the Arts in Letchworth Garden City and provides an exciting venue suitable for artists working across a range of contemporary visual arts media.

Throughout the year our artists will share their work through our feature window programme

You are our current featured artist at the Wynd gallery, with our featured artist window. Please tell us about what we can expect to see when we visit the gallery? With Autumn being my favourite season, the colours and shapes will be mainly

autumnal Can you tell us a little about your journey into art? Back in 1983 I started pottery in evening classes, whilst I was studying science in

West-Berlin; mostly as a way to relax after a long day at university. Clay soon

became addictive and I pursuit my hobby wherever I worked

What materials or techniques do you most enjoy working with? It all starts with clay. I use white-firing stoneware clay because it is very versatile and durable What’s one tool you couldn’t live without?

That would be my hands! Starting preparing the clay to throwing on the potter’s wheel Where do you draw inspiration from? Nature, people, emotions, or something else?

Nature is full of inspiration. I love plants, fruit, seed-heads.

What projects or ideas are you excited to explore next? My head is always full of ideas to try new shapes and glazes. I am currently very

much into making ceramic fish, colourfully glazed. What’s one surprising fact about you that people might not expect? I own a piece of the Berlin Wall; I hammered it out myself in January 1990

somewhere in the district of Wedding on the western side; very hard concrete!! No

photographic evidence, no one had any mobile phones at the time Do you have a ritual or routine that helps you get into a creative mindset? I try to get household-chores etc. out the way by 12 noon, so my afternoon is free to

be in the workshop!

Coffee, tea, or something else while you create?

Tea in huge mugs, so it lasts for a while

What advice would you give someone who wants to start exploring craft or art themselves?

If possible, try out various crafts/art-classes. When you find the one for you, just go

for it!