I have a real thing for tiles. I haven’t been adventurous enough to do some actual tiling in my flat yet but I have collected a few quirky tiles over the years. I display them on my window sills and look at them lovingly.
Angela Evans from Brighton also has a real thing for tiles and she makes each one by hand in her ‘chalet-style’ shed in her garden. ‘I make my range of fruit and vegetable tiles – using casts of the real thing – alongside their cousins growing in the vegetable patch!’ she tells me.
Angela’s fruit and veg tiles are her trademark if you like and have caught the attention of the press. With headlines such as ‘The fruits (and veg) of her labour’ the tiles have been featured in newspapers and design magazines such as Elle Decoration, Homes & Gardens, Period Home.
“Luscious strawberries nestle against tasty looking asparagus and glistening green and red peppers – tiles, each and every one, but with colours so vibrant and lifelike they look good enough to eat.” – Kate Mikhail, The Independent, 1st August 1998.
Angela’s work has also featured on Channel 4′s ‘Collectors’ Lot’.
Her ‘Hair Harvesting’ kit – a cast nose with scissors dangling beneath – raised some eyebrows and exfoliated some nostrils at one Open House in last year, while her ‘Please Wash Your Duck’ plaque reads like a surreal public health warning.
She employs a carefully accumulated assortment of found objects – golf tees, clock parts, plug chains, bits of flotsam – to make abstract marks in the clay which allow oxides and glazes to pool and create a depth of colour and texture.
Angela has been making ceramic tiles since graduating from Brighton University eighteen years ago. She grew up in Brighton and, apart from a few years in the nineties when she had a workshop in London’s trendy Hoxton Square (‘before it got too expensive!’), she has lived and worked in the city – working from high rise New England House for a decade before moving to her ‘garden studio’.
Angela is currently working on a shoal of fish for the Mackerel Festival on the seafront in May.
Her tiles range from £5.30 for a small feature tile to £14 for a sought-after fruit and veg tile. Angela also works on bespoke commissions. Her contact details can be found via her website www.angelaevans.co.uk
By Helen Ruff
