Worthing-based ceramicist Alice Mara’s miniature houses, buildings, and even an entire High Street, complete with graffiti and shoppers wearing face masks, are making a big impact on the art scene
Look closely at Alice Mara’s 3D ceramic models of private homes, community centres, swimming pools and tower blocks and one is instantly drawn into her small world. A skateboarder whizzes past one of Brighton’s grand Regency homes, a dog gazes out of a window in an unassuming semi-detached while shoppers queue in face masks outside a shop.
They convey not just architecture but, in these little details, a sense of the people connected to the buildings, and a moment in time. ‘I’m interested in describing the period we’re living in,’ the artist explains over coffee in the Worthing home she shares with partner Sami Länsimäk and 18-year-old daughter Mima Mara. ‘There are always symbols – like the masks – that immediately place the piece.’
Alice has just come from the studio at the bottom of her garden, where she’s busy making orders taken from her installation at the Royal College of Art’s summer exhibition that depicted shops on Worthing High Street, many empty or graffitied. It’s perhaps not the image the tourist board would choose of the town but undeniably it represents a moment.
In another recent project – Lancing Story Buildings – Alice, 49, made models of familiar local landmarks, including the Luxor Cinema, Lancing Sailing Club, The Empire Club and Goring House, weaving in the memories and stories she gathered from residents.
The former Luxor Cinema features queues in 1940s dress outside – a nod to its glamorous beginnings – while the inclusion of the pest control business on its ground floor reflects how it looks today. She included a drum kit on the outside of the Empire Club model after one man told her about his dad playing a set there in the ‘80s. She continues to be contacted by people who have seen the pieces, which are still on display in various locations around Brooklands Park, and want to share their own anecdotes. ‘They made a great talking point,’ says Alice.
At the moment she is struggling to find time for her fine art, however, as she attempts to keep up with commissions of her models of private homes.
SMALL WONDER
Whether to celebrate a first house or commemorate a beloved family home, Alice turns people’s photographs into 3D models ranging in size from just 15cm high up to 25cm, often adding favourite pets, cars and late relatives. Each piece is a labour of love. Alice rarely sees a building in person, but instead requests images taken from different angles, before constructing it in her mind.
After rolling slabs of clay to recreate her interpretation of the house, rather than a scale model, she fires and glazes it. She will then scan the model onto her computer and, taking measurements of each side, create custom-sized photographic transfers of the images sent to her by the client and fire them onto the model.
The use of old photographs lends a nostalgic feel while the imperfect, handmade construction gives the impression of a building as it exists in memory. ‘It can be quite an emotional process,’ says Alice. ‘I made one recently for a woman whose mum had died. She wanted a model of her mother in the home she used to live in during her later years. It was wonderful to be able to capture happy memories in this way and I know she was thrilled with it.’
It’s a technique Alice has been perfecting for years now. Born in Walthamstow, East London, she was creative from a young age. Her late father Tim Mara was professor of printmaking at the Royal College of Art and always encouraged his two daughters to draw and make.
‘I remember sitting in front of the telly drawing, and stuffing the paper down the side of the sofa as I did them,’ she says. Her father, whose pop art prints are included in collections at The Tate London and Victoria & Albert Museum, continues to be a huge influence on her work.
‘Dad didn’t do buildings at all but he did the insides – the interiors and objects,’ she explains. ‘If you look at his work and at mine there’s a definite crossover. We’re both interested in the everyday object and the everyday scene.’ Her childhood was filled with private views, artists around the kitchen table and Saturday art classes, where she first learned to throw clay. The attraction was instant: ‘I loved the process of throwing and of opening the kiln door to reveal my latest creation.’
She went on to take a degree in ceramics at the University of Westminster followed by a masters at the Royal College of Art, where she first became interested in the possibilities of transferring digital prints onto pottery. ‘I started off making eggs and bacon on plates and cows on jugs – simple, functional things,’ she explains. ‘Then one of my tutors suggested I make some work based around Walthamstow, since it was such a huge part of my identity.’
It was the catalyst for a series of projects inspired by her hometown, including a collection of 22 houses from Walthamstow High Street, which formed the basis of her 2010 show at London’s Eagle Gallery, which was opened by artist Grayson Perry, who had bought one of the pieces from Alice’s final degree show.
‘It was great,’ she says. ‘He turned up in his dress, I turned up in mine! I remember he told people to look out for my work at the Antiques Roadshow in years to come, which meant a lot. Grayson Perry really changed the way pottery was seen because he was showing work in both ceramic and fine art shows.’
She continued exploring her fascination with East London with Affordable Housing, an array of ceramic salt and pepper pots wrapped in transfers of other Walthamstow homes and their inhabitants.
Since moving to Sussex in 2012 - ‘My mum had just died and I wanted to change my life path’ - she has turned her talents to tiny ceramic lidos, beach huts, Brutalist car parks and witty jugs and bowls featuring miniature figures appearing to hang from the rims.
She has even made a few urns, including one for her late mother’s ashes, depicting their family home in Walthamstow her with Alice and her sister waving from the doorstep. ‘It was something I could do that was useful to the process of someone dying,’ she shrugs. ‘I liked the idea of sending Mum off in a place she had loved with all of us around her.’
Alice has always been fascinated by architecture, history and the imprints people leave on their habitats. Yet she has chosen to live in a sleek new-build on the outskirts of Worthing. ‘I find it very calm,’ she says. She previously lived for almost a decade in Lewes, in an ‘old, wonky house, full of other people’s stories. This house felt like a new beginning.’
And what does this new chapter look like? ‘I’ve been focused on the exteriors of buildings but I’m becoming interested in what goes on inside,’ she grins. ‘I want to step through those front doors.’
