Helen Johannessen
Ceramic Artist Maker and Educator
Helen Johannessen
Ceramic Maker and Educator
My creative process/thinking and career have led me to do things and achieve the unexpected. I have only recently been diagnosed with dyspraxia so looking back, my tendency to be easily distracted has influenced my risk taking nature where I’ve leapt into the unknown with positive results. This attitude feeds into my creativity and the work that I do in my studio making ceramics. My imagination benefits from the less usual wiring in my brain, using my hands or haptic skills, applied to my ideas intercepts my overthinking.
Neurodiverse indicates someone who thinks and reacts usually outside of societal conforms and being a free spirit is defiantly how I exist best.
My significant achievements to date are having had a successful ceramic product business with Yoyo Ceramics 2003-2015 (with a best seller on NOTHS in 2009) being voted Tutor of the Year in 2014 by my students and completing my Master's degree at the Royal College of Art in 2017. I am now making emotive ceramic artwork surfaces and sculptural forms and won the Rising Star Award 2018 in Taiwan for the porcelain work developed during my masters.
