THE WEY GALLERY |  Terri Smart

Terri has not always been a potter, although, to use her phrase, she has always been a bit "arty farty",taking after her father, who was himself an artist. As a student she completed five years training to be an architect then after a spell running a drawing office of a surveying company in England, was enticed to go to Abu Dhabi to work as an architect there. This was the start of fourteen years abroad. After four years in Abu Dhabi and various jobs in interior design and architectural drafting, she moved to Paris to work in interior design where the french she had learned at the Lycee in South Kensington, came in handy.

Next, Terri worked for seven years in Hong Kong as an interior designer for two companies including a Chinese firm of architects. At that point, tired by the Hong Kong rat-race, she swapped interior design for pottery. She began day classes at "The Fringe" in a studio owned by an Asian potter in Hong Kong where her English pottery teacher, Liz Cameron, was both excellent and a great inspiration.

Before long Terri was hooked. On moving to Singapore with her husband a year or so later, she rented space in the studio of a Singapore potter, Peter Seah whose experience she could lean on when the need arose. Returning to England in 1994, she set up her own studio and completed her City & Guilds course in Ceramics in 1999, for which she needed to demonstrate competence in a wide variety of techniques including throwing, coiling, slab building and slip casting.