Tracey Ceramics

15/03/2026

Clay, culture, and Castle Espie: an interview with resident artist Tracey Johnston

WWT Castle Espie Wetland Centre

https://www.wwt.org.uk/discover-wetlands/blog/clay-culture-and-castle-espie-an-interview-with-resident-artist-tracey-johnston

07/03/2026

05/03/2026

28/11/2025

My first Solo Exhibition! Thank you to for the opportunity and support.

From Coast to Clay

Tracey’s vessels are not merely objects; they are carriers of place.
This exhibition invites you to walk the coastline in clay, to feel the pull of the tide, the whisper of wings, and the stories held in sediment and glaze. From Coast to Clay is a journey of transformation where natural materials become vessels of memory and where the tactile becomes poetic.

19/11/2025

📅 SAVE THE DATE

Enrolments for our Spring Term 2026 of Creative Classes and One-Day Workshops at Ards Arts Centre open on Thurs 11 Dec, 12noon.

Your favourites are back including ceramics, painting, drawing, illustration, floral art, silversmithing, calligraphy, mosaics, printmaking, and more!

Keep an eye out for the programme when it goes live on Thurs 11 Dec. Or if you are not on it already, then subscribe to our e-mailing list so you don't miss out - be sure to select 'Classes' as one of your interests so you get all the important updates!

📨Subscribe: https://andculture.org.uk/newsletter

Tracey Ceramics Bernice Anderson Illustration Jo Hatty Diane Lyness Goldsmith Blue Cube Arts

28/09/2025

13/09/2025

This year’s Ulster Tatler Award has been handcrafted by Tracey Johnston Ceramics.

Each vessel is thrown by hand in terracotta clay, its surface washed with a lime like glaze, echoing the brick and lime once produced here at Castle Espie, where Tracey is the resident artist.

Over 150 years ago, this shoreline was alive with industry. Two hundred men, women, and children worked the kilns, shaping bricks, pipes, tiles, and pottery. The site’s coal-fired kiln had 24 chambers. It produced 9,000 tons of lime a year and 24,000 bricks a day.

Today, the land has been reclaimed by the Lough, restored and preserved by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust. But the memory of that labour lives on.

Each award bears the maker’s finger marks and the winner’s name, written freehand and fired into the glaze—a tactile tribute to the resilience, craft, and spirit of this place.

05/09/2025

The Bee’s Gift

Hand-painted blossom on maiolica, the orchard’s quiet promise of what’s to come.
In the apple trees behind my studio, I watch petals unfold with urgency and grace. Their fleeting pink blooms and green leaves captured here in a moment of spring.
Bees and insects carry the story forward to pollination, unseen but essential.
Harvest is the culmination. Apples gathered, stories ripened, another year passes. The vessel itself becomes a metaphor: it holds, preserves and pours out a reflection of what we gather, what we leave behind.
From my studio I hear children running amongst the trees and the dull thud of apples falling as they carry and chew on mouthfuls of sweet fruit - yummy, I hear them sing and we silently give thanks to the bees who made it all happen back at the unfolding of these little pink blooms.
The majolica technique allows for vivid storytelling, where each brushstroke is both botanical and symbolic.
Through this trilogy—blossom, pollination, harvest—I explore the dialogue between nature and craft, between the orchard and the hand. My ceramics are not just objects but invitations: to remember, to connect and honour the cycles that shape us.

26/08/2025