Most of my ceramic torsos work well as sconces as there is enough room for a light to be fitted between the back of the torso and the wall. This torso was bought by a couple from Manchester to give their daughter as a Christmas present.

Please go to www.annakeiller.com to find more exciting Christmas gifts!

This torso was inspired by a song by Talking Heads called Listening Wind. So late one night a few years ago,  I made some graffiti…

This is a torso glazed in white and then smoke fired. The smoke has given a silvery and black shimmer to the surface. There is a scorpion on her shoulder.

This torso will also be in the sale

There will also be some of my new work – which won’t be included in the sale…

I call this ceramic torso ‘Forest Floor’ It has been smoke fired, and I really like how the copper oxide has turned red in certain places while staying green in others. I particularly like the effect on the left lizard that’s  both green and red…The orange/brown effects are caused by manganese oxide.
I like this torso very much, but it has been hanging around for more than 2 years now, so I have decided to add it to the sale and let it go for £175.
I will add another five ceramic torsos to be sold at this price in the next coming days.. Please let me know if you would like and invite to my show by emailing me here

I wrote about smoke firing ceramic Fat Bird sculptures on my blog  yesterday, and I mentioned how metal oxides sometimes change colours in unpredictable ways during smoke firing.
Here is another example of that;  copper oxide, when glazed, usually turns green but on this torso the copper came up red in places.  I used a matt transparant glaze on top of the oxides.

When a shiny transparant glaze is used, the result can be even more dramatic.
To see more of my work, or join one of my c

I’m not sure the clay is strong enough to survive the intense heat flucturations with larger items such as my torsos… Has anyone tried to smoke fire terracotta sculpture?

To see more of my work please visit www.annakeiller.com

I am trying out a recipe for a dry bronze finish to go on top of the bisque fired torsos, and it is a messy business to say the least. This picture was taken the day before yesterday…              

And this is how it looks today. Still some finetuning to do, but almost there! There are 9 of us crammed into my studio.

 We tend to only see what our culture, our education and our prejudices have trained us to see. I heard a true story when I was a child about how in 1520 when Ferdinand Magellan arrived in Terra del Fuego in South America, the Del Fuego Indians, who lived around the area, could not see his ships entering the bay – the boats were too big! Nothing in their past experience had prepared them for the idea that vessels could be as big as floating houses – they were used to canoes, and tiny canoes were the only reality for them.

I remember this story because it brought home to me how blinkered I am in ordinary reality, how I only see what I expect to see. 
People born blind who later in life have successful operations to the eyes, enabling them to see, first experience nothing but spinning masses of lights and colours. They‘re unable to pick out specific objects in the chaos and so have to undergo long training to teach their brains how to digest this type of  information. Seeing is learned rather than automatic. We censor what see with our minds, not our eyes, which is why I believe that changes to the way we think will change what we see.

In my meditations and shamanic journeys I often see things that go beyond what I am used to in ordinary reality. I bring this back with me to offer up – but with a human twist.

Please scroll down the page to see more Gods, torsos, mood critters and other delights.