Being human

Canterbury potter Cherry Tewfik on her latest collection of heads, love of colour and working with special needs children

- Diana Crampton

Cherry Tewfik works in a conservatory with kiln sheds in her garden in Canterbury. She also has a workshop in France.

Brought up in Uganda, she maintains an interest in Ugandan forms and patterns, but her ceramic and art training took place in Canterbury, at Christ Church. She subsequently lived in Malaysia and worked and taught for the British Council.

Cherry has taught in Canterbury Prison, and was a special needs teacher at St Nicholas special school. She now teaches at the Kent Refugee Action Network and ran the Canterbury Throw Down for three years during the Canterbury Festival in October.

Her work has been exhibited in Malaysia and Singapore and at the Affordable Art Fairs at Hampstead in May and Battersea in October. She is a member of both the Kent Potters group and the Pilgrims’ Way Artists group who exhibit at Lenham each May.

Cherry believes that formal art training is very important “Not only the training and the time to be able to dedicate to art, but also the time it gives for communicating and sharing information with other artists.”

So how does Cherry see her art? “I don’t think of myself as a sculptor, but I do throw.” That is, she makes pots on a wheel, and from this is able to adapt the throwing to become sculpture.