Art has been a significant passion of mine throughout school and beyond, and I've always dreamed of taking a visual art course. In 2020, after returning from traveling, I decided to finally pursue it. I fell deeply in love with clay from the first touch.

It was something I was drawn to; I enjoyed the medium and loved the freedom it offered to create any object or forms I wanted to express.

Clay became a safe, comfortable place for me. Over the next few years, as I studied at Tafe on the Sunshine Coast, I learned that clay has an incredible way of reflecting your feelings. This was especially true during the time COVID-19 emerged, which coincidentally was when I discovered clay.

The moment I touched clay, I was hooked; life and myself was never the same again.

Tess Miller investigates the connection between the embodied practices of clay construction as she physically molds and materialises shapes.

Transformation occurs through the hands of this artist creating broods and families of new organic forms fortified through the alchemy of fire, becoming monuments to the natural world.

Tess Miller creates biomorphic abstract forms that work with both negative and positive space, using her hands as tools, embedding the clay and listening to the whispers of where the clay wants to go. 

Interested in transforming movement into shape, natural pigments and form that hold its own, Tess physically works clay bodies into tactile objects that are both grounded and open.

Driven and excited by clay as a medium, Tess works intuitively and slowly to achieve unique, timeless, one off pieces to last a lifetime.