Childless Cat Lady

Childless Cat Lady

Childless Cat Lady developed in response to the phrase being used as a political and cultural insult towards women who do not have children. The comment struck a nerve with me as a woman who had consciously chosen not to have children while happily sharing my life with animals. I had always felt that there was something else I was meant to do with my life, and my experience at university was beginning to give me an idea of what that might be, whether through making art, facilitating work with others, further research or something I had not yet discovered.

The work was made shortly after acquiring my first non-vessel plaster mould: a large cat head. Until this point I had primarily been working with pot forms, and I instinctively felt that the proportions of the cat head and one of my small vessels would work together. The resulting form is deliberately top-heavy but remains visually balanced, with the oversized head transforming the familiar vessel beneath it into something more figurative.

This piece also marked an early material shift in my surface decoration. Having recently invested in underglazes, I began using them to explore the same handwritten and gestural processes I had previously attempted through slip trailing. The words CHILDLESS CAT LADY wrap around the small vessel rather than appearing as a single, immediately readable statement.

One of the cat's ears was accidentally broken while the assembled piece was drying after being knocked by my partner. The damage was retained as part of the finished object.
Rather than treating childlessness as an absence, Childless Cat Lady reflects a life organised around different possibilities. What began with a phrase intended to diminish women became an opportunity to claim the description without accepting the judgement attached to it: childless, cat lady, and still becoming whatever else I might be.