Aberystwyth artist wins People’s Choice award for ceramic artwork

An artist best known for printmaking has won the prestigious Josef Herman Award at the National Eisteddfod in Boduan for her ceramic artwork.

Ruth Jên Evans from Aberystwyth received the People’s Choice award, chosen by visitors to Y Lle Celf in a closed ballot, in a short ceremony on Saturday afternoon

Officials at Y Lle Celf, said to be the biggest temporary art exhibition in Europe, said votes for Ruth’s work had poured in from the first day.

Speaking after receiving the award to loud applause in Y Lle Celf Ruth said: “There are 600 clay creatures in a row, a caravan of individuals if you like.

“They started out as linocut prints which have been pressed into the clay so they are based on the work I’m perhaps best known for.”

Mixed media

Ruth Jên’s illustration work is often in mixed media, combining painting, collage and printmaking techniques.

She said the inspiration came from a pottery class at a night school she was running.

Ruth said the collection will remain together for the next few months before she decides what to do with the figures.

The People’s Choice is one of the Eisteddfod’s most popular annual prizes.

With the support of the Josef Herman Art Foundation, £500 is awarded to the artist responsible for creating the most popular piece or collection of work.

The Josef Herman Art Foundation Cymru, a registered charity, was founded in 2002 to encourage, through exhibitions and by awarding grants, the public appreciation of the visual arts and to honour Herman’s legacy.

Herman as a highly regarded Polish-British painter who influenced contemporary art, particularly in the United Kingdom. He was part of a generation of central and eastern European Jewish refugee artists who emigrated to escape Nazi persecution.

He escaped to France and then Britain where he first lived in Glasgow. While in Scotland he drew and painted scenes of Jewish life from Poland which only became more widely known in the 1980s.

Herman later moved to Ystradgynlais, a mining community in south Wales where he was fondly nicknamed “Joe Bach”.