"My work concentrates on form and texture. I make pieces which are simple yet have a softness, a freedom and a sculptural quality.

I work in porcelain, for its innate beauty and because its smoothness allows the use of subtle textures. The pieces are altered to both exploit and escape the soft cylinders and circles imposed by the wheel.

I'm often asked about sources of inspiration. When I was younger I'd say these ranged from Cycladic sculpture and Song dynasty porcelain to modern industrial artefacts. But the grappledome of the senses is complex, and I honestly cannot chart linear routes to these sources any longer. There is a clever, evasive and dismissive reply to the question 'Where do you get your ideas from?' which is, 'If I knew I'd go there'. In fact all artists know, if only because they've been there. But the routes can be labyrinthine and the journey a very private affair."

Portrait from 'Living In Wales' by David Hurn published by Seren 2005

Novelist Tom Ladislaw first bought a Joanna Howells piece in the late 1980s, but didn't realise until a year ago that he lived less than 3 miles from her studio. He has since had the opportunity of socialising with Joanna and her extended clan.

Joanna Howells grew up in a Warwickshire village near the town of Rugby. Her parents created a home described as eccentric, academic and life-enhancing by those prepared to accept that dining room tables can also be used as jumbled libraries and experimental workbenches. Mealtimes have the air of cafeteria breaks for a mixed conference of engineers, physicists, mathematicians, theologians and musicians. On one occasion every room seemed to contain a grandparent, child or grandchild practising a musical instrument.

On my first visit to Joanna's parents I asked about the totemic structures peopling the misty garden, and they turned out to be the remnants of kilns made by Joanna during school holidays or university vacations. She first read Natural Sciences at Cambridge then switched to graduate in Medicine. But she'd already decided to pursue pottery and went on to do a foundation course at the Sir John Cass School of Art in London, followed by a two-year ceramics course at the Harrow College of Higher Education. Influential teachers were Danny Killick, Victor Margrie, West Marshall, Mo Jupp, Mike Hullis and Mick Casson.

I did not realise when I bought my first Howells piece in the Eighties that she'd started exploring the unconventional orientation of the throwing rings while at Harrow, and it is these strands of her earliest work in porcelain that she's been developing ever since. The elements detectable in that piece have supported an almost protean production of ideas since: the throwing and altering techniques working at the edge of what is possible; the slipped surface textures creating unique pieces on the same bodies; the scientist's exploration of temperamental glazes. The sorbet green ash-glaze on my first Howells teapot came from a bag of ash collected from the embers of a bonfire at a public fireworks display on Highbury Fields in London. There was no way of knowing what had been burnt to create the ash, but I've witnessed Joanna patiently recreating the glaze at the request of photographer David Hurn.

While the ceramics scene in Wales has undoubtedly gained from Joanna's presence here since 1997, the surroundings of her Tythegston Pottery have requited in terms of influence and stimulus. The inspirations of Glamorgan land and seascapes - by turns cultivated and wild - are discernible in the surface textures and stretching techniques she is currently exploring. From my non-potter's perspective I have discovered that there is a privilege beyond simply turning up and admiring the established work: it is being there to see the beginnings of some new direction. 'What do you think of this?' she will ask casually, raising the protective cover on some newly thrown and altered form. And there will follow periodic discussions, as much with herself as anybody else, in the spirit of her parents' dining room, until techniques have been mastered and a new direction established.
Tom Ladislaw