Ginny Sims is best known for her ceramic work. Heavily inspired by Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex, and by the Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, her pieces are charming yet full of impact. Despite the fragile nature of her work, Ginny herself is clearly a hardy vessel and filled to the brim with an intrepid sense of adventure.
In 2001 when she graduated from college in her hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, Ginny was itching to ‘experience the world’. Armed with an open mind and a Blue Card (Europe’s answer to the United States’s Green Card), she embarked on her travels. Despite the dark cloud that hung over the world in the wake of the devastating 9/11 attacks, Ginny moved to London full of hope. During those early years she scoured magazines such as Ceramic Review for opportunities, and tracked down jobs in Italy, England, Scotland and Ireland. Around 2005 Ginny found herself in the rolling countryside of Somerset and apprentice to the potter Mike Dodd. She refers to this as ‘another thing that sort of just happened by my own sort of naive will, going and knocking on potters’ doors’. In fact, Dodd, who Ginny calls ‘one of England’s greatest living potters’, was the fifth doorstep she came to; ‘I learned a lot through him and he’s been a lifelong friend.’
Now Ginny lives in Minneapolis with Adam and their two children. She moved to the city 15 years ago, drawn to the clay community that had sprung up around the American potter Warren Mackenzie. Thanks to the kindness of a friend, she was able to rent a room for $300 per month. The house was a vision of colour, each room a different vibrant shade of the kind one might expect to see in Ginny’s own creations, and it was the perfect perch while she got her bearings in the new city. When she was at last able to move out into an apartment of her own, she would still think of that place as ‘the house I wanted for myself and my family’.
By a stroke of luck, the same house became available, and the potter’s dream home finally became a reality. She was reaching the final stretches of pregnancy with her daughter Ida and in desperate need of more space for herself and Adam. It was yet another example of Ginny’s concrete will manifesting itself.
Normally, moving house is an exciting opportunity to put your mark on a blank canvas. But in this case, Ginny already knew how this space had been lived in, and had formed attachments to the colours and layouts. The brightly painted walls throughout were perfect for the couple’s extensive collections of books, ceramics and carefully selected knick-knacks.
The basement of the house has been repurposed as Ginny’s studio, with a potter’s wheel and kiln. ‘It's not beautiful,’ Ginny laughs as she guides me through her working space, ‘it’s a mess, but it’s a working studio.’ At the moment she is busy with a collection of sculptures for an upcoming exhibition. Her works span subjects from imagined sailors to real-life hip-hop duo Salt-N-Pepa. Ginny enjoys these somewhat chaotic pairings. ‘I like that clash, because for me it’s sort of like a mash-up of stories and histories coming together, and it’s fun.’
The kitchen is a joyful riot of colour and stuff. Utensils hang wherever there’s room – it’s easy to tell this is a well-used space. ‘I think most potters enjoy cooking – it sort of comes with the occupation,’ Ginny muses. When the icy Minnesota winter drives her out of her chilly basement studio, she finds herself drawn to the domestic space. ‘The kitchen is like a studio as well.’ It’s also a space where the family can come together over a joint creative venture, whether they’re communing over hearty soup or creating teas from nettles and rosehips gathered in their yard.
The yard is also Ginny’s showroom. What was formerly a small guest house is now a space for the potter to display her wares without having to usher potential buyers through her house and down into her basement. The walls of this informal gallery have been decorated by Ginny and her daughter, once again echoing the inspiration of Charleston farmhouse, a place she was able to visit for the first time in September 2023. Her visit confirmed her attraction to ‘artists that really surround and immerse themselves in their own world of what they’re dreaming and thinking and seeing’. It is fair to say that Ginny lives by her words and her family home is nothing if not a space well inhabited.
Ginny Sims’s upcoming solo show ‘Maud’s Bed’ runs at Hair and Nails Gallery, Minneapolis, 13 April–18 May. For more information, visit Hair and Nails Gallery.
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