About
In The Making is a collaboration between artists and community-builders Maia Walton and Tressa Thomas. Together we work toward curating collaborative experiences such as workshops, exhibitions, and community-centred art that mobilise responsive making as a method for accessing vulnerability and connection. We are invested in material-led making which pulls us away from a capitalist model and fosters a reciprocal relationship with the natural world.
Past projects include an installation with Stoke’s Village Hub in Blockhouse Park, intuitive making workshops with Flameworks Creative Studios, a public art installation for Plymouth Central Park, and ‘Points of Contact’ - a solo exhibition at Ocean Studios.
Tressa Thomas
Tressa Thomas is a socially-engaged artist and educator with a focus on embodiment work and process; she holds an MA in Creative Education from Arts University Plymouth.
Tressa's making and teaching ethos relies on the belief that one of our greatest tasks as creatives is to learn to recenter the body. Her practice is rooted in material-led and body-led making, asking participants and viewers to understand material, space, and body as equal partners within the creative process.
Tressa is a yoga teacher, a visiting lecturer at Arts University Plymouth Pre Degree, and a short course facilitator at Black Mountains College.
Maia Walton
Maia Walton is an artist whose sculptural practice is led by the sensuous materiality of clay; she holds an MA in Ceramics from Arts University Plymouth.
Maia’s work seeks to give physical form to haptic communication, exploring the desire to create a visual expression of non-visible sensory connection. Maia approaches making as an act of care, cultivating an intimate relationship between her body and the material. Her work sees clay as a material agent to be interacted with, rather than acted upon. Forms organically emerge through responsive making, the resulting objects a record of holistic process.