Bethan Hemus Art

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  • Making a positive cattle horn for the plaster mold
    After making a few maquettes and researching how to make a cone, I went with this method.

    Acquiring a real horn gave me a new sense of scale, and for want of a better word, heft,  that they have as an object and I wanted to relay this in the ceramic pieces.

    So my final horn size is much larger than I first thought.

    Using gum paper, masking tape, gaffa and cardboard I slowly built a straight point version of the horn form, layer by layer, until I felt happy with it.
    Here’s an image of it with my lovely “reference horn”.
    I dried it thoroughly with the help of a hair dryer and then covered it with plastic parcel tape.

    This creates a waterproof layer so that the shape stays intact while being sat in the wet plaster mix. 

    Next I need to build a container using boards and clamps, large enough for me to stand this upright inside the middle. I can then pour plaster around it, which when it’s dry and Ice removed this object, will become the negative mold that i use for slip casting. 

  • Introduction to glazes

    James lead an inspiring introduction to ceramic glazes this week and it’s definitely something that I’d like to explore.



    I’ve got a bit of background chemistry knowledge which helped me to understand the processes he was describing a little.

    I’d like to experiment with glazing some slip cast stoneware horn forms next week and am arranging how and when to best do this with James. 

  • Desire path tape drawings

    I traced some enlarged photos that I took of desire paths at YSP onto acetate using masking tape. I enjoyed exploring this technique when I was translating my poppy head images earlier in the term and so was keen to try it again.



    I experimented with overlaying these and also with including blocks of colour to define certain areas.










    I like that the tape has this quality of being slightly rigid and linear, but also pliable and has enough give to create an organic line. I like this balance as a material choice because it lends itself nicely to abstracting the form of the original photographs without taking away their pleasing undulation.

    I think that the lack of a horizon line in both images slightly un-anchors them. In the textile sketches I created, the horizon line gave the path lines context and grounded them in the piece, even though it is a subtle, even abstract, addition. 

    I also think that playing around with scale when layering images like this works well and I will make a few more of these with that in mind and see what works.

    I am not hugely pleased with my initial end results but I think it was worth having a play around with it and I will revisit them next week with the above 2 points in mind to see if I can rework the pieces.

    IIf I managed this then I would like to use these masking tape images to create some prints.

    I would also like to experiment with some photography using these acetate images and an OHP.

  • Why I struggled to source cow pelt and horns
    I wanted to use a horn as a template for a 3D piece on desire paths and the animals that help forge them. 

    During my research into acquiring one, I discovered that certain materials require a license for distribution, including animal parts or taxidermy supplies like cow horns and hide. 

    Sales of this kind are particularly restricted since the BSE epidemic. 

    After speaking with the National Longhorn Cattle Association and various abattoirs, I decided that I would try and source a horn second hand; although they are all, in a sense, very much second hand I suppose, no longer being used by the animal who grew them.

  • Foraging and processing wool to use in desire path textile project


    I foraged this sheep wool while walking around York Sculpture park.


    After soaking in hot soapy water for 30 minutes, I washed it, then rinsed and drained the water. I picked out any organic material I could see and then repeated this whole process until it looked, felt and smelt clean.

    I rung it dry as much as I possibly could and then left it to air dry near my radiator.





    I’m really pleased with how this turned out, the wool has kept a lot of its natural character and texture and it is a beautiful bone white colour. 

    I am looking forward to illustrating some of the desire paths I photographed at YSP using wool from the sheep who will have helped form those paths through their living habits. Through their choices. Through their habit. Through their instinct and relationship with the land. 




  • Cow horn paper and gum paper vessel

    I was asked to make a vessel maquette as part of one of Julian’s sessions in the ceramic studio. Initially using paper, card and tape, with a view to developing a ceramic version after we refined our initial idea.

    I felt drawn to make a cow horn because I’d been so connected with research around that shape on the day. In fact, I just gotten off the phone talking to the secretary of The Longhorn Cattle Society about how to source a horn and a pelt to use in my project as ethically and safely as possible.

    I experimented a little using different materials and eventually settled on making the foundation structure using several interlocking cardboard tubes that were held together and reinforced by masking tape.


    I then covered this all with a layer of gum paper, which I absolutely adored working with. It was visceral and pleasing to handle, it worked really well as a fast drying binding and reinforcing material and it has a finish which suits my maquette.



    I experimented with some photography and video of this initial piece with Julian and was pleased with the results.


    I wanted to include more of a natural curve/ twist to the piece, and decided the cut it in half, turn the top half and then reattach it to the bottom in order to achieve this.






    I covered the whole thing with more gum paper to give it a pleasing finish but also to make it robust as a structure.

    I really enjoy the shape of this object. It feels beastly and powerful and natural and ancient in some way.

    I would like to play around with this form more, and so will make a slip cast mold to do so. Hopefully this will let me reproduce multiple versions of it relatively easily.


  • Desire path textile experiments
    I want to start this post by saying that I am really pleased with how these came out, largely because the direction of the pieces literally flipped through my making journey. I wasn’t precious about my original idea and I responded to the piece(s) as they evolved through the making journey.

    I set out with the intention of interpreting my original desire path photographs using a combination of textiles, including the wool I foraged during my visit to YSP. I was using embroidery and sewing threads as well as the wool, stitched onto sheets of felt.

    As I worked on the pieces, I became progressively more unhappy. They seemed uptight, polite and uninspired to me. 

    At a certain point in making the largest piece (to be honest I cant quite remember but I think it was tying off threads), I turned it over and really noticed the “back”. 

    I much preferred it! It looked like a confident, loose and energetic thread sketch of the photograph. 

    As I thought on why it worked for me, I realised that it represented qualities, like collaborative chaos and anarchy, that are inherent to the creation of desire paths. The backs are uncontrived, emergent and wild. 

    In this way, the “backs” illustrate the photographs so much more beautifully than the front ever did, or could. 

    And so now they are the front.





  • Amateur and Professionalism

    Amateur and Professionalism

    What makes an artist a professional? 

    Normally a professional is someone who gets paid for their vocation. But not all artists do get paid, or get paid well enough to make their art their main profession. Many artist are not recognized or financially successful in their lifetime, but are retrospectively perceived as a professional.

    Are they a professional then because they have a certain level of training or skill? This could be a factor, but again, not all artist do have formal training. Many are self taught. And some include aspects of poor craftsmanship and visibly low skill level in their work which, on the surface could appear amateur, but which is a part of conveying the concept and or aesthetic of the piece.

    An amateur artist could be described as someone not pursuing a career in the arts; someone who creates as a hobby or as a recreational past time. Just for fun.

    But then many professional artists gain much pleasure from making, whether they are commercially successful or not.

    Amateur artists may never have any intention to exhibit their work. But in the last half a century, the rise of outsider art has seen many amateur artists being celebrated and experiencing notoriety and even commercial success.

    It is clearly a complicated conversation, and one that yet again touches on this notion that art is what an artist says it is. And that the confidence they have in their process and their work can really define how people relate to it. How it is perceived. It’s value.

    I wanted to add here that while researching this topic, I ended up this about outsider artists more and how it is important that our approach to their work and our inclusion of them is not exploitative or insensitive. Outsider artist very often are vulnerable, experiencing mental illness for example, and so there is an inherent power imbalance.

    Here are some piece by the famous outsider artist Adolf Wölfli.


    Wölfli was born in 1864 in rural Switzerland, the youngest of seven children. His father left when Wölfli was around five, leaving his family in extreme poverty. His mother passed away approximately three years later. Wölfli worked a variety of farming and labor jobs until, at the age of 26, he reportedly attempted to molest a 14-year-old girl. He was later imprisoned for allegedly molesting a 17-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old. He was eventually placed in an asylum where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He spent the rest of his life there. Wölfli’s work, however, would suggest little of his dark past. He crafts massive and obsessive labyrinths of information, ranging from numerical lists to musical compositions. He began drawing around four years after he was admitted to the Waldau Mental Asylum, and soon after became calmer in disposition and consumed by his work. The images transcend time and space, collapsing natural and unnatural forms into a flattened mass that attempts to “say everything in one word, something mystical and demonical.”
    I think his pieces are beautifully intricate and have a lot of qualities that you would associate with a trained artist; colour theory and compositional qualities for example. 


    Conversely, the successful contemporary artist John Pylychuck makes “his sculptures from the most impoverished materials: scraps of wood, remnant fabric, felt, glitter, and glue. Rendered with wonky ‘best attempt’ aesthetics, Pylypchuk mines all the sentimental authenticity of the unloved yet hopeful media of craft camps and community workshops.”

    I enjoy both artists work. 
    And I enjoyed thinking on this topic. It gives me confidence to make as I feel compelled to, without being steered too much by establishment. To believe in the validity and power of my own creativity.

  • Desire path photography

    Various photos I have taken of desire paths in the last month.

  • York Sculpture Park October 2023