Ellie Clewlow Studio

31/07/2026

28/07/2026

Playing with something new.

One of the first encounters with craft that I remember from childhood is mum making porcelain roses. She was a skilled flowermaker combining home-based piece-work for the local Coalport factory with child-rearing. Her fingers were magically quick; a twist here, a petal pressed there - the resulting slabs full of porcelain flowers consigned to the kitchen oven for safekeeping.

I would sometimes be allowed a small scrap of clay and she would pause briefly to coach me: how to shape petals, how to assemble a flower, how to tweak perfect forms into imperfect realism.

I revisited this haptic memory yesterday when someone asked me if I knew how to make paper flowers. Shape the petals. Assemble the flower. Twist. Tweak. Not yet a production line of dozens of flowers per hour, but a moment, a memory.

23/07/2026

A lovely and enlightening evening Pop Recs Ltd with Sunderland Lit & Phil Society, blending discussion, art and performance on the theme of romance. Thank you to the panel for expanding my literary vocabulary (I now feel the need for a s**t thesaurus in my life…which I would, of course, fold into sculptural form!) My gratitude to for including my work. Chapeau to for sharing work in progress. And big love to and for epic amounts of support

23/07/2026

I’m delighted to have the chance to show one of the first paper origami quilts I made at tonight’s romance literature-themed taking place at .

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbIGPujMEQm/?igsh=enZ6aTdtZmRzbXJo

Women’s Hours is made from the pages of secondhand books that come from the same market stall I remember my mother buying romance novels from when I was a child. It was a circular economy of regular customers taking in books they had read to get money off their next purchases. I would wait impatiently as my mother systematically worked through the rows of books to find the ones she hadn’t yet read.

The colour detail is created with handwritten extracts from the daily texts I exchanged with her describing how we have spent our day.

Women’s Hours asks how the ways in which we spend our time define our identities as women: as mother, wife, daughter, maker, author, worker, consumer, reader, patient.

19/07/2026

📸 OPEN CALL | This Place, These People

Who are the people that make Sunderland what it is?

I'm looking for people from all walks of life to take part in This Place, These People – an ongoing documentary portrait project celebrating the individuals who shape our city through their work, passions, creativity and everyday lives.

Each participant will be photographed in a location that means something to them, alongside a relaxed conversation about their connection to Sunderland. Together, these portraits and personal stories will create a growing visual archive of the city and the people who call it home.

Whether you're an artist, volunteer, business owner, healthcare worker, musician, sportsperson, student, community champion, tradesperson, or simply someone with a story to tell, I’d love to hear from you!

✨ Taking part is completely free
📍 You just need a connection to Sunderland through living, working, studying, volunteering or contributing to the city
📷 No modelling experience is needed!

If you'd like to take part, complete the contact form via the link in my bio or visit www.clairelouisephotographyuk.com/this-place-these-people, where you'll also find more information about the project, what taking part involves, and answers to some frequently asked questions.

Let's tell the story of Sunderland, one person at a time. 📸🎊





SunderlandCreatives CommunityPhotography NorthEastPhotography VisualStorytelling PeopleOfSunderland

13/07/2026

The Mills & Boon paper origami quilt (also known as Women’s Work) gets a brief outing this month courtesy of the Sunderland Lit & Phil Society.

Why not bag yourself a ticket?

July 23rd we are delighted to welcome to display her incredible folded paper quilt at our Romance Renaissance night at Pop Recs 💖✨

Ellie's artwork joins our menagerie of troubadours, writers and visual artists to figure out what's got wearsiders heating up this summer. You'll find us in Sunderland's grassroots cultural heart, Pop Recs in Sunniside.

What have you been reading?

😉💖

Link to Tickets is in Bio

30/06/2026

I’ll be at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Art Car Boot Fair on Saturday 4th July as part of the Breeze Creatives Best Practice cohort.

I will have a few samples on sale as well as some mini music paper sculptures.

Why not come along and say hello?

09/06/2026

02/06/2026

Sadly, I wasn’t able to join the Best Practice end of year exhibition this week, but as I pack up my studio at the end of my stint with Breeze Creatives I did want to share a few quick snapshots of what I have been working on, an installation called Archival Principles. Better images and an accompanying essay to follow.

I started my career as an archivist and as a historian rather than as an artist. Recently I have been mining my personal archive to explore questions of the transitory nature of identity, storytelling and value by connecting to traditions of making.

You are invited to step into a room made from origami memory quilts. This is Provenance, my archive. Inside, you encounter the paper bowls of Original order - the creation of a historian, selecting her sources and shaping her narrative.

Provenance answers a question I am often asked – but where are you FROM from? Made from the places and texts that made me, the pages of books and documents that anchor me to time spent in particular places: from a childhood in Stoke, to education and work in a succession of university cities, and my current life on the north east coast as a maker. Like old geological drawings of rock and soil stratification, accreting layers of paper and stitch become my personal geographies. These patchworked forms are my collection of froms.

The five vessels of Original order are made from the margins of books from different chapters of my life. They do not offer a linear narrative. Instead, they explore the circularity of an autobiographical journey: from early years spent amid the pot-banks, to a career shaped by paper, books and words, exchanged for a creative practice in which I use those same materials to make bowls inspired by the pottery my family used to make.

Quilts and bowls: an academic and intellectual landscape made domestic and tangible. Societal and familial expectations of a domesticated daughter meet the words that marked my path to becoming a maker of ideas and things rather than of babies and homes.