https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4000887400212447

We live in an age of AI. Images can be generated in seconds, ideas can be produced at the click of a button, and digital technology can create almost anything we can imagine.

Yet alongside all this technological innovation, there is something reassuringly human about makers who continue to work slowly with the materials around them.

For centuries, artists and craftspeople have created beauty from what was readily available: wood, clay, stone, fibres, shells, feathers, bark and whatever else could be gathered, shaped or transformed. Materials don’t necessarily need to be precious to become precious.

That idea sits at the heart of Foraging, What is Precious?, a touring exhibition from Design Nation bringing together 20 makers who transform overlooked and everyday materials into objects of beauty and meaning.

Currently at Waterside Arts in Sale, Manchester, until 24 October, the exhibition demonstrates how contemporary makers are looking closely at what surrounds them – and finding value in materials that might otherwise be ignored.

Among the makers featured are Tracy Caldah, Jane Bevan and Liz Blyth, three artists whose work demonstrates a particularly strong relationship between nature, memory and making.

Jane Bevan: Bringing the woodland indoors

Jane Bevan’s materials are considerably closer to the places where they originate.

Based in Derbyshire, she collects natural found materials during her daily walks through ancient woodlands: bark, thorns, seeds, feathers and acorns.

These are materials that might be trodden on, discarded or simply overlooked.

Bevan sees something different.

She notices their colours, textures, patterns, irregularities and imperfections. A piece of bark can become part of a vessel. A feather can become part of a sculpture. Seeds and acorns can be incorporated into intricate collages.

Her practice begins with collecting. She gathers materials first and decides what they might become later.

There is a wonderful spontaneity in that process. Rather than deciding what she needs and going out to buy it, she walks through the landscape and allows the landscape to provide the starting point.

Her studio becomes an extension of the woodland.

And the making itself is deliberately slow.

Bevan doesn’t use glue. Instead, she stitches, ties, knots, binds and weaves her materials together using painstaking techniques.

It is labour-intensive and repetitive, but that is precisely what she enjoys.

In a world where AI can produce an image almost instantaneously, there is something almost radical about choosing to spend hours stitching together pieces of bark.

The slowness becomes part of the artwork.

Her relationship with her local environment has even extended into the wider rural community. People who know what she collects sometimes leave natural materials on her doorstep.

The artist has become part of a local network of gathering, sharing and making.

Tracy Caldah: Finding value in what has been overlooked

Designer maker Tracy Caldah creates bespoke memorial art and handcrafted Jesmonite pieces, including her Art and Ashes work.

Jesmonite is an eco-friendly, water-based composite material made from a reactive mineral powder and acrylic liquid resin. For Caldah, however, the material has become much more than a medium for making.

Her vessels developed from grief following the death of her father in 2018 from dementia. She describes the experience as losing him twice: first through the gradual effects of dementia and then through his death.

Her father had lived a relatively simple life. He was a lay preacher and a caring person who did not want for much. After his death, Caldah was left with his ashes and the question of how to preserve something of his life and legacy.

Having returned to education as a mature student and completed an art degree, she began experimenting with incorporating ashes into Jesmonite sculptures.

Something discarded became something deeply significant.

The ashes, which might otherwise remain in an urn or be scattered, could become part of a physical object that could be held and touched.

Caldah’s approach also extends into working with people experiencing grief. Through a connection with a grief counsellor she met through a women’s networking group, she developed workshops where people could create Jesmonite sculptures incorporating ashes while also having access to emotional support.

Making became a physical and emotional process.

There is something important about this in an increasingly digital world. A screen can show us an image of something, but it cannot replicate the experience of holding an object that contains part of someone’s story.

Liz Blyth: Nature as inspiration

Liz Blyth approaches nature differently.

The designer maker works across ceramics and mixed materials, exploring how materials relate to, resist, illuminate and interact with memory.

Her Glacial Flow series demonstrates how the natural world can become an artistic language for discussing something much bigger.

The inspiration came from towering limestone and shale mountains, glaciers and deep green lakes encountered in Canada.

Blyth translates those experiences into porcelain.

Using pure white porcelain paper clay, she creates translucent, subtly textured surfaces that evoke the appearance and movement of glaciers.

But there is more here than simply reproducing a landscape.

The melting glacier becomes a way of thinking about climate change, transformation and the fragility of the natural environment.

Like Bevan, Blyth allows the physical qualities of her materials to contribute to the meaning of the work.

She sketches, tests and models. Ideas develop slowly. She documents her experiments and carries a notebook with her to record thoughts as they occur.

Again, the process is one of observation.

Why are we still looking to nature?

There is a striking connection between these three very different makers.

Bevan gathers bark, feathers, seeds and other woodland materials.

Caldah works with ashes and Jesmonite.

Blyth translates glaciers and geological landscapes into porcelain.

None of them needs nature to be spectacular in the conventional sense. Instead, they look closely.

A piece of bark becomes interesting.

An irregular seed becomes beautiful.

Ashes become a memorial.

A glacier becomes a form in porcelain.

Their work raises a wider question: what do we consider precious?

Perhaps preciousness isn’t an inherent quality of an object. Perhaps it comes from the meaning we give it, the memories attached to it, the labour invested in it or the relationship we develop with the material.

Making in an age of AI

This feels particularly relevant now.

AI has made the production of digital images extraordinarily quick. We can ask a machine to imagine a forest, a sculpture, a landscape or an object and receive an interpretation almost instantly.

But an AI-generated image doesn’t require us to walk through a woodland.

It doesn’t involve picking up a piece of bark and wondering where it came from.

It doesn’t involve the physical resistance of a material in your hands.

It doesn’t require stitching, tying, cutting, washing, drying or shaping.

And it doesn’t carry the same physical relationship to memory as an object containing the ashes of someone we loved.

This doesn’t mean that digital creativity and traditional craft are opposites. They can coexist. But the work of these makers reminds us that creativity isn’t only about producing an image or an idea.

It can also be about being present.

The healing quality of making

There is a growing appreciation of the relationship between spending time outdoors, working with our hands and wellbeing.

Anyone who regularly walks, hikes or camps will probably recognise the feeling. Away from screens and notifications, the landscape demands attention.

You notice the weather.

The texture of the ground.

The changing light.

The shape of a tree.

A feather lying on the path.

A stone in a stream.

Perhaps this is partly why foraging and nature-based crafts feel so relevant.

They give us permission to slow down and notice.

Bevan’s woodland walks aren’t simply a way of collecting materials. The walk itself becomes part of the creative process.

For Caldah, physical making provides a way of processing grief.

For Blyth, looking at glaciers becomes a way of exploring environmental change.

The materials aren’t simply ingredients. They carry experiences.

What surrounds us can become what we create

There is something beautifully circular about this approach to making.

We walk through the landscape.

We notice something.

We pick it up.

We take it home.

We transform it.

And eventually, the landscape comes back into our lives as an object.

That process creates a different relationship with the things around us.

Instead of seeing nature as scenery, we begin to see it as a resource – not necessarily a resource to exploit, but one to observe, respect and learn from.

Perhaps that is one reason craft still matters in an age of AI.

Technology can give us extraordinary new ways of creating, but making with natural and overlooked materials reconnects us with something much older.

Our hands.

Our surroundings.

Our memories.

Our communities.

And our sense of place.

What is Precious? is at Waterside Arts, Sale, Manchester, until 24 October 2026. The touring exhibition features 20 makers brought together by Design Nation, with the next venue yet to be announced.

In an age where almost anything can be generated digitally, these makers offer a quieter reminder: sometimes the most interesting creative material is the thing we almost walked past.

This article contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase — at no extra cost to you.