Sitting with Kate O'Connell in her new studio it is hard not to get caught up in the buzz of excitement that surrounds her. O'Connell, like her work, is larger than life. With an impish smile she hands me a cup of tea and offers a biscuit from a giant shard of willow pattern china. It is rather like being at a hybrid between a Greek wedding and the Mad Hatter's tea party, surrounded by fractured bits of crockery at various scales...and O'Connell is grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. It has been a long journey to get here but Australian born O'Connell is full of enthusiasm, which is downright infectious. After coming to England in 1998 she went into enforced office slavery, working in various admin roles but all the while harbouring a desire to indulge her creative side. Working in various art colleges around the south coast showed her what she was missing and in 2005- she began her degree in Three-Dimensional Design at the University of Portsmouth, which she completed in June 2008. She moved into her first studio at Making Space in Havant, Hampshire in October.
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