JULIE APAP

In Malta, Julie Apap and a few other potters are riding high on the crest of this wave of popularity and exploiting with enthusiasm the demand for pots of real quality. Her studio at Msida Circus, corner with Henry Calleja Schembri Street, is well sited in this expanding suburban neighbourhood close to the Malta University campus at Tal-Qroqq. Julie Apap is a potter of quality. Her works are elelgant, refined and meticulously finished with an attention to detail and, occasionally, burnished and polished surfaces. She specialises in functional ware and containers of exquisite craftsmanship and design, with a fine decorative quality that induces the client to acquire a piece to decorate a corner in the house. Julie is mainly interested in work done on the wheel. In warmer weather she produces coil pots, as the exercise is more restful and less taxing than the more intensive and strenuous wheel. Since she is particular about the uniqueness of her objet dart she does not countenance items produced in moulds. She prefers individual pieces produced with love, care, patience and total involvement. Simplicity, elegance and refinement are the hallmarks that project her monogram JA.

Julie has made a name for herself in less than a decade. She feels at ease with geometric or abstract patterns, and admires full-bodied African and Mexican Pueblo pots. Her interpretation of such influences at the Annalise Gallery in Valletta in 1994 won her recognition and earned her a reputation.

Julie is currently firing stoneware items at 1,250 degrees Centigrade in Mediterranean colours she loves so much as blue, yellow, brown and cream. The fine blue mat glaze and special textures she produces add that sense of preciosity, that sacral quality. She allows the warmth of the terracotta to surface, and often enough uses inlay and etches into the clay body for decorative purposes.

Julie was born in Sri Lanka in 1948 to British parents. Her father Kenneth Landon, a radio officer always encouraged her and wanted to buy her a kiln to start her off. Initially she opted for a wheel, but now ruefully admits her mistake. A kiln so early in her career might have given her years of experience in glazes and firing, whose benefit she would have reaped long ago. Her mother Audrey Salt, a housewife, taught her vital life skills. Julies hobbies take after her mothers - macramé, embroidery and cookery - even though her her greatest love is reading books about pottery and technique. Julie is mainly self-taught and she learned empirically, by trial and error. She passed her childhood in Sri Lanka and England. In UK she lived in Winchester (1956-61), where the cathedral and the statue of Alfred the Great further kindled her love for art. She visited Malta with her family in 1962, became a resident and her parents sent her to Tal Handaq School, where she studied for her advanced levels. Back in England she attended Cheltenham Art College (1965-66), where she spent long periods studying sculpture, pottery, painting, fashion design and history of arts as part of her pre-diploma course. In college she became conscious of her talent for pottery.

She returned to Malta in 1967 when she married Carmel. They have a son and daughter: Christopher, aged 29, and Sharon, 26. Between 1986 and 1990 Julie attended classes at Anna Ciavolas pottery studio at Zebbug, Malta. She also attended two intensive courses with Phil Rogers (1989) and a course in maiolica by Gaspare Cascio (1997) at Targa Gap, Mosta.

Julie Apap has taken part in several collective exhibitions, but she was best represented in those at the Annalise Gallery, Valletta (1993); at the Melitensia Art Gallery, Lija (1994); at the Cathedral Museum, Mdina (1995) where she exhibited with Jeni Caruana and Hedwig Hauck; and at the New Gallery in the National Museum of Archaeology, Valletta in 1995. Usually she exhibits with her friend and colleague Talia Maggi.