Elizabeth Fritsch, ceramicist

Liz working at home, 1977.

The 1970s was a busy period for me. I’d left art school in 1968 and begun working as a freelance, documentary photographer. Penguins had published my work on A S Neill and his democratic school, Summerhill, as an Education Special in 1969. For several years, I was a part-time lecturer at the AA School of Architecture in London whilst, at the same time, living and working at Digswell House, Hertfordshire, where the Digswell Arts Trust provided somewhere to live and work for a wide range of artists.

Liz Fritsch, ceramicist, was one of us and this is the front cover of a new A5 zine I’ve published to coincide with a major retrospective of her work at the Hepworth Wakefield, on until Jan 2026. The zine is available from my website, here. It’s £7 +Del.

What’s coming up? The next zine will be on repertory theatre in the 70s and should be available by mid-May, 2025. After that, one on my Summerhill School work and then one on life at the AA School of Architecture. Lots to do.

John Walmsley is a member of the National Union of Journalists and the Society of Authors. His work, in one form or another, is at the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain Library, the National Art Library at the V&A, the V&A Museum of Childhood, Liverpool Museum, la Bibliothèque nationale de France and the University of California, San Diego, Library.

With a wide range of other artists, he has recently taken part in group exhibitions in Sydney, NYC, Los Angeles, Arizona, Texas, Tbilisi, Sao Paolo, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, France, Bangkok, Rome, France, Glasgow and Guildford.