In 2015 I returned to school to begin a part-time MA in ceramic design at Bath School of Art and Design. For many years, I had been making colourful tableware, but I was searching for a change in direction, wanting time and space to explore form as a means of expression, which was a big shift for me, as, up until this time, my emphasis had been on surface decoration. The head of Ceramics at Bath during my time there was the ceramic artist Conor Wilson, who possesses a real talent for prodding students out of their comfort zone while supporting and encouraging their explorations. Every few weeks we would have a crit session during which we gathered to view and discuss each other's work. At one of these sessions I presented a white stoneware sculptural form about 40 cm high into which I had inserted broken red stoneware shareds to disrupt the otherwise smooth surface. My intention was that the piece should convey a sense of discomfort. During the discussion of the piece, Conor remarked that it looked like a maquette for something much bigger. My imagination was fired. That evening I decided that the piece I would present for my Master's would be an up-scaled version of this 'maquette'. I had no clue how I would make it, where I would make it and what I would make it from. It would take an awful lot of clay and a very big kiln! Conor suggested that bick clay might be an inexpensive option, which led to vist to Ibstock Bricks just outside Bristol and a meeting with their 'Specials' manager. I left the meeting having no only been offered all the clay I needed, but also a place to work and kiln space to fire the completed sculpture. There followed many weeks of experimentation, during which I developed a method of hand-building hollow sections that were cross-braced with clay bulkheads. Every 50-60cm I placed a thin plastic membrane and lifting straps, so that when the clay became leather hard the form could be dismantled, and moved by the forklift to the drying rooms. The brick clay, being heavily grogged, was ideal for my purposes, supporting the weight of the sections above even when barely leather hard. The Gateway of Dreams, as I named the piece, was my first foray into large-scale work. I learnt by trail and error, and on one occasion having worked too fast, I arriving in the morning to find my two metre high structure was now a nothing but a confused mass of wet crumpled clay. I began again.  The Ibstock staff became partners in the endeavour. Their knowledge of brick clay and firing techniques was invaluable. On their suggestion, I began incorporating coloured sands into the surfaces and one of the Gateway towers was 'flash' fired - creating a mottling through partial reduction. The other, built our of a much redder clay, was left oxidised.   The finished Gateway of Dreams was installed outside the Art School on Sion Hill. Seeing it in the shifting light of the outdoors taught me another valuable lesson; sculpture is all about creating shadows, creating surfaces over which light can play and remodel as sun and clouds move over head. Making sculpture to sit in a landfscape is very different from making work to inhabit the never-changing world of the white-box gallery.