By Yvette Huddleston

Published 2nd Oct 2022, 06:00 BST

“Everyone started with a theme or a passion, we were encouraged to explore whatever we had chosen and to try out the various different materials available to us,” says Sharpley. “Partly because it was my first time away from home and I found that having a cup of tea was comforting, I was looking at tea and teacups and the tutor would come around and ask different questions like ‘what if it was a cheap mug? or a broken tea cup?’ It was always about the process and it encouraged us to think. I started looking at things around tea – such as the etiquette and china teacups and so on. I was also doing pen and ink drawings that were inspired by sepia photographs of Scarborough and Lytham St Anne’s and other seaside resorts. My tutor saw them – I was supposed to be testing out different materials and he told me that if I didn’t start doing that soon, he would have to transfer me to the illustration course. Then he gave me some wire – and that was it.”

She had found her medium.

She went on to make a pair of Edwardian ladies out of wire from sketches she had done based on old postcards she had collected and which had inspired her drawing. She has never looked back. In the past 16 years or so, she has built up a body of work of attractive and highly original wall art – the impression is of drawings that have partially come to life. And in a way, that is her process, gradually developing three dimensions from two. “I still draw everything first,” she says. “All of the wire works I make start off as pen and ink drawings.”

Wire artist Helaina Sharpley, who works out of a gallery based in West Yorkshire Print Workshop, Mirfield

Sharpley was interested in art and making from an early age, encouraged by her parents who were both teachers.

“They have played a big part in my career and they are very supportive. My mum studied fashion at Liverpool College of Art in the 1960s and then went into teaching. She made all our clothes when I was a child – she was always sewing in the evenings. And as a family we often go to galleries. I remember once during the school holidays I was bored and my mum put some stuff on the table and got me to draw a still life. I just loved doing that. Art was a big part of my life and doing things with my hands.”

She realised that this more practical, craft-based approach might suit her better while she was attending a foundation course at Batley School of Art.

“I started knitting when I was studying there and when I was looking for a degree course my tutor pointed me in the direction of a more craft-oriented one. That foundation year really helped me understand that I was more ‘crafty’.”

Wire artist Helaina Sharpley, in front of artwork copied from a photograph of Scarborough in 1887

Her inspirations, aside from tea and its associated objects and rituals, include period architecture (“I love Victorian and Edwardian lamp posts”) and historical photographs of English coastal towns.

She surrounds herself with these prompts in her studio.

“I always have lots of china tea cups and teapots and silverware around; and my wire – I have eight to ten different thicknesses of wire that I work with.”

She uses wire cutters and twists the wire into the desired shape, using her fingers, special tools and often her fingernails. “It can be quite hard on the hands at times,” she says.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Earlier this year she had a large-scale installation on display at Somerset House in London as part of Collect 2022 organised by the Crafts Council, which took her work in a different direction.

“You had to be invited to take part and the Craft Council selected a group of 12 artists – the project was about experimentation and pushing the boundaries of your practice. I made a piece called Drawn into the Distance inspired by the Yorkshire landscape which was 1.5m x 1.5m. During lockdown I got inspiration from views of the hills around Huddersfield and I started making work inspired by British wildflowers, and this was partly based on that.”

It is a beautiful, intricately layered artwork full of trees, flowers, rolling hills and drystone walls that was suspended from the ceiling of one of the rooms in Somerset House.

It is almost like an extended immersive mobile which people could walk into, through and around. Sharpley is pleased to have taken part in the exhibition as it has opened up other avenues for her to explore in her wireworks.

“It really gave me the opportunity to develop my work and to think about it in different ways.”

Having been a full-time artist since 2006, in addition to gallery pieces and exhibitions much of Sharpley’s work now comes from individual commissions.

“Recently I have done lots of architectural works for people of places that are significant to them,” she says. “Sometimes it is of houses they have lived in, maybe the church where they got married. I did one not long ago of the Eiffel Tower; they are buildings that mean something to people. I really like doing those personal pieces – at the moment I am creating a landscape that looks like an open book.” She clearly relishes the challenge. “As long as I can draw it, I know that I will be able to make it out of wire.”

You can see Helaina Sharpley’s work at the exhibition Vessel, Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley until October 30 and in the solo show A Perfect Cup of Tea at the Tinker Gallery, Ilkley, October 6-December 23. helainasharpley.co.uk

Meet the Yorkshire wire artist who takes her inspiration from tea and Victorian lamp-posts