In memoriam: A diabolical ceramicist

I wanted to acknowledge the death of my friend Kim Foale two weeks ago.

Kim passed away unexpectedly on 5 June 2026, which was the most terrible news.

My blogging friend

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that Kim and her daughter Veronica were the inspirations behind me starting this blog in 2011, and hearing this news was heartbreaking, all the more so because of the struggles Kim and her family have been going through these past few years.

If memory serves me correctly, I met Kim and Veronica on Twitter back in 2010, back when Twitter was still Twitter and there was a lovely community of Tasmanian folk, some of whom became real life friends. Kim and Veronica both wrote blogs, and I loved reading their posts. Veronica’s oldest child is the same age as Kramstable so we had a lot of child milestones in common, and Kim posted about her art and her life, and day to day happenings in the world. A lot of the injustice and unfairness in the world that she wrote ahout would make it into her work.

Kim’s posts were great to read. I felt I got to know her through them, so the first time we met in person (which was at a large “Tweet-up” of Hobart tweeples in January 2011), I felt like she was an old friend and greeted her with a hug. Uhhhh! I don’t hug people! Not even people I know. And I don’t actually know her. What if she didn’t like hugs? From people she doesn’t know? Awkward … I still to this day don’t understand how I did that.

Sunday selections

Back then the blogging world was also like a big, close-knot community. Kim set up a meme called “Sunday Selections”, the idea being for people to post photos they’d never posted before and link them up on Kim’s blog so we could all visit each other and look at the photos.

I didn’t do it every week but I did join in from time to time. Here’s one of my earliest contributions, which is about the open day at Chauncy Vale, where Kim had gone to make dragon eggs with the kids. It was a wonderful day. Kramstable (who was called Juniordwarf back then) and I made our own dragon eggs with Kim.

After the event, Kim gave me one of the eggs she’d made (the biggest one!) to keep in my garden.

I recently moved it into a new spot, and it remains one of my most treasured objects. It has even more meaning now.

A diabolical ceramicist

Kim made beautiful ceramics, and she was so generous with her work. She did some fabulous open day workshops with the Tasmanian Ceramics Association and encouraged me to get messy and creative in ways my ordered logical brain never felt it could.

This one was from August 2014. I called it ‘Measles and Worms on a Road’. (The straight lines are pretty obvious, aren’t they?)

The first cup I bought from Kim was in 2012 at the Off Centre Gallery.

I had to go back to my journal because I didn’t remember exactly when I bought this cup, and I read that I’d been in the gallery and heard Kim explaining her work to two visitors. She spoke about how her work was messy and deliberately imperfect. If you want perfection, she said, buy something mass-produced from a factory.

Her comment had made me go back to my coffee mugs and notice how dull they were, compared to Kim’s unkempt style and deliberate imperfections. Most of mine were standard coffee mugs made to commemorate something or other – football grand finals, escape from a former workplace . . . and they didn’t have any character.

So I decided I needed to have one of Kim’s cups instead. Something that was beautiful to look at and functional as well. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted, but Kim told me to have a look at what was in the gallery, and if nothing appealed she would make one just for me. That wasn’t necessary (but what a lovely offer!) because I found the perfect cup, earthy brown, with green glaze on the inside.

For some reason at the time I felt a need to be surrounded by green (which is odd, because I don’t particularly like the colour), and I loved the texture of the outside of the brown mugs. So it was an easy decision in the end.

This has been my go-to tea cup for a long time.

I love this cup.

Well, I love all the cups I got from Kim over the years. There is so much depth and detail and life in them, and I often find new things in them I’ve not noticed before.

The arty party

I couldn’t write about Kim without mentioning the ‘Arty Party’ she ran for Kramstable’s eighth birthday. The party was a reward for contributing to Kim’s Pozible campaign for her trip to Kalgoorlie to attend a ceramics conference—a “family fun day in the clay”. Kim was more than happy to run it for not-family kids, and we had a most wonderful two hours (probably more) playing with clay in the TCA studios.

Amazing!

One of the kids (I don’t remember them saying this but I wrote it down at the time so it must be true) said it wasn’t the most exciting party they’d ever been to, but that it was the most interesting.

High praise indeed from an eight-year-old. Kim said she’d take that!

It really was a fabulous party.

When Kim got back from the trip, she channeled what she’d experienced into some amazing pieces, including this bowl, which she said was inspired by the mines at Kalgoorlie where they cut away faces of earth and you could see all the little tunnels the miners had dug.

Rest in peace

I have so many memories of Kim, and even though I hadn’t seen her in person much the last few years, she has always been somewhere in my mind, and with so many of her works in my house I’m reminded of her every day. The cups and bowls and birds and fripperies are more precious now than ever.

Kim was an amazing person and the many tributes from people who knew her show how much she was loved.

With deepest sympathy to Kim’s family. I will miss her and I am grateful to have known her.

If you love soap

I also wanted to add that Veronica is a beautiful soap maker, and if you would like to help her family through a very difficult period, you might consider buying some soap from her at Veronica Foale Essentials.