Yoona Welling

Originally from the Huon Valley and born in Hobart as a 6th generation Tasmanian, Yoona lived in many towns along the North West Coast before returning to Hobart to study at the Tasmanian School of Art, completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Northern Territory. There are many convicts in her ancestry. They settled in the Midlands, Fingal Valley, East Coast and Huon Valley districts.
“I’m pretty sure some of them spent time at Port Arthur and The Female Factory before venturing further afield!”
After returning to Tasmania with young children Yoona became involved with The Tasmanian Wildlife Park where she set up a Pottery Studio that was open to the public.
“I worked with the native animals as a part-time Animal Keeper’s Assistant and was able to study them closely. As I had already produced work at Art School about the disrespect many Tasmanians showed towards our beautiful animals, it was a natural progression to create a range of native animal designs for the local and visitor markets.
A central theme has been to show Tasmanians what precious and unique creatures inhabit Tasmania’s forests.”
“It was not an easy task to capture realistic likenesses of the animals as I had been far more familiar with domestic and exotic animals. My first attempts looked more like dogs, bears, hedgehogs, and pigs, anything but devils, wombats, quolls and echidnas. The prototypes were produced in 1991, and apart from a few years break they have been rolling off the slip cast, handmade production line ever since. The first hundreds were a mixture of success and needed more work, mainly in the area of glazing, but ‘the recession we had to have’ had begun and I had to start selling whether they were ready or not. Luckily the devil glaze was successful from day one and has always performed beautifully. Fortunately the animals sold and after nearly 22 years I have finally sorted out my glazes so that most of them work well most of the time!”