Home is where the kiln is for celebrity ceramicist Joy Smithers

Joy Smithers is just as comfortable in a clay-spattered shirt and jeans with her hair tied up, as she is in front of the cameras.

Joy Smithers and Gary Grant at their home in Botany, Sydney. Picture: John Feder

Joy Smithers is just as comfortable in a clay-spattered shirt and jeans with her hair tied up, as she is in front of the cameras or tackling a “renovator’s dream” with a jackhammer in hand.

The talented ceramicist, actor, model, singer, voice-over artist, mother and businesswoman, who established Batch Ceramics in 2013, has completed renovations most others would have shunned.

She’s not just talking cosmetic revamps — it’s serious, with walls bashed down, horsehair-plaster-filled ceilings ripped out and floors removed.

“I am not afraid of loud noise and being super messy and I handle power tools pretty well,” says Smithers, a veteran of 10 renovations, who lists a chainsaw on a pole as a treasured gift.

She is also used to the initial reaction of family and friends when they see her “wrecks”.

“They are either speechless or roll their eyes and yes, there have been a few tears from the children over the years, but they change their minds when it’s completed,” she says.

A platter by Phoebe Smithers. Picture: John Feder

For Smithers, 57, it’s always about the bigger picture, hard work and not skimping.

She and partner Gary Grant, who co-managed rock band INXS, enjoy living in their renovated 1930s three-bedroom house they purchased three years ago on a leafy street in southeast Sydney.

In a first for Smithers, her Batch Ceramic workshop, where she produces striking homewares, is on site.

“In the past I have lived away from my work and would often wake up in the middle of the night and jump in the car to do something — now I can pop out the back door,” she says.

Her favourite place is her bath in the slick bathroom, where she can soak after a busy day in the studio where she often clocks up 12-hour days when production ramps up.

Joy’s throwing wheel. Picture: John Feder

She also loves the pergola with its wisteria and creeping jasmine which Gary designed and the spacious kitchen where he cooks fabulous Italian dishes.

Smithers believes her love of ceramics harks back to when she played in the red mud with her three older sisters on their family rabbit farm at Oxley Park.

“Making things is in my blood and I have been doing it seriously since I was 13 when I chose ceramics as a subject at Fort Street High. I had an abandoned and disused ceramics room to myself for a year,” she says.

She later co-founded the ceramic company, Mud Australia, and sold out in 2000.

Asked what makes her happy, she replies it’s holding a handful of clay and imagining its journey from raw material to maybe an emerald green platter with whimsical brush marks and glazes. “I think the love and happiness I feel when I am creating actually somehow goes into each piece — just call me a clay diehard,” she says.

Joy Smithers on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road in Namibia.

Recalling her acting career, Smithers says she followed her sister Sue, Australia’s first international model, on to the catwalk and acting roles soon followed.

Her favourite is the movie, Mad Max: Fury Road, in which she performed her own stunts in the Namibian desert. She and her three children, Sasha, Phoebe and Orlando, spent five months filming in Africa. She also appeared in Bangkok Hilton, Home And Away, All Saints, The Flying Doctors and was co-host of Good Morning Australia.

Apollo the dog. Picture: John Feder

These days the family often escapes to Hill End in central NSW to an 1870s house that she describes as “higgledy-piggledy”.

As for relaxing — it’s about ripping up carpet or pulling out a bathroom — and another renovator’s dream is always on the cards.