About
Paddling close to home on Hornby
British Columbia has been my home since 1995. After studying Languages and Linguistics in Nova Scotia, I went to Japan to gain teaching experience and to pay down a student loan. The plan was to work abroad for one year. But once I got to Japan and discovered ceramic culture I had no desire to come home. I worked with Japanese potters for just under four years.
Studying ceramics in Japan was life-changing. I found teachers in Tokyo, Yokohama and Kitakyushu, each with a different take on the art. Those teachers taught me how to see, how to look at objects and how to appreciate the quiet in a visual and environmental context. I learned about the tea culture, meditation, and the art of sitting still internally and externally. Ceramic culture was only one aspect of the deeply developed arts in that country. I could have stayed there forever but Canada is truly my home and I had to find a way of bringing that part of Japan back with me.
I came back to study ceramics at the Sheridan College of Art and Design in Oakville, Ontario, and later at the Emily Carr School of Art and Design in Vancouver. My grounding in Japanese ceramics gave way to an aesthetic that fits more closely with where I live now. I could make Japanese pots in Japan but now that I live on the Coast my work reflects a different sensibility and a different culture. Moving to Hornby Island in 2007 completed the picture and I am where I have wanted to be – by the ocean making pots in the quiet of island life.
Working in ceramics in Canada has been a bit of a lonely road. We really have no ceramics culture to speak of and if you are a studio ceramist unaffiliated with a university, your world is entirely self-made. So some things I’m proud of — and feel fully within my rights to brag a little – about are the following:
2012 Up-coming solo exhibition at the Campbell River Art Gallery ”Portrait of an Ocean” This will be an exhibition of sculptural work together with documentation of the process, what it means to make work with the human hand in the context of the digital age, and how it affects the maker.
2007 The BC Creative Achievement Award for Excellence (Acceptance Speech for this award – met Gordon Campbell and had a great time celebrating with the other award recipients.)
2009 Post Modern Ceramics Festival in VarazdinCroatia (one of 3 finalists from Canada – I entered a sake set now in the Varazdin Museum Collection)
2010, 2009 NICHE Awards (finalist – entered covered jar in 2009, sake set in 2010)
2005 World Ceramic Competition, Icheon, Korea (Honorable Mention for a tea set that the World Ceramics Exposition Museum now has in its collection )
2004 Sydney Myer Fund International Ceramics Award (I entered a carved bowl on bronze base. The Shepparton Museum has this piece in their collection now. )
2004 Hot Clay, Surrey BC (This was an invitation exhibition of 16 contemporary ceramists in British Columbia. This show took place at the same time the exhibition ‘Thrown‘ was on at the Belkin. These two shows appearing at the same time was the most exposure the ceramic arts had ever seen in British Columbia.)
2003 Porcelain and Bronze Exhibition, Kingston, Jamaica (I was invited to participate in this one-time exhibition … most fun at an exhibition to date! Met people I will never forget.)
Images of exhibitions from 1998 – 2003