HIGH FIRE CULTURE:
Locating Leach/Hamada in West Coast Studio Pottery

By Jana Tyner, Morris And Helen Belkin Art Gallery

May 24 - July 6, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 23; 6 to 9 p.m.
Curator’s Talk with Nora Vaillant and Shelly Rosenblum:

Saturday, May 25; 4 p.m.

Satellite Gallery, 560 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor, Vancouver
info@satellitegallery.ca * www.satellitegallery.ca

This exhibition examines an artistic community linked by the
aesthetic sensibilities and philosophy put forth by English potter
Bernard Leach (1887-1979) and his Japanese colleague Shoji Hamada
(1894-1978). The potters Lari Robson, Sam Kwan, Andrew Wong,
Ron Vallis, Cris Giuffrida, Heinz Laffin, Vincent Massey, Martin
Peters, and Hiro Urakami share this lineage. Inspired and influenced
by the first generation of Canadian potters who apprenticed with
Bernard Leach at his pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall, the West Coast
artists in this exhibition articulate an historical period in which the
imaginations of many young potters around the world were captured
by the studio pottery movement.

The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery's 2004 Thrown exhibition
and 2011 book by the same name focused on the Leach apprentices,
John Reeve, Glenn Lewis, Michael Henry and Ian Steele, along with
their well-known contemporaries Charmian Johnson, Wayne Ngan,
and Tam Irving. When they returned to Vancouver from St. Ives

beginning in 1961, the apprentices brought with them hands-on

1

Sam Kwan, lugged vase, 2000. Photo: Michael R. Barrick.

Canadian Clay Ceramic
Symposium Wrap-up
Watch for articles, photos and all the skinny on the

Symposium in the May newsletter!

Do you have something to share about your experience at the

knowledge and experience that profoundly shaped the next generation
of potters in this region. High Fire Culture provides an expanded view
of the working relationships between potters in the wider ceramic
community during this same time period of the 1960s and 1970s.
Tt calls attention to the often collaborative nature of claywork, the
sharing of practical knowledge from throwing techniques to glaze
recipes, and the ways in which the subtleties of the craft are passed
from one generation to another.

Many of the participants were students at the Vancouver School of
Art during a particularly fruitful time, some of them taught at the
art school during this period, some completed apprenticeships, many
attended seminal workshops with those who had studied directly
with Leach, others studied in Japan, and nearly all traveled to St. Ives
making a pilgrimage of sorts to meet Leach himself. The work and
careers of these artists have an international value because, although
some of them no longer make pots, when they did they made them
with an intensity, spirit and style that identifies them as members of
the Leach legacy diaspora.

High Fire Culture is curated by Nora Vaillant and Shelly Rosenblum
and is organized by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the
University of British Columbia, and Satellite Gallery, and made
possible with funding from the Doris Shadbolt Endowment for
the Arts, the Michael O'Brian Family Foundation, the Hamber
Foundation and the North-West Ceramics Foundation.

FANTASTIC FEAST
Fantasy pottery for feasting by
TRICITY POTTERS

MARCH 21ST - APRIL 25, 2013

Port Moody Art Centre

2425 St.John’s, Port Moody

Monday - Friday 10am - 8pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm

~
POTTERS
an

COLUMBIA
a

Symposium? Email Melany at editor@bcpotters.com.
Sunday noon - 4pm

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - April 2013 11