(F bc potters

POTTERS
GUILD February 2002 Volume 38 Number 2

Presenter at the Canadian Clay Symposium, March 23

—— |
NEWSLETTER

[ have been committed to working with clay for well over 40 years,
However, itis still achallenge to try to make objects which seem visually
fresh, expressive of vitality, intellectually provoking and technically
well made.

[began with a love affair for wheel thrown pottery in the Mingei-sota
school in the carly 1960s. Warren MacKenzie was an important first
teacher and his ideas about form and function are still imprinted. I won't
give wp my St. Ives Leach wheel even though it is used mostly to store
things. I worked on this wheel in the beginning making utilitarian
stoneware pots for the table.

In the late 1960s | began to hand build and found this to be a more
inventive technique for me. I slowly moved away from stoneware, but
made many tables, benches, footstools, and various odd containers — still
involved with function but in a more elaborate manner. I lived in
Cincinnati, Ohio where houses were big and pantrics could hold many
large, odd containers. I built my first gas kiln there — a cross draft with
four burners.

In 1973 shortly after receiving my MFA in Ceramic Sculpture, I was
hired part-time at the Vancouver School of Ar. Starting out in a small
studio at home, | continued work with hand built vessels, often incorpo-
rating mythical, humorous images as embellishments. | built another gas
kiln, this time a downdraft with six bumers after we built a house with

large studio spaces. It was there [ began the interestin columms andthe = sai Michener
hegative space between columns, which resulted in various installations Siena of Becoming Vi & VII 2001,
for garden-like settings. My interestinreferencestothe humanbodywas 184.0% 32.0em
becoming more central.

Sally Michener continued page /()

Inside
Sally Michencr
Day of the Dead Foourea! 2001,

Techno Ti
echno Tip 2 26.0% 39.0 x 36.0 cm

Made of Clay 3

and see all the
latest informa-
tion about the
Canadian Clay
Symposium v7

For more information abou she Cana-

diun Clay Sympasiam: Diversity in
Clay, see pages 6 and 7,