COMMENT ___#eb Kingsmill.

Tf vou've not taken the train from North Vancouver to
Lillooet, you have missed a most beautiful and powerful
landscape. In April I gave a Clay Workshop there. It was
in the home of Lillooet potter, Marjorie Smith, just up
the hill from the Miyazaki house which is becoming the
town's centre for the arts and crafts.

We were about a dozen people, overlooking the convergence
of the muddy Fraser River and the glacial blue-green

waters from Seton Lake in a dry valley of semi arid coni-
fers. What a change from the rain forest of Lynn Valley!
On the Sunday evening we were taken up to Fountain Lake to
observe well fed beaver and muskrat sittingon ice that had
not yet melted. We also drove up into the hills, along an
ochre coloured stream called Rustry Creek to visit one of
the people from the workshop. On a smallish bench (room
for a large fenced garden, a pasture, a mill for cutting
lumber and a carefully built Y-shaped log house) we met her
family and looked into the clay working room in the upstairs
of their home.

I found it really invigorating and inspiring to reflect on
the complexities (and hardships) this person went through
to make pots. It showed the powerful attraction the
material has and the extent to which people - even if
Lsolated geographically - will go to work with clay. And
there are folks in nearly every community in B.C. who find
time in their day or evening to handbuild or wheelthrow
their "stuff". It staggers the imagination! I would like
to toast the lot of them and wish them luck in discovering
the things they would like to make - for they are an inspir-
ation to all of us lower mainland clay workers.

EXHIBITIONS cil J

Rembrant Galleries. Oakridge Gallery features potters
Donna McLaren and Judy Cranmer, and artist Betty Jean
Drummond, October 13 to 26,

Currey Arts Centre, October 26 to November 24. Sally

~ Hichener: Ceramic Sculpture. Main Gallery and the
Courtyard. October 27, 2:00 p.m, Sally discusses
her work. Illustrated. Free

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