Cuban Canadian Ceramic Art Collective

Ceramic artists in the
greater Vancouver area
had the opportunity,
August 4th -29th, to
participate in a pioneer-
ing international project:
the Proyecto Arte del
"Cuban

Canadian Ceramic Art

Fuego's

Collective,” a collective
of ten ceramic artists from Canada, Cuba
and the U.S. It was hosted. by Kwantlen
University College in Surrey, B.C. The
event was organized by me, Catherine
Merrill, (US) and Antonio Lewis (Cuba),
co-directors of PAF, an ongoing interna-
tional cultural exchange project whose
goal is to promote peace through the
international language of art. As the U.S.
no longer grants visas to visiting Cuban
artists, we chose to locate the project in
Canada, a neutral third country, and
worked in partnership for over a year
with Alison Petty and David Lloyd,
Ceramics Instructor at Kwantlen College.
The other participants were: from
Canada, BC Potters Guild members
Cathi Jefferson, Judy Burke and Connie
Glover and from Cuba, Xiomara
Gutierrez, Jose Vasquez Xenes and
Alberto Lescay, who is Cuba's foremost
sculptor of monumental bronzes, world
class painter and printmaker, and
President of the Caguayo Foundation,
permanent sponsor of PAE

The project events consisted of an open-
ing exhibition at Kwantlen College and a
show at CityScape Gallery that featured
the collaborative works in clay created
during the residency. The Cuban artists
presented two one-day workshops: "A
Panorama of Cuban Ceramics” and
"Contemporary Cuban Sculpture.” Lewis
and I gave a hands-on Figurative
Sculpture Workshop working with a live
model that concluded with a raku Firing.
We offered two Community Outreach
projects: one for seniors at Century
House in New Westminster and
"Bounty's Gate,” a ceramic archway
sponsored. by the North Vancouver Arts
Council. We also invited the public to

two Open Studios featuring videos by

Bean Pod - Cathi Jefferson, Judy Burke
and Alison Petty

Cuban Canadian Ceramics Arts Collective

Joel Bennett and Robert
Freimark and a panel,
"How Art Can
Overcome Cultural
which was-
greatly enriched by the
eloquent commentary of
Dr. Jan Walls, Director
of the David Lam
Centre of International
Communications at

Barriers,”

Simon Fraser

University.

For us, to experience joy and inspiration,
working in the studio as a community of
artists from different cultures, exploring
new directions opened up by the collabo-
rative process, was truly magical. The
Canadians created ceramic forms that we
all decorated and sculpted: vases, platters,
columns, seed pods and giant pears. A
significant influence of the Cuban aes-
thetic, from a country where there are no
ceramic supply stores, was that we
worked with extremely basic materials,
primarily black ink and charcoal, formu-
lated for ceramics by Antonio Lewis, and
a broad palette of colored clays.

The project was sponsored by Kwantlen
College, the Fraser Valley Potters Guild,
the North-West Ceramics Foundation,
individual donors and countless generous
members of the greater ceramic commu-
nity, who worked tirelessly solving prob-
lems great and small, invited us into their
homes, fed us, arranged. special events,
and were always there when we needed
help, truly demonstrating how as artists
we have the ability to connect people,
cultures and countries.

Concerning the fate of our Cuban
friends during hurricane Ivan: by a mira-
cle the storm was deflected to the west
and, although they suffered high winds
and rain, it was not the extremely danger-
ous situation initially feared. However,
the combination of Charley and Ivan has
left Cuba devastated and in great need of
help from its international friends.

Catherine Merrill

Photos courtesy of Jim Gunson

Potters Guild of British Columbia Newsletter

October 2004