The fourth Pottery Prowl — an open-ended studio tour event held on July 5 and 6 — solidified the annual event’s reputation as a ceramics-focused complement to the annual Art Crawl. Eighteen studios, from Liz de Beer’s Klaywerk Studio in Langdale to Pia Sillem’s Geopia Gallery & Garden in Earls Cove, welcomed browsers and buyers over 14 hours of availability on Saturday and Sunday.
Five newcomer artists joined the Prowl for the first time, while Beth Hawthorn of Roberts Creek-based Hawthorn Ceramics debuted a new studio and gallery facility.
“It was so terrific,” said Roxanne Hoffman, who previously exhibited in the Prowl as part of the Forst Pottery Studio run by artist and instructor Pat Forst. On the first day alone, Hoffman welcomed over 100 people to her Gibsons-based gallery. “For the Art Crawl, I would expect those kinds of numbers, but for the Pottery Prowl, I just didn’t know,” she added.
Hoffman’s works (including her distinctive solar lanterns, replenished with new stock fresh from the kiln on Sunday morning) were displayed alongside atmospheric landscapes by painter Ezmina Samaroo.
Creative collaboration and co-location were hallmarks of the Prowl. Heather Lippold, who is a board member of the BC potter’s guild and volunteers at the association’s gas-fired kiln in Vancouver, displayed her work at The Kube gallery in Upper Gibsons. Although Lippold has a degree in ceramics from Emily Carr University, upon moving to the Coast she enrolled in classes with Ray and Bev Niebergall (of Roberts Creek’s Mustard Seed Clay Creations, themselves perennial Prowl exhibitors).
The Niebergall influence — and Lippold’s affinity for the dahlias raised by her employer, the Sunshine Coast Nursery — resulted in her use of unique textures that resemble petals or feathers. “It’s also very meditative,” she observed. She incorporates local clay from Trout Lake into her functional items: its low-temperature melting point makes it an attractive glaze for low-fired works.
Desiree Metcalfe of Mud Witch Ceramics (“I chose the name because pottery is a little bit magic,” she said) displayed works inspired by the female form, snakes and butterflies. Real butterflies, minute and radiant, are preserved inside the items she fires at her studio in Roberts Creek.
Another colourful creature — the chameleon — appears in figurines by Masami Bolt, a first-time Prowl artist situated in Davis Bay. “I first saw them in a book many years ago,” Bolt recalled. “I was fascinated, and then I started making chameleons.” Last year, during a trip to Namibia and Cameroon, she observed African variants of the species in person and fashioned richly glazed replicas.
Bolt developed her interest in clay while working as a soil scientist in the Philippines, and stores polychromatic samples collected from around the world in miniature apothecary jars.
At the sun-drenched backyard studio of Jill Dube, mugs, bowls and plates bore the unmistakable imprint of nature in her West Sechelt location. Dube fires her items at the kiln of Pam Horner (owner of Gibsons-based “Pottery by Pam”, a charter participant in the Pottery Prowl). “People are so supportive of each other, which really makes a big difference,” Dube said. During the upcoming Art Crawl in October, she plans to show her work at the Roberts Creek studio of painter Kandice Keith.
Dube, who also developed her expertise through Niebergall classes, expressed the need for a central ceramics facility on the Sunshine Coast. “It would be lovely to have a community studio here,” she said, “but it’s very expensive: the rent is the problem, and the investment in equipment is so high. What we need is a pottery philanthropist.”
In a basket under Dube’s matched saucer sets and finely fluted pitchers, a sale basket held discounted wares, with a sign advertising Bits and Pieces and Wonky Ones. “Pottery is philosophy,” explained Roxanne Hoffman. “You learn about not having an attachment to anything, because so many things don’t work out. You learn to let it go, which is really good exercise.”
Portraits of the latest Pottery Prowl exhibitors can be viewed — along with links to their online platforms — in a photo supplement to this article at michaelgurney.com/culture.
