Some months ago I began to notice wonderful painted porcelain mugs showing up on Instagram. Lori Elling’s work is unique in many ways. She cheerfully applies oodles of underglaze patterns, but the interesting thing is that they are broken up by raised shapes, left uncoloured. When I noticed that she is one of the latest artists whose work has been juried into the Circle Craft Co-op I realized she’s local! Lori lives in Burnaby so, totally in self interest, I suggested to the TriCity Potters board that she be invited to be a presenter this year.
Lori’s presentation at last Wednesday’s meeting was her first public talk. It was extremely well prepared and was received with much interest by members. I noticed several people taking photos as well as me and there were frequent questions. Forgive the distorted ‘slides’.
The astonishing thing about Lori’s career as a potter is that she took her first pottery course in 2022, followed by a Summer retreat with Sabrina Keskula at the Shadbolt Centre in 2022. She has come so far since then and credits Naomi Clement’s “Professional Practices for Artists” course with her determination to become a professional maker of functional pots. Her succession of ‘slides’ showed us how her work has evolved from varied work in painting, wood, fabric and paper over twenty years, to the current resolved collection of considered forms.
She has done some wheelthrowing but decided early on that she prefers to work with slabs. We saw how she paints with Speedball underglazes (yes, three coats in two directions), and separates the colours with sgraffito lines and/or vinyl stencils.
Working with slabs allows Lori to emboss the surface. Shapes are cut from Craftfoam. Adhesive sheets allow her to make varied depths of the embossing. I am intrigued with the effect of unglazed areas contrasting with the coloured, seemingly overlapping shapes below.
At some point she realized that if the raised parts which are extended across the butts of mugs were not coloured, they could form the foot. I like that.
She experimented with various ways of making elegant handles, including mould-made and hand-rolled and cut but has found that actually pulling them works best. She tells us that her signature hole at the base is for inserting the tea-bag label!
We were impressed with her extensive research on suitable (cone 6) porcelains, food safety, colour effects of various underglazes and mainly functionality of her ware. Much time is spent on perfecting production systems that will make a career in pottery production a success.
Lori brought along a few pieces for us to hand around. I confess that I purchased the large demo mug. Perfect for a large cuppa.
Lori’s work can be found at h squared gallery in Fernie. This is her link. https://www.hsquaredgallery.com/lori-elling/
Lori will be giving a workshop for The Ceramic School’s ClayCamp. This year’s focus is on Surface Design Techniques and will run between February 20th – 22nd 2026.
Thank you Lori for an inspiring evening!
I absolutely love her work! The use of bright colours and negative space between shapes is striking, and leads to an amazing result.
A blend of some of my favourite artists from Picasso, Morrisseau and Harrison.
This is so cool! Colours that literally “pop”!
Thanks, Gillian. This is a great remembrance of Lori’s presentation. We, at Tri-City Potters were very fortunate to have had wonderful guest speaker.