North Vancouver potter and sculptor Santo Mignosa was our speaker at the TriCity Potters’ monthly meeting last night. Santo was born in Sicily into a clay family. Tiles, bricks and quicklime were made from the local beach sand. He says that pots made with that mixture of  sand, sea water and sea algae for clay held water even though they were earthenware. Salt glaze?

Santo attended the Art Institute of Florence for a degree in painting and then took a further year of clay sculpture. He immigrated to Canada in 1957 and in Vancouver potter Olea Davis took him under her wing. Santo showed us slides of Sicily and its historic ruins, many photos of his sculpture over the years and some interesting photos of early days of the BC Potters Guild. Olea Davis travelled with him back to Sicily at one point. After some wonderful successes having his sculptures and hand built vessels win awards, including representing Canada at the Smithsonian Institute, he was hired to teach in Calgary for twenty years. During that time he took a leave to attend New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred for a masters degree.

On retirement Santo returned to the Vancouver area and he has been active for many years giving workshops and being an important inspiration to the West Coast Clay Sculpture Association.

He brought some portable samples of his work for us to hold. Many are much too big to transport. He expressed regret that he doesn’t know where some of his favourite pieces are now. We also were shown treasured samples of ancient Greek and Roman pottery shards from his home country. He has great respect for the skill of ancient Greek potters. And he brought samples of reduction-fired stoneware pots that he makes. He has a gas kiln on his property and has plans to be making more pots to give to his friends. His grandchildren Miranda and Nicholas live in Port Moody and were in the audience for his presentation and are obviously very proud of their grandfather. I do hope they can take a hoped-for trip to Sicily with him one day soon.

Thank you Santo for a most interesting talk about your career and adventures in clay. We are lucky to have had Susan Gorris take a video of the evening so we will all have a record of his contributions to clay in BC for the BC Potters Guild archives. Debra Sloan came out from Vancouver to hear him and to take notes too.

Members brought bowls to donate to ‘The Loving Spoonful’s Empty Bowl Fundraiser’. Thank you to all the members who did that and thanks to Sue Griese for taking them in to the organizers for us.