After spending the afternoon at Horseshoe Bay’s Art Walk Al and I poddled along Marine Drive and stopped for a bite of supper at Park Royal’s White Spot.
We had a little walk along Capilano River, under the railway bridge and out towards Ambleside Beach.
Then we drove into Vancouver over the Lion’s Gate bridge, through Stanley Park and in to downtown. Al dropped me off on Georgia street and I joined Debra Sloan and her family to walk to 560 Seymour street, and up in the lift to Satellite Gallery.
Hiro Urikami was hosting 7.7.7, (July 7th, 7pm) a party to mark the closing of the splendid show featuring Leach/Hamada-influenced potters of this West Coast.
High Fire Culture; Locating Leach/Hamada in West Coast Studio Pottery
Back in the seventies and early eighties Hiro was the owner of The House of Ceramics which can’t have been very far from today’s Satellite Gallery. Apparently the opening receptions and especially the food were something to remember, so it was a treat that the tradition was revived for this show. Thank you Hiro.
Lots of familiar faces were there, and it was good to have a final chance to admire the show. Cris Guiffrida, who was the only living potter of the eight in the show not to have been at the opening, was there from her home in Alba, Italy with her daughter.
It was very much a pottery and real family gathering. I was pleased to have a chance to talk to Sam Kwan. He’s as horrified as we all are about the closing of Fine Arts programming at Capilano University, but pleased to tell me that he is throwing pots again, at the Shadbolt Centre. Good news!
The show has now been taken down and the pots will have gone back to their owners, whether private collections or galleries, but we have had a very good chance to be reminded of our roots and influences. As I mentioned in my previous blog about the opening, most of us have moved on in wildly different directions within the ceramic tradition, some more than others, but there’s no denying how Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, from their writings and from their apprentices, have been hugely important to our clay culture here on the West Coast.
Afterwards I walked to the nearby Skytrain station with Keith and Celia Rice-Jones and their house guest from Galiano, Richard Hawbolt. Richard was another Leach/Hamada apostle who was proud to explain to me, as we sat on the train, that he had travelled to Japan back in the seventies with Hiro. Sadly economic times caused him to give up being a potter in 1984 but he’s still obviously keen enough on the subject to come off his island to attend the show and reconnect with his old colleagues. I get the feeling that there are several potters waiting for retirement to get back to their main passion full-time. Right, Ron Vallis?
