Last Wednesday evening Jason Walker was the presenter for TriCity Potters’ monthly meeting. He lives in Bellingham, Washington state but is teaching on Wednesdays in the Ceramics department at Emily Carr University this year.

Several of us had noticed his remarkable work at NCECA in Seattle (the light bulb beaker in the photo here was on display there), realized he lives nearby and decided to see if he would drive across the border to talk to us. How lucky we were to discover that he’s in the lower mainland every week!

I was so impressed with Jason’s work and its exquisite drawings that I took photos of many of his slides. Rather than edit too much I’ve put my photos into a Picasa album so you can go to the link below and get an idea of why we were blown away! I apologize for not having made a note of titles. If I can get them from Jason I’ll add them to the photos here and in my Picasa album.

https://picasaweb.google.com/112208740085943894765/JasonWalker

For further information and more images check out his website. I hope that he will add more recent work soon.

http://jasonwalkerceramics.com/portfolio.php?page=collections

When he’s not teaching at Emily Carr he works out of a studio in Bellingham. I plan to pop in to visit next time I’m in Bellingham.

http://www.bakercreekceramics.com

Jason earned his BFA from Utah State University in 1996 and his MFA from Penn State U in 1999. After that he worked and taught at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana for a couple of years. I wonder if that was when Aaron Nelson was there? He is an outdoorsman and often takes his sketch pad with him when hiking in US National Parks and Wilderness areas. Now he is using his passion for drawing and his skill at making thrown, hand built and mould-made ceramic forms to make us consider the natural world, our place in that world and what we have done to it. His pieces are sometimes a combination of wildlife with mechanical additions, forming a canvas for his painstaking illustrations of his thoughts. His quotation below sums up some of his ideas.

“Light bulbs, plugs, power-lines and pipes that grow from the earth are common images found in my work, juxtaposed with birds, insects, and organic matter such as leaves and trees. Similar to the thinking of the Hudson River School of painting, I attempt to portray nature’s vastness and human-kind as a small proponent of it. Yet I draw the small things of nature large and the huge creations of man small. I want to show how we influence the landscape, or nature. My ideas stem from my own experiences bicycle touring, backpacking and the daily hikes I take with my dog.” Jason Walker
Read more at http://www.ceramicsnow.org/jasonwalker#Vd0B0CqyUUmEKrGJ.99

As far as his technique is concerned, Jason explained that he works with a really white porcelain and the drawings are underglazes applied with fine water-colour brushes. If, rarely these days, the piece is functional he will glaze the inside but the exterior is left unglazed. He also uses china paints sometimes when he is looking for a slightly glazed look in some areas.

Thank you Jason, for a most interesting evening. The work is skilfully made, can I say beautiful? and thought-provoking. We’ll have to try to get to an important solo show he is working towards, to be held at Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle in July 2014.