BC Potters Guild webmaster and Burnaby Arts Council board member Linda Lewis has curated a show, ‘Ceramic Sensibilities: One to Many’. The opening was on Saturday, so knowing that I would be unable to attend I stopped in at the Deer Lake Art Gallery on my way to Granville Island on Thursday afternoon, just after the show was set up.

This show will have special late hours on Saturday March 23rd, 5-6pm so that attendees at the Elementum: Form, Function & Feast Ceramic Symposium at nearby Shadbolt Centre can take in this excellent show. Linda Lewis has taken the idea that we clay artists all need to find some form or idea, explore it and make many versions. This way we focus on a direction, a making or firing technique and exploit its possibilities.

The three artists she selected to illustrate this familiar idea couldn’t have more different ways of working or of finished work: Darcy Greiner, Debra Sloan and Jinny Whitehead.

The photos will probably get separated from my comments but slide your mouse over each image and a title should appear.

Past-president of BC Potters Guild, Jinny Whitehead’s work is wood-fired and one would expect a variety of forms. But she obviously enjoys the idea of baskets and for this show we see a selection of warm-coloured, textured vessels, each with a hand-made drift-wood handle. Although they vary in size the familiar shape is repeated.

Clay sculptor Debra Sloan, already en route to another  two-month ceramic residency in Hungary, has been focussing on making small babies from a mould. These have been installed in little stage settings. Alongside them are some much bigger, sometimes patterned, in one case alarming babies! She also loves dogs but the ‘many’ for her in this show are the babies.

Darcy Greiner, who was one of 6 artists featured in the Gallery of BC Ceramics’ recent show ‘Evocativa Curiosa’, works very carefully and mathematically with moulded pieces. Displayed is a decorated pie form and Linda showed me how Darcy has used this to produce all the other forms in the show. Even the transfer pattern on and in them is a version of the design formed by repeating the original shape.

You have to have to study his pieces to see how cleverly they all fit together and get your own ‘aha’ moment. Here is his ‘one to many’.

Do try to find time to visit this show. The invitation gives times when the gallery is open.