Douglas College opened in 1970 with campuses in New Westminster, Richmond and Surrey. That is when my husband Alan was hired to teach Anthropology there, and also when artists Laura Wee Lay Laq (who now carries the ancestral name Lumlamelut) and Marcus Bowcott started taking classes in Ceramics at the Surrey campus under their fondly-remembered mentor Fred Owen. By the following year Alan and I had decided to buy a house in Port Moody so that Al’s commutes to work weren’t as crazy as from Kitsilano and I started to take credit courses in Ceramics at Douglas College too, joining Laura and Marcus. The Ceramics department was housed in the old Simon Cunningham school on King George Highway. Some years later the Surrey campus split from Douglas and became Kwantlen College, now University.

Marcus and I didn’t recognize one another but Laura and I have kept tabs on each other’s careers over the intervening years. I remember Laura was so happy to be able to pit-fire her beautiful burnished pots on land near where Fred Owen lived on Barnston Island. Much later, when I was one of two artists-in-residence in Port Moody Arts Centre’s clay studios I invited Laura to give a olla-making and pit-firing workshop to drop-in students there.

As part of the Amelia Douglas Art Exhibit Committee (of which Al was a member until his retirement) I gather that Joan Owen suggested the two long-ago class-mates should have a joint show at Douglas College, New Westminster. Laura’s impressive ollas are displayed in large acrylic cases, for safety reasons, and Marcus’ large oil paintings fill the long wall outside the theatre as well as in the inner Gallery.

The show opened last Thursday evening so I couldn’t go to that but Al and I decided to drive over to New Westminster for their Saturday afternoon public talk. Gallery committee member and college instructor Christine Dewar had a group of her students attending, giving them a chance to get an understanding of artists’ lives. Both Marcus and Laura have made teaching a major part of their careers so the talk was mainly aimed at the young adults, with Marcus bemoaning the closing of art programmes at colleges generally, and Capilano University particularly. He feels that exposure to the Arts is more critical to students now than ever before.

Laura took a decade or more away from her Art practice to embrace her father’s Stó:lō heritage in Chilliwack where she lives now. She studied his language and then spent several years as a language instructor on the reserve. Laura has Oweekeno/Kwakwaka’wakw heritage through her mother who was in the audience on Saturday.

She described the making of her coiled and burnished vessels and the pleasure of allowing the pit-firing to complete the process. She does not use a potters’ wheel or any glazes.

Marcus explained that his first love was always drawing but that in Fred’s class his focus was sculpture. Over the years he has had interesting jobs related to British Columbia’s natural resources, spending time on the water. His vast paintings have an environmental focus, with huge tankers navigating our dangerous waterways, and piles of metal garbage being dumped in the ocean. One display case contains the maquette for his huge Trans Am Totem, with wrecked cars on a logged stump, which stands on Quebec street in Vancouver.

Long ago Alan and I purchased a pot from Laura at the Western Front which we now proudly display in our house.

fire/water will be showing in the Amelia Douglas Gallery at Douglas College, New Westminster until April 21st.

This show is one of at least thirteen exhibits timed to coincide with the Canadian Clay Symposium at Shadbolt Centre, Burnaby on March 18th.

I hope to attend another clay show opening, Fraser Valley Potters’ Clay 17 at the ACT Art Centre in Maple Ridge. It opens next Saturday March 11th.