Thursday May 23rd saw the opening of High Fire Culture; Locating Leach/Hamada in West Coast Studio Pottery at Satellite Gallery. The show will be open until July 6th.   www.satellitegallery.ca

Curated by potter and independent researcher Nora Vaillant and Shelly Rosenblum, curator of Academic Programmes, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the show has assembled work by nine BC potters who have been influenced by the Leach/Hamada pottery tradition via the first generation of Leach apprentices from BC. Those four were featured in the Belkin Gallery’s previous show “Thrown”: John Reeve, Glenn Lewis, Michael Henry and Ian Steele along with their contemporaries Charmian Johnson, Wayne Ngan and Tam Irving.

I will take the liberty of taking Nora Vaillant’s first paragraph from the useful catalogue folder to outline the purpose of the show.

‘High Fire Culture’ examines an artistic community linked by the aesthetic sensibilities and philosophy developed by English potter, Bernard Leach (1887-1979) and his Japanese colleague Shoji Hamada (1894-1978). The West Coast potters Lari Robson, Sam Kwan, Andrew Wong, Ron Vallis, Cris Guiffrida, Heinz Laffin, Vincent Massey, Martin Peters and Hiro Urakami share this lineage. Inspired and influenced by the first generation of Canadian potters who apprenticed with Bernard Leach at his pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall, the artists in this exhibition delineate an historical period in which the imaginations of many young potters around the world were captured by the studio pottery movement.

Nora’s whole essay is a clear description of the careers of the potters chosen to illustrate this BC studio pottery tradition. Make sure to pick up a copy for your library while the brochures are available.

Heinz Laffin 

Apart from Lari Robson who died in 2012 and Cris Guiffrida, who lives in Alba, Italy, all the potters attended the opening. It was a marvellous evening to say hello to all my favourite people once again!

Ron Vallis  

Each potter has a shelf devoted to their work, and then down the middle of the gallery are two long planks where common colour, glazes, firing methods and forms by all of them are shown. It really is a feast of fine form. I will post my photos of each shelf and then some of the people attending the opening.

Martin Peters  

Vincent Massey  

Andrew Wong    

Sam Kwan   

Lari Robson   

Cris Guiffrida   

Hiro Urakami    

The other room has a quietly elegant display of a yunomi by each potter. Display cases show photos, note books, posters and samples illustrating the shared experiences within the group. Three video screens are running constantly. Potters can sit mesmerized by film of Leach and Hamada at work.

To complement the theme of studio pottery and its relationship with Modernism there are paintings by BC artists who travelled to and were influenced by Japan; BC Binning, Roy Kiyooka and Takao Tanabe.

I will post my photos of each shelf and then some of the people attending the opening.

Two days later, yesterday, the two curators spoke to us all, courtesy of the NorthWest Ceramic Foundation. I’ll post some more photos in my next blog.