Vanishing Half, earthenware, Andrea Puszkar, winner of best in show. (contributed)

Both ceramic royalty and newcomers to the kingdom of clay exhibit in a Nova Scotia Potters Guild showcase at the Ice House Gallery, Tatamagouche, to Dec. 15.

Triumphs in Clay is a great chance to see the huge variety of talent, technique and themes in ceramic art in Nova Scotia with work by over 50 artists. Some are some very familiar like Pam Birdsall and Tim Worthington, who founded Birdsall Worthington Inc. Mahone Bay in 1977, closing this spring; others are newer to the scene like Rachel de Condé, who moved to Nova Scotia in 2009 and makes both functional and art ceramics while also running a small farm.

One wall celebrates ceramic royalty with a gorgeous 2006 Walter Ostrom wall work, a creamy pale green-bordered plate with a white cream centre and brightly-coloured stripes in an asymmetrical Byzantine flower pattern.

Ostrom, a legendary teacher at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD University), is a key influence on those exhibiting work on the plinths below his plate like popular South Shore ceramic artists Jim Smith, with his architectural, historically-referential Platter for a Venetian Flood, and Joan Bruneau with her colourful, nature-based patterns as well as architectural forms.

Purcell’s Cove veteran potter Sally Ravindra exhibits an exquisite vase in earthy brown with a white spiral pattern. The high-fired stoneware, titled Circles, looks like it belongs to an ancient, Indigenous culture and holds sacred secrets. Similarly, Mi’kmaq/Wampanoag artist Nancy E. Oakley’s large white vase with a sweetgrass rim and a central decal of black ash basketry feels ancient and symbolic and is rooted in Mi’kmaw culture. Oakley, who lives in Eskasoni First Nation, is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and her work is for sale far and wide; her dream catcher ornaments are next to the cash at Just Us Cafe in Grand Pre.

She works directly with the land as does Janet Doble in her earthy, organically-shaped, nature-based vases made of Diligent River red clay. Andrea Puszkar’s unglazed earthenware vase, Vanishing Half, has the feel of permanence and features beautiful carving with raised flower and leaf patterning and lots of textural details.

Kate Grey, a 2016 NSCAD University graduate, creates playful, storybook, pictorial imagery in Albertosaurus, in her unique, bright palette. A bright orange dinosaur cavorts in a split landscape of two layers of varied green vegetation with two layers of sky, one with orange and another with white clouds. Surisak Chongrampai also uses hot colour and a painterly effect in her vessels, including a small bowl with a beautifully brush-worked bird.

Carol Morrow’s conceptual porcelain piece, Rocked in the cradle of the deep (Remembering the lost children of the Titanic), is a wave pattern on the wall of blue tiles of children’s beds. Opposite this sombre piece is Teresa Bergen’s riotous, baroque, carnivalesque Matryoshka, of glazed white earthenware with gold lustre. The doll’s tummy opens up to reveal another doll whose tummy opens up to reveal another doll. The back of the doll is just as amazing and highly-detailed with an abundance of tiny pink flowers and a painting of a fancy fountain in an ornate classical garden.

Well-placed next to Bergen’s enchantment is Mary Jane Lundy’s joyful, comical bird, Riding the Wave/Blue Heron, with curled feet and a cheeky, lively head, as well as Sharon Fiske’s playful, exacting imitations of a diner lunch and the ebullient Piece of Cake! Celebrate!, her multicoloured tower of one piece of birthday cake. Equally playful are Jo-Ann Shaw’s miniature stone houses with tiny furniture.

Toni Losey’s ceramic sculpture, Gleam from Light in the Dark Series, is an exciting and unusual sculpture with no reference at all to function. It is purely art in evoking emotion and ideas; its bulbous, organic forms with attached flower or sea blossom shapes are tantalizing – both compelling and repelling as if they could grow and grow and take over the world.

Shauna Macleod and France Arruda, of Firing Point Pottery, collaborated on a magical installation titled The Moon jellyfish are heading to the bloom; a large vessel in a box is decorated in jellyfish that glow in the dark with the flick of a switch.

Works range from earthy to urban in Meggie Richards’ semi-porcelain Pour Into Me sculptural piece in white of organic bulbs with silver balls and a pattern of circles to spiritual in Meg Bennett’s wall of stoneware Tarot Plates, each piece an artwork in itself of elegantly drawn imagery in white on black. Firmly rooted in nature are Susan Daver’s beautifully glazed oceanic plate, which won best in show, and Marla Benton’s Gone Fishin/ A Drinking Game, which won honourable mention, best in show.

Also exhibiting are Micaila Abboud, France Arruda, Meg Bennett, Marla Benton, Susan Delatour, Elise Dufour, Paige Fraser, Judy Gordon, Alexandra McCurdy, Deb Kuzyk, Jane Harrington, Jolanta Jung, Mindy Moore, Kirsten Nichols, Amy Noel, Darren Rowles, Morgan Sheppard, Deborah Wheeler, Sheri White, Carol Smeraldo, Gerri Frager; Ashley Hills; Joletta Jung and Melanie Zurba.

Vote for your favourite piece. If you have an itch to purchase functional pottery in a wide range of prices visit Sara Bonnyman’s large and glorious studio gallery on Maple St. Unfortunately The Nook and Cranny Cafe, which has great food, is closed until the summer; The Chowder House, though, is as reliable, affordable and tasty as ever.

Ceramic art is scattered in Nova Scotia at craft fairs, privately-organized group shows, farmers’ markets, a few stores, at Secord Gallery and at the Mary E. Black Gallery; it’s hard to find it in any volume and this show is a great compilation.

• Winter Moons: mesmerizing Mi’kmaw storytelling with fantastic design
• Controlled Damage: nine actors, a fiddler and one heck of a story

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Art, ceramics, pottery, sculpture