TORONTO POTTERS Monthly Meetings
Winter 2018
LOCATION:
Gardiner Museum
Main Floor Auditorium
111 Queen’s Park, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C7
TIME:
6:45pm – 8:45pm
The Gardiner Museum has graciously agreed to host Toronto Potters for Tuesday meeting dates, on the 4th Tuesday of each month. Toronto Potters is grateful to the Museum for offering their support. The meeting time will be 6:45 pm and will end at 8:45. The speakers’ programme will begin at 7:15 pm after a short business meeting.
JANUARY 23rd SPEAKER
NIKOLA WOJEWODA-PATTI is a contemporary artist of Russian and Polish descent. After graduation from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1981, she has worked and exhibited in a variety of fine art mediums in her diverse artistic practice.
In addition to drawing, painting and printmaking, she has shown sculptural works in bronze and stone, plaster, mixed media assemblage, and installation. She has also made experimental short films, which have been shown in North America and Europe, and has designed sets for dance and theatre in Toronto – as well as for community theatre in her hometown of Hamilton, ON. She has taught painting and sculpture in Continuing Education programs through the Toronto Board of Education.
Her work can be found in private and corporate collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank and has been written about in a variety of publications such as C Magazine and the Globe and Mail. The recipient of several Ontario Arts Council Grants, she has recently received several awards for her work. In her current practice she has expanded the materials she works with and is exploring ceramic sculpture as well as a hybrid of collage and paper cutting. Nikola is a member of Hamilton Artists Inc., the Art Galley of Burlington, and Arts Burlington Fine Arts Association, Sculptors, and Potters Guilds.
FEBRUARY 27th SPEAKER
Although trained as a biochemical researcher (B.Sc., University of Guelph), RHONDA UPPINGTON pursued her desire to create by taking courses at Haliburton School of the Arts, where she learned the basics of relief and collagraph printmaking, mosaics, and ceramic tile making. With a renovation completed in 2010 on her Newmarket century home, Rhonda is now making handmade ceramic tiles and vessels, mosaics, relief and collagraph prints, and wet-felted bead jewellery in her 3rd floor studio. She is inspired by the “minutiae in everyday life, the delicate details created by the hand of man or Mother Nature”. Her goal is to entice the viewer to pause for moment in their busy life to look at or touch her work, a record of impressions of the natural world.
MARCH 27th SPEAKER
In 1985 Jack Howard became the Head of the Library for Japanese materials in the historic H.H. Mu Far Eastern Library (founded 1933) at the ROM. Through his years working at the ROM Jack Howard has become familiar with the Museum’s artefact collections, especially the ceramic collections of objects from Japan, China and Korea. He helped to build up the ROM’s Far Eastern Library’s book and periodical holdings on the subject. Now Librarian Emeritus, he still contributes to the life of the H.H. Mu Far Eastern Library (now called the Bishop White Committee Library of East Asia) and the ROM.
At the March meeting of Toronto Potters, in tandem with the Gardiner’s new featured exhibition in the vitrine on contemporary Japanese Ceramics, Jack Howard will speak about historical Japanese Ceramics and show a film about pottery making in Japan.
APRIL 24th SPEAKER
SCOTT BARNIM established his studio in 1978 after part time studies in Ceramics at Mohawk College and a full time apprenticeship in the production studio of Donn Zver in Troy, ON. From 1985-86 he spent two years in Cardiff, Wales, UK pursing an MFA in ceramics from the University of Wales.
The Barnim Pottery studio showroom is located in an 1850’s stone house and stable in Dundas, ON. and features a line of reduction fired stoneware – dinnerware and decorative accessories – inspired by the natural beauty of the Dundas Valley. Since 2003, the studio has featured a limited production of reduced Islamic lusterware.
Believing in the apprentice system of education for potters, Barnim has imparted his knowledge to numerous apprentices who have cycled through his studio and gone on to establish their own. Since 1980 he has taught workshops to guilds across Ontario, served as ceramic instructor at Dundas Valley School of Art and Mohawk College, part time faculty at Sheridan College, School of Visual Arts and Design (1992-2002), taught at Haliburton School of the Arts, has been a visiting artist and lecturer at University of Wales Institute, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, York University and also in PEI.
A pillar of the ceramics community, Barnim volunteered on the executive of the Potters’ Guild of Hamilton & Region from 1979-85, on the Ontario Crafts Council Board in various capacities and as President in 1991-92, and as advisor to OCC, Harbourfront, DVSA and Hamilton Arts Awards before returning to the Hamilton guild as President in 2014. He has served as a juror for Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Crafts Council, McMaster Museum of Art, Muskoka Arts and Crafts exhibition, Mississauga living Arts Centre, FUSION, and is a founding member of the Beyond the Valley Studio Tour.
A recipient of exhibition assistance grants from the OAC, Barnim’s award winning work has been presented in over 140 exhibitions since 1978, including at the Carnegie Gallery, Burlington Art Centre, Gardiner Museum and in Jingdezhen China. His work is included in private and public collections, including the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Burlington, and can be found in selected shops and galleries.
MAY 22nd AGM and POT LUCK