Online News for Members of The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery

Those of you who were here for this event last year know that we use this opportunity to thank our primary benefactors, our supporters, patrons, and customers, and all of our wonderful volunteers. We need you, and we thank you all for your assistance, in all areas of gallery activity over the last year.

Through that assistance, the gallery continues to flourish, developing exhibition projects and educative initiatives. We hope that this event elicits from you the ongoing commitment we cherish. It enables us to provide service to the immediate community, to the surrounding region, and to the field of art itself. As a cultural organization, we also exist to serve the art forms that are the basis of our mandate, the silica arts: contemporary clay, glass and enamel.

We are nearing our 10th anniversary, and plans are afoot to celebrate that in novel and exciting ways. With all your assistance, our future looks rosy. We are becoming what the visionary founders like Win Shantz and Ann Roberts always intended us to be: a tourist magnet, a center of excellence, and a matter of civic pride.

The current Board members and staff would be pleased to assist any and all prospective sponsors in finding a hand to glove fit with our future offerings.

At this moment in time, we look good, indeed. The Clarica Tower Gallery sports a jam-packed show of dark-glazed ceramics that reveal the extension of an ancient oriental glaze tradition from the studios of 20 Canadian functional potters.

The Donald and Pamela Bierstock Gallery holds Reliquary for the Heart, a small but exquisite show by Halifax enamellist Kye-Yeon Son. She demonstrates innovative and conventional use of that media, in works that exploit her particular Korean cultural heritage.

For tonight only, glass is in eclipse. This evening belongs to clay. For twenty years, The National Biennial of Ceramics originating in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, has been a showcase of Canadian activity in clay media. Each exhibition has revealed different approaches in organization, allowing us to see the diversity, quality, and depth of ceramics throughout the country.

The theme for the 10th Biennial is "Self-portrait". In that all making, particularly making by hand, provides us with things that reflect our being, anything made can be seen to reflect us. Signatures have that same capacity. What you have in your pocket or purse can be seen to represent you. Karen Dahl's fabulous little suitcase and its casually gathered junk is a perfect example, in super-realism, of this approach. But as you may have noticed, other artists have approached the concept of self-portrait, or self-representation, with varied interpretations.

Four regional curators were given the task of selecting artists and 26 works that can be seen to be autobiographical in nature. Each artist has a different source of inspiration, therefore each has different motivation, and each conveys a unique image regarding origins, values, practice, identity and interests.

So, just as these pieces are intended to represent the soul, the psyche, the inner state, or to infer other aspects of the individual maker, so too, cultural institutions such as this gallery can be seen to represent the soul, the inner core of our collectivity.

I encourage you to view this gallery as a site that presents WHAT, HOW and WHY we are WHO WE ARE.

If you do that, if you look at this show as us, then you will see that we are a community of creators, innovators, and experimenters with vital imaginations, with rigorous minds, with delicate sensibilities and robust senses of humor. We have colourful histories all ripe for the telling. And we represent expressive excellence and technical mastery. Not a bad collective profile!

Another purpose of this evening is to announce the winner of the Winifred Shantz Award in Ceramics, a sum of $10,000 given annually to foster the career of an emerging ceramist. As the title of the award indicates, this has been established as one of many philanthropic cultural initiatives by Winifred Shantz, and it is an indication of her wisdom that this award is gauged to assist emerging ceramists make a quantum leap in their professional practice. Because technical and artistic progress have to occur simultaneously, that quantum leap is hard won in ceramics.

Now, in the business and corporate realm, and especially in the non-profit sector, the term partnership is bandied about like a tennis ball. Association and joint interest are the hallmarks of true partnership, and it is a credit to Win that she has had the foresight to implement this award as a demonstration of truly enlightened partnership between generations. We cannot commend her too highly for the initiative.

We called for applications for this award, and this year, nineteen submissions came in from across the country, from 6 of the provinces. Last year we noticed a paucity of submissions from central Canada, and this year the Maritimes were less represented than last. We now sense that applications will fluctuate regionally. Last year's winner, Toronto artist Susan Colette, is also with us this evening.

The jurors for this award were all seasoned professionals. Bruce Taylor, from the Department of Art at the University of Waterloo, Wendy Walgate, ceramist from Toronto, and Jonathan Smith, Curator of Collections at the Burlington Art Centre are all known for their expertise and focus on the field nationally.

Now these are very fine folks, and I felt guilty in asking them to jury the competition because it was extremely difficult, with very good proposals. In some ways, this particular batch of applications was difficult because of the very broad range of material, assorted educational and varied experiential backgrounds. A variety of formats, including functional vessels, sculptural expressions, installation formats, and architectural endeavors were viewed. Populist idioms and intellectual premises also marked the genres presented for consideration. I did not envy the jurors, and frankly, I was surprised they did not come to blows! They graciously accepted their charge, and in the end, they came to a decision, albeit a difficult one.

The Winifred Shantz Award is distinguished by one particular criterion: candidates must submit a plan of action or a statement of intent, one that will demonstrate how they propose to use the award to further their career.

This year's winner proposed to deepen his understanding of Hellenic or Greek ceramics through studying the techniques, iconography, symbolism and function of Greek prototypes through research and travel, but he also plans to study with two distinguished senior figures, Nino Caruso in Rome and Luigi Mainolfi in Turin.

This year's winner was born in France. He now lives and works in Montreal. Academically - and this is a perfect illustration of the caliber of the applicants this year - he has first a degree in Veterinary Medicine from France, second, a Masters degree in Physiology and Anatomy from the University of Montreal, and thirdly, a degree in Ceramics from the Centre of Ceramics, Bonsecours Pottery, in Montreal. He too is represented in the Autoportrait show.

It is with great pleasure that I ask the donor of the award to present the second Winifred Shantz Award to ceramist Laurent Craste.