Sarah Lawless Pottery
833 C Ave V0G 1M0 Kaslo, BC, Canada

For those of you who have been wondering what I've been up to in the studio since COVID started... Thanks to the BC Arts Council & Kootenay Columbia Alliance for their support of this project! "Smoked":

Announcement! I will no longer be using Facebook Messenger. To reach me directly, please phone, text, or e-mail: [email protected]

More about the incomparable Wayne Ngan, who was my mentor for one memorable summer.

My 11-year-old designed this t-shirt for my birthday (her dad did the calligraphy)! Apparently we can print more, any size, for $20 each. Any takers?

Wayne Ngan, May 19, 1937June 12, 2020 I had the amazing privilege of working for Wayne Ngan during the summer of 2004. It was a hugely transformative experienc...e for me, and continues to inform my work today. I think of him whenever I sit down to throw on the old Shimpo wheel he gave me (I threw a lotta pots on that wheel!). In Wayne’s honour, I would like to share with you an essay I wrote in my second year of art school (2005). It is a long one, but if you choose to read through to the end, keep in mind that my information about his life came directly from the stories he told me, so may not be completely, historically accurate! ***** One night, a hawk appeared in Wayne Ngan’s dreams, and in the morning he rushed to the studio to make a pot to represent it. The next evening, as he sat watching TV, a hawk flew in through the open door of his ocean-view deck. Confused, it U-turned and hit the window, thrashing its wings as it tried to find the doorway. Without thinking, Wayne picked up the bird in his bare hands. He held it for a moment, calming it with his steady, gentle touch, and asked it, Hawk, what do you have to tell me?, before releasing it back to the sky. Born in Canton Province, China in 1937, Wayne Ngan is considered one of Canada’s top studio potters, winning the Sadye Bronfman award in 1983, for his successful revival of Song Dynasty pottery traditions. His beginnings, however, were much humbler. When he was a young boy, Japan invaded China, and his father fled to Malaysia, leaving Wayne’s mother to raise two young boys on her own. When she went to work, they were left to fend for themselves. At school, Wayne’s teachers chastised him for arriving late, not caring that he had spent the morning fishing and scrounging for food. When Wayne’s mother sent him to Canada at age 14, his situation did not improve. He struggled to learn English, ridiculed by classmates and teachers alike. At home, he faced abuse by the alcoholic grandfather charged with his care. With nothing beautiful in his life, Wayne decided to create his own beauty, which he did, initially, through drawing. As he says, I transcend the horror by transforming it into something beautiful. Art became his sole reason for living. When Wayne was able to go to art school with the help of a sympathetic teacher, his struggle did not end. He lived in Richmond, went to school in downtown Vancouver, and worked in a shingle mill every night to pay his tuition and supplies. When his grandfather discovered he was going to art school, he kicked him out of the house. Furthermore, Wayne’s passion was for painting, but he couldn’t afford paints, so he took up pottery instead. He spent two years throwing cylinders, slowly but determinedly developing his skill on the wheel. He wedged clay on the studio floor, because the tables were too crowded. These early experiences gave Wayne a do-it-yourself approach to education, and to life in general. When he moved to Hornsby Island in the 1960s, he built a house & studio of driftwood and beach rocks, and a kiln shed of old car hoods. He scrounged clay and glaze materials wherever he could, using local materials as much as possible. He mixed his clay bodies with his feet and threw pots on a kick wheel he had built himself. With his painter wife Anne, he grew vegetables, caught fish, ate kelp from the nearby ocean, and raised two creative daughters, Goya & Gailan. All of these elements gave a unique life force to his work, as he struggled to reconcile his heritage with his present situation. He did this by striving to recreate the jade-like celadons and coppery oil-spot glazed of the Song Dynasty, the peak period, he believes of Chinese pottery. His oil-spot glaze, in particular, is unlike that of any modern potter. He spent most of his career trying to perfect it, and always found something to be lacking. Finally, during a teaching residency in Victoria, he was given a truckload of local clay that had been waiting for someone who knew how to use it. This unnamed high-iron clay became the key ingredient in his oil-spot glaze, which is transformed to a solid copper colour in heavy reduction. Wayne’s forms, too, flow from his Asian roots, with an emphasis on proportion, spontaneity, solidity, straightforwardness. He has never made a coffee mug in his life, but his studio, kitchen, and gallery are jammed full of tea bowls. In 1982, Wayne bought a piece of land in the opposite side of the island. He demolished the existing dilapidated house, and was left with, in his words, a parking lot. Visitors today are amazed at how he transformed his parking lot into a paradise, with a sunset view of the ocean, and a fantasy garden of passion flower, grapevine, poppies, Japanese maple, rose bushes, fig trees, plum, kiwi, apple, and pear. At the centre of the garden is a lily pond, overhung with fragrant pink wisteria. Wayne believes that it is essential for an artist to create an inspiring working environment, and his own wheel is situated to face the studio window, looking straight to the centre of the pond. The wisteria trails like lace curtains over the windows and doors of the studio. In 2002, after a life of long hours and frantic work, Wayne had major heart surgery, and most people believed that he would never work again. Less than six months later, he was back at the wheel. Now it was an electric wheel with a soft pedal, and he uses an electric pug mill instead of his feet for mixing clay. But for him, the creation of art is still deeply connected with the motion and energy of the human body. His method of wedging clay involves the whole body, the energy rising from the feet grounded in the earth, to the elbows supported by the abdomen, the centre of energy or Qi. His whole body rocks in rhythm with the lumps of clay, as he considers the forms they will take on the wheel. You will make beautiful pots, Wayne says, if you put your love and your intention into each action. He often compares pottery to babysitting, because of the mindful care required in the finishing of thrown forms. The pot is like your baby. You can’t leave it out in the sun or in the cold. You have to feed it, change it’s diaper. It won’t wait for you. Wayne’s work has changed dramatically in recent years. He has begun throwing vessels in sections, assembling and hand-molding them into sculptural pieces, with much less emphasis on tradition. This work, he says, is about pure form. The forms emerge from his dreams (like the hawk), and from the mornings he spends tending his garden. His traditional forms have become canvasses for his painting. With wax resist, he brushes calligraphic images of wisteria and bamboo onto tea bowls and boxes. Plates and tiles have become abstract paintings of layered slips and glazes, combining elements of Chinese calligraphy with playful images reminiscent of Miro. In spite of his success, Wayne refuses to rest on his laurels. He avoids with disdain the trap of the production potter whose work never changes, but instead continues to experiment with new materials, techniques, and forms, constantly sketching new ideas, testing new glaze recipes. He loves clay, because he knows it, but it seems almost incidental, one colour in a palette that includes watercolour, ink, cast bronze, concrete, architecture, gardening, and recently, performance art. First and foremost, Wayne Ngan is an artist, taking what he is given and transforming it into something beautiful.

So, today I picked up my stock from Viewpoint Gallery in Nelson, which is closing (hopefully temporarily) in the face of an unknown future. My intention was to launch a Facebook pottery sale (Canada Post is still up and running, at least), but with everyone in survival mode, I wonder how likely it is that anyone will be interested in buying pottery right now? Can I please see a show of hands??