A WORKSHOP WITH GWYN HANSSEN PIGOTT

Twenty-five Guild members signed up for the Apmil 17th session at Emily Carr, in anticipation of the opportunity ta meet and hear one individual who has such a history as a potter. If one spent the whole six hours with her that day, it was impossible to come away wilhoul a silent inner cheer, a “Hoorah!*, for this person Who has managed to pack what appears to be several lives into 40 years of working with clay, all the while obviously maintaining a very strong. guilet focus on her work as 4 polter.

She started out the morning with a demonstration of throwing the simple vessel forms in poreelain, while maintaining a dialogue with those presenl about both technical and philosophical dilemmas and concerns. She uses a very short, highly silicious porcelain clay to accomodate the high feldspar glazes, wood-flring to Cone 13 in her “Bouri", Freneh-style kiln. While the clay predicates to a degree the kind of throwing she presently does, Gwyn has as her main objective the creation of “still lives", and her concerns are wilh the forms and their relationships. Individual pieces, the small tumblers, bowls, and bottles are seen as components in the “sketches” she assembles. The shino-type glaze she uses is designed for the wood kiln, using only soda or potash as flux, with iron giving a wide range of warm colours, and stains also being used. With her traditional background, it’s encouraging lo knew that ahe has been willing to be “Headble" and “accept” electric wheels and commercial stains in her work, She readily acknowledges the very real limitations that we may impose on ourselves and our work by dogmatically refusing to change. She also admits toa few “dead ends”, where she had loaccept that ber direction was wrong Jor her, and made changes.

With the afternoon slide show, Gwyn discussed her early influences and showed a sampling of the pots that had inspired her, with relatively few shots of her own Wark prier to returning to Australia and the Jam Fartory

workshops in Adelaide. She now lives in tropical Queensland in a relatively remate area on her own.

[t's been pointed out that Gwyn's visit was unique in several ways. Firstly, there haven't been a lot of women potters in town lately to give one or two day workshops. The Potters’ Guild has been visited by numerous men potters, and there's no denying that Gwyn was an interesting change, Secondly. and Idon't think it's related to her being female, her work [s simpler and more direct than a lot we have been exposed to lately. And yet, is it? It certainly makes us look very carefully.

Owyn's accompanying text to her show at the Crafthouse on Granville Island {and where these photos were takerl included the following statements, which sum Up quite well her approach to her work and life,

Morandi, in Nothing if not Critical (Collins, Harvidl 1990) wrote;

*Modesthy, insistently, Morancli’s images try to slow fhe eye, ashoing tt togii: up its inattention, its restless scanning, and give full weight to something small

When Japanese desthetes spote of the quality called wabi, they had in mind something like this; theclarity of ordinary substance seen for itself, in tts true quality....Worandi’s entire fe was predicated on the prelorjed search for |

Morandi ts an obvious inspiration; Lacie Rie, too. Hans Caper too. Ivan MeMeekin, Piero della Francesca. Juan Gris, Ben Nichelsan too,

And lovely others, people and work. -

But more than these, the mystery itself; “wo * the Kindness of the stillness beneath the skin.

Luckily, beauty can't be understood - only hoped for

and semetimes felt.

Brancusi’s Birds in Space. a Korean penny rice bowl:

even. perhaps {] fervently believe a beaker.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, November [99]

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