We made careful choices of pottery tableware when we got married but it wasn’t until I had young children that I thought of making pots myself. I signed up for a parent-and-toddler class in Bradford, West Yorkshire in England, where we then lived. I loved every minute, and took classes year after year in the local adult education unit. We still use some old favourite jugs, mugs and bowls – some a bit chipped in places -- made back in the 1970s.
On relocating to Kingston, Ontario in Canada I joined the local potters’ guild and was encouraged to exhibit and sell my work for the first time. What a thrill to find that people wanted to buy what I’d made! I set up my own studio and started teaching classes of my own. That was in the early 1990s and now one of my daughters, abi, works alongside me in the studio.
Believing that art and craft can help to transform the ordinary into the beautiful I make mainly functional pieces for the home but I also enjoy exploring clay relief, figure work and more abstract forms as well. Our own home has bathroom bowl-sinks, as well as floor and wall tiles made in my studio. I work in stoneware, using an electric wheel (disability prevents me using a kick-wheel) and an electric kiln.
Over the past ten years I’ve found great stimulation and help from visiting or working with potters in Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand and the UK. The gritty wabi-sabi style of the Edmund Leach / Shoji Hamada connection is a great inspiration, but so is the work of my Australian friend Andrew Cope who relishes the most reckless experiments! I’m also deeply moved by the pottery poems in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, where God’s creative work in star-making or even forming humans is likened to the potter’s hands and fingers.
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Sue Lyon :: 293 Albert Street :: Kingston :: Ontario :: K7L 3V7
(613)544-7573 :: email Sue