upcoming: Sydney Craft Week 2020 

by | Sep 13, 2020 | Uncategorized, workshops

Theme: Change Makers

Festival Dates: 9 – 18 October

Sydney Craft Week is about celebrating creativity and the handmade in all its forms. This festival creates the opportunity for the whole community to engage with craft, experience the benefits of making, and purchase local handmade work.

Be part of Sydney Craft Week, bringing together Sydney’s contemporary craft community in a city-wide festival.

Sydney Craft Week is the only festival in Sydney dedicated to making by hand. Led by the Australian Design Centre (ADC) and supported by an advisory group of craft sector professionals, Sydney Craft Week brings together contemporary crafts organisations and individuals in a celebration of craft across the city as part of a ten-day festival each year in October. The festival fosters community participation and creativity, with the opportunity for the public to meet artists, buy and learn about craft and get involved in making.

Each year, Sydney Craft Week puts out a Call for Entries for galleries, shops, cultural organisations and institutions, and individual makers to host events, ranging from large-scale exhibitions to one-off workshops encompassing the breadth and power of craft.

The festival takes place over 10 days in October. Sydney Craft Week invites all residents and visitors to experience Sydney’s vibrant craft scene. Most events are free to enter, with ticketed events managed by host organisations and venues.

www.sydneycraftweek.com

 

 

Hiroe Swen: A Lifetime in Ceramics

by | Sep 9, 2020 | Uncategorized

Our next exhibition “Hiroe Swen – a lifetime in ceramics” is a ‘must see’ and will be on show from 20 September. There is a harmony between nature and practicality in Hiroe’s work.  Her pottery is functional, her artwork gives a simple feeling of “Kokorozukai” or consideration for others.  She expresses her joy through the unique forms of her work to achieve a new and personal sense of art and style.

Hiroe Swen was born in the old capital city of Kyoto, regarded by many as the cultural heart of Japan. At age 23 Hiroe began a 5 and a half year apprenticeship at the Kyoto Crafts Institute under master potter H Hayashi. At that time, female potters were very rare and Hiroe was a pioneer in ceramic society. She met her future husband Cornel in the mid-sixties and together they migrated to Australia in 1968. Hiroe and Cornel have lived in Australia ever since and throughout her life Hiroe has been a prolific creator of ever changing and evolving hand built ceramics. In 2016, Hiroe-san was awarded The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays by the Government of Japan for her contribution to the promotion of Japanese culture and mutual understanding between Japan and Australia.

In this landmark exhibition at Sturt, for one of the most important Japanese-born ceramic artists still working in Australia today, we recognise the 6 decades of Hiroe’s extensive career as well as showcase the stunning new work being made by Hiroe today. The exhibition will run from 20 September to 15 November and a digital catalogue is available for the purchase of Hiroe’s new work.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings there will not be a public opening for this exhibition but the exhibition will be on show for 7 weeks so there is plenty of time to plan your visit.

This project has been supported by the Embassy of Japan in Australia.

www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/exhibitions/sturt-gallery

movie day: Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists

by | Sep 9, 2020 | Uncategorized

For portfolio purposes only, this is a video walk through of Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, an exhibition curated by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Ana Taylor for Minneapolis Institute of Art // © 2020 Minneapolis Institute of Art

“Women have long been the creative force behind Native art. Presented in close cooperation with top Native women artists and scholars, this first major exhibition of artwork by Native women honors the achievements of over 115 artists from the United States and Canada spanning over 1,000 years. Their triumphs—from pottery, textiles, and painting, to photographic portraits, to a gleaming El Camino—show astonishing innovation and technical mastery.”

 

a site to see: Black Craftspeople Digital Archive

by | Sep 8, 2020 | Uncategorized

“The valued decorative arts, architecture, and handcrafts of the early American South depended on African American hands, a truth highlighted by folklorist John Michael Vlach in the seminal exhibit, “The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts” at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1978. Yet, some forty years later, too few historians, museum curators, and certainly visitors to the public history institutions of the United States are presented with that truth. The Black Craftspeople Digital Archive (BCDA) seeks to showcase black craftsmanship while bringing to light the stories of black craftspeople.”

blackcraftspeople.org

Lots of online workshops available through Pot LA

by | Aug 28, 2020 | Uncategorized

POT is a full-service pottery studio owned and operated by people of color, a majority of which are women and Los Angeles natives. We are devoted to celebrating the cultures and communities surrounding us through an ancient art form that connects so many of us. We felt a need for a space that felt accessible and empowering for those that felt marginalized in ceramic spaces – namely persons of color, the queer community, and millennials.  Plus, we are huge pottery lovers who admire the craft for all its creative, therapeutic, and cultural elements. 

​We’ve been getting weird since July 2017, and we’ve thus developed a community of kind, radical, funny, and incredibly supportive people. Our staff consists of and is run by our members. We are outsiders to the institution of art, do everything in house, and we have a DIY non-traditional approach to all things. Most of us are POC, many of us are queer, and we are always committed to proliferating radical art and providing a safe space for uncensored creative expression. We aim to provide an alternative to vanilla pottery spaces. 

​Mandy, our founder, is Iranian and wanted to celebrate LA being a hub for so many diasporas seeing as LA is the largest diaspora for Iranians in the world. Her dream was to facilitate a space that builds community and cultivates culture in Los Angeles, while also creating fun fulfilling jobs with living wages for radical POC artists. With Mandy being an avid handbuilder, she enlisted the help of our Studio Manager Ambar to man the wheel (literally) and opened POT. Ambar is an LA-native Salvi woman with a commitment to radical activism, and she is also a self-taught wizard at the wheel.  The two shared a commitment to activism, social politics, laughing, and pottery – which made POT come to fruition organically. 

​Part of POT’s mission is to break down the walls surrounding art spaces in LA and create a beginner’s oriented studio. We recognize that not all of us are raised with the privilege of growing up with the arts, many of us are adults wanting to try new things for the first time – and that’s a beautiful thing. We aim to provide a chill and fun adult atmosphere where people can laugh, dig their hands in, and build up a fire inside through pottery. This is ceramics for activists, meme lovers, abuelas, and everything in-between. 

​POT is committed to being accessible to persons of color and the native Echo Park community. We have numerous practices to ensure we give back to the community.

Please visit our Community page for more information. POT is an inclusive space for everyone. We encourage you all to sit back relax, connect, laugh, and get your hands on some pot…tery. 

Find out more HERE!