by Carole Epp | Jul 6, 2026 | workshops
Parallel Play is a 1.5-day workshop in Toronto’s east end built around the joy of pure experimentation. Through terra sigillata, slips, engobes, symbolic imagery, narrative mark-making, and low-fire glazes, you’ll shake up your surface language and rediscover what makes making fun.
Jenny Mendes is a full-time studio artist and educator from Chesterland, Ohio, whose practice has been shaped by residencies across Europe and Asia — we are so excited to welcome her to Toronto! Annie McDonald has been running a low-fire ceramics practice in Brighton, Ontario since 2003, and as a former art teacher, FUSION mentorship alumni, and recipient of our Best in Clay award, she brings warmth, expertise, and a whole lot of heart.
As longtime friends and collaborators, Jenny and Annie bring something to the learning environment that goes beyond a typical workshop. It’s a genuine creative exchange, and you’re invited in.
📅 August 8–9
📍 MUD The Clay Studio, Toronto
www.clayandglass.on.ca/workshops-parallel-play
by Carole Epp | Jul 4, 2026 | workshops
Surface Matters is an invitation to linger at the edge of material—where clay stops being form and becomes language. Here, surface is not finish but beginning: a place where fire, hand, air, and time leave their traces. Glaze blooms, breaks, and crawls; textures gather like memory; colour settles like weather across skin.
Across these conversations, artists explore surface as terrain—layered, unstable, alive. Each mark holds evidence of process, place, and intuition, revealing how matter can speak when pushed, coaxed, or allowed to unravel. In this gathering, surface is everything: the record of making, and the space where meaning quietly emerges.
In 2021, AX conducted a survey of potters, ceramists, and other industry professionals in the Atlantic provinces. The results were clear: a need for a tighter, stronger ceramics community. In response, AX is offering the only ceramics conference in Atlantic Canada.
Join us October 1–4, 2026, for the third biennial AX Atlantic Ceramics Conference: Surface Matters. Over four days, the conversation unfolds through the work and ideas of Alex Bevan-Baker, Joan Bruneau, Chris Colwell, Matthew Cripps, Darren Emenau, Jamie Germaine, Maria Guevara, Linda Homenick, and Tim Isaac—each offering a distinct approach to clay, process, and surface.
Your registration includes a welcome kit and access to a full program of talks, discussions, presentations, playful exchanges, networking opportunities, a live music concert featuring Montreal-based Pastel Blank, and a studio tour with Linda Homenick. Light breakfast and lunch are provided on Saturday and Sunday, offering space to gather, pause, and continue the conversations beyond the stage.
Optional experiences extend the weekend further: a raku firing workshop with Tim Isaac, and a bus tour through the studios of ceramic artists across Saint John, the Kennebecasis Valley, and the Kingston Peninsula—both available at an additional cost.
At its heart, the weekend is about community in motion—artists meeting artists, ideas crossing tables, and connections forming in real time.
Register now at axartscentre.ca
by Carole Epp | Oct 18, 2022 | exhibition, workshops
We are pleased to announce “Commonly Uncommon: Selections from the Museum of Contemporary Craft Collection”, a three-part exhibition of objects and archives on view November 3 – December 10, 2022.
Co-curated by Hannah Bakken Morris, Sara Huston and Abby McGehee.
Please join us for a public reception on Thursday, November 3 from 5-8-pm and return in the following weeks of November for a panel discussion and film viewing.
The Museum of Contemporary Craft served as a vital nexus for the consideration of art, craft and design in Portland from its founding in 1937 to its dissolution in 2016. The permanent collection and the institutional archives, under the stewardship of PNCA and Willamette University, remain important resources for these continued and ever-shifting conversations. This exhibition presents objects that illuminate issues of function, use, the nature of labor, and methods of production. Viewers can engage with both objects and archives to understand the way in which they inform one another as well as the multiple ways makers, curators and audiences appreciate and define an institution and its place in a regional artistic ecology.
A complimentary panel discussion about the collection, craft, and community-building will take place on Thursday, November 17, 2022 from 6:30-8pm at the Lemelson Design and Innovation Studio on the 1st Floor of PNCA. This discussion will be moderated by Namita Gupta Wiggers (past Curator for the Museum of Contemporary Craft) and will include exhibiting artists Hilary Pfiefer, Joe Feddersen, Charissa Brock and other exhibiting artists. This event is open to the public, free of charge.
Additionally, please join us a week earlier to attend a screening of “Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y. Craft, Art and Design”, a film made by exhibiting artist Faythe Levine, in the PNCA Mediateque on Thursday, November 10th at 5pm. This film is the culmination of nationwide research and interviews for which its archive will be displayed in the Dane Nelson and Ed Cauduro Collection Studies Lab at PNCA, as part of the Commonly Uncommon exhibition. This event is open to the public, free of charge.
by Carole Epp | Oct 5, 2022 | workshops
After a more than two-year hiatus due to Covid, the North-West Ceramics Foundation is thrilled to finally be able to present Martina Lantin as their featured speaker. Martina will present via Zoom on Sunday, October 16, 2022, at 1pm PST. The presentation is free and open to all, but registration is required. Please see below for information about how to register.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Martina Lantin received her Master of Fine Art degree from NSCAD University in Halifax. She has participated in residencies in Canada, the United States, Germany, Iceland and China, including the Watershed Centre for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME; the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN; and the Liling Ceramic Valley Museum in Liling, Hunan Province, China.
Martina has written for various ceramic publications and edited the 2017 summer issue of the Studio Potter journal. Her work has been included in numerous juried and invitational exhibitions internationally. Recent participation includes Borderline, the Alberta Biennial 2020 and The Pots and Passion of Walter Ostrom at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Martina Lantin is an Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts.
Martina mines the history of ornament and pattern to explore the mutation and boundaries of functional ceramics through vessels and installations. More recently, her exploration of adaptation and change has engaged emergent technologies as a method of production. In her talk “Role: Function and Object,” she will share new works produced during recent residencies in Iceland and Germany and discuss the evolution of her practice. Her talk will take place on Zoom on October 16, 2022, at 1pm. Registration is required.
To register, please click on this link, which will take you to a sign-up form. We look forward to seeing you there!
For more on Martina Lantin , please see her website
To receive periodic email updates about upcoming NWCF events, please see here.
by Carole Epp | Oct 2, 2022 | workshops
The Hand Building Basics online course starts next week and runs Oct 4-Nov 29.
It’s the perfect course for beginners and throwers looking to expand their hand building techniques.
It’s not too late to join.
PS participants should have access to a kiln to get the most out of this course.
Let me know if you have any questions. I’d be happy to help you.
🔗Course info – click to learn more
https://courses-with-jacquie.thinkific.com/courses/hand-building-basics-fall-2022
Or go to https://jacquieblondin.com/pages/workshops-and-classes
