Lindsay Montgomery March 13, 2024

Lindsay Montgomery works across a variety of media including ceramics, painting and puppetry to create narrative videos, performances and objects. Her work is focused on creating personal mythologies that address a wide range of topics and issues including death and mysticism, family dynamics, and evolving modes of power. She earned a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and received her MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally with exhibitions at The Gardiner Museum for Ceramics, The Archie Bray Foundation, and The National Conference on Education in the Ceramic Arts. She is the recipient of numerous awards including The Helen Copeland Memorial Award, The Joyce Carlyle Memorial Scholarship in the Crafts Endowment, and an individual project grant from The Canada Council for the Arts. She lives and works in Toronto and is currently an Assistant Professor at Concordia University in Montreal.

Lindsay Montgomery has written:

My work examines the mythologies and craft traditions of western Europe to create new vessels, figures, stories, and performances that update historical narratives and practices to connect and continue ancestral craft traditions, as well as deeply critique the problematic foundations of western society. I reimagine objects, stories, and rituals from the past and spin them with new meanings and messages to reveal the slow spiritual progress we’ve made since the Dark Ages in the hopes of both preserving and continuing important craft traditions without erasing or perpetuating harmful attitudes, as well as critiquing the evolution of western society with its continued penchants for violence, colonization, and discrimination. I continually highlight the separation of craft from consumer culture in my work to solidify its place as an essential exercise for us all to create meaning and connection in an increasingly non-tactile and isolated world.

For more on Lindsay Montgomery, please see here website.

Lindsay Montgomery, Mother, 2020

Lindsay Montgomery, Mother, 2020, detail.

Julie Moon February 13, 2025

Julie Moon is a Toronto-based ceramic artist, holding a BFA from OCAD University (2005) and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (2010). Her dedication to her practice is motivated by material and process. The universality and tactile qualities of working with clay offers a refreshing contrast to our screen-dominated lives

The surface of her sculpture and vessel works is a canvas for expressing individualism and diversity.  Julie often draws from popular culture, using an accessible visual language that resonates with broad audiences. Her work pays homage to the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 70’s and 80’s, while embracing the inclusive spirit of the 1960’s and 70’s counterculture movement. Simultaneously, Julie’s admiration for the bold and clear aesthetics of modernism and post-modernism, is also very apparent.

Prior to ceramics, Julie spent over a decade in the garment industry while studying fashion technology; today, Julie continues to be inspired by the language of ornament, pattern, tactile media, and the human figure. Her practice is deeply connected to the intuitive process of making, allowing subconscious thoughts and geometries to manifest. The resulting works range from imaginative and intricate sculptures that are botanical, figurative, or abstract.

Julie has exhibited internationally in galleries across Canada and the US, notably the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, ART Toronto, the Philadelphia Art Fair, MASS Gallery in Austin, TX, Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN. Julie has worked extensively as an artist-in-residence, including at The Ceramic Art Center in Berlin, Anderson Ranch Art Center in Aspen, CO, The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MO, and a four-year residency at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA.

More on Julie Moon can be found on her website.

Julie Moon

Lisa Creskey January 9, 2025

Lisa Creskey is a ceramic artist who lives and works in Chelsea, Québec, Canada. She studied Studio Art/Art History at Concordia University in Montreal and painting at Parsons School of Design in New York. Her work explores visual storytelling through sculpture and installation. She creates surreal, immersive worlds that engage the intersection of history, time, nature, landscape, and art history. Her work has been collected by the Global Affairs Canada, the Yingge Ceramics Museum in New Taipei City, Taiwan, the Korea Ceramics Foundation in Incheon, South Korea, the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils, Latvia, the Aimia Canadian Art Collection in Toronto, the City of Ottawa Art Collection, the Prime Minister of Canada’s Office (PMO), and numerous private collectors.

Lisa’s ceramic and mixed media outdoor public art installations were commissioned for the outdoor Sentier culturel/Culture Path in 2022 and 2023 in downtown Gatineau, Quebec. Her mixed media Return to the Nest was acquired in 2023 by the Global Affairs Canada Visual Art Collection. She was commissioned by the City of Ottawa to create and present a sculptural gift to Princess Margriet of the Netherlands at Ottawa City Hall in May 2022. Her most recent international recognition includes Finalist in the 2020 Taiwan Ceramic Biennale, Finalist in the Korea International Ceramic Biennale KICB2019 and being awarded a 2019 Taiwan Ceramics Residency hosted by the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum.

More on her work can be found on her website and Facebook account.

Lisa Creskey

Conjoint, 2021, ceramic, 25 x 50 x 25 cm

Shikha Joshi November 14, 2024

Shikha Joshi will be our featured speaker on Thursday, November 14, 2024, via Zoom. Shikha is a studio potter based in Round Rock, Texas. Born and raised in New Delhi, India, Joshi learned ceramics through community classes and workshops in the US. Her work has been featured at prominent galleries like Companion, Charlie Cummings Gallery and Clayakar. She has exhibited at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts where her work is part of their permanent collection. Joshi has been published in Ceramic Monthly, Surface Design for Ceramics, and 500 Platters. She has taught numerous workshops nationally and internationally, sharing her passion for creating surface variation in an electric kiln.

My creative process results from an interplay between form and function. I like to explore form, to create pots with strong shapes, with the underlying guiding factor being, achievement of good functionality. The rich earthy hues strongly appeal to the artist in me, which in turn dictate the choice of my clay and glazes.

I find myself being drawn to the Japanese aesthetic of “Wabi Sabi”. Loosely translated, it means beauty in imperfection. Consequently, the surfaces of my pots have slowly transitioned from intricately carved to being rustic, earthy and organic. I hope my pots echo the silent austere beauty and simplicity of the natural world and infuse the user with a feeling of meditative peace.

Colors and textures of rocks, tree bark, algae are some of the things that inspire me and I am constantly experimenting with slips, glazes, colorants and inclusions to recreate that look. The desire to emulate the rustic surface of wood fired ceramics within the constraints of an oxidation kiln continues to guide me on my evolutionary journey as a potter.

For more on Shikha Joshi, please see her website.

Amelia Butcher October 10, 2024

Amelia Butcher will be our invited speaker at our meeting on Thursday, October 10. Amelia Butcher is a Vancouver-based visual artist and educator with a sculptural, pottery, writing and drawing practice centered in clay. A 2013 graduate of Emily Carr University, she is a founding member of the Dusty Babes Collective and a dedicated volunteer kiln tech at the Potters Guild of BC community kiln. She makes artwork about worms, women, weeds and Frankenstein, exhibiting widely and instructing classes and workshops in clay and comic-making for all ages. For more on Amelia, please see her website here.

I am a visual artist with a practice centered in clay, in particular reduction-fired porcelain and stoneware. Sculpture, figuration, illustration and pottery swim together freely in my work. I’m a maker led by craft, material and narrative. I play with the slippage between 2D and 3D, drawing and sculpture, fiction and non-fiction, trying to make objects that are self-conscious of their own act of making and capture moments of transfiguration.

Amelia Butcher and Swimmer.

Amelia Butcher. Left: Volcano Bucket. Right: Reader.

Pat Schendel and Brendon Martin: Crystalline Glazes, September 12, 2024

FVPG members Pat Schendel and Brendon Martin will present their work at our first meeting of the new season. Through many years of working with clay, Pat Schendel came to love Crystalline Porcelains. She learned her craft from the masters—Peter Ilsley from England and Diane Creber from Toronto. Her work has been shown in a number of galleries in the Fraser Valley region and in every FVPG Exhibition since 1992. Pat served as mentor to Brendon Martin, who also appreciates crystalline glazes. Brandon’s work was featured in several galleries alongside Pat, and in FVPG exhibitions since becoming a member of the guild.

Left: Brendon Martin; Right: Pat Schendel

Pat Schendel and Brendon Martin