For some, November signals the end of fall and the start of winter, but for Willock & Sax, November has become the Month of Ceramics.
This marks the second year the Banff-based gallery has dedicated the first month of winter to ceramics and this year the gallery is featuring the work of Bradley Keys in a solo show, Grounded, alongside a group show, The Makings III, featuring work by new and renowned artists.
“Over the years we have gradually added more and more people and actually have some of the most significant ceramicists in the country and then we‘ve got very good emerging people and mid-career people,” Susan Sax-Willock said Monday (Oct. 29). “It’s a good group of people with some interesting pieces and a wide variety of styles.”
The reception for Grounded and The Makings III will be held on Saturday (Nov. 3) from 3-5 p.m. with an artist’s talk at 3:30 p.m. Keys will speak first, followed by the artists in the group show.
Keys is heavily influenced by Alberta’s landscapes and his work, most of which is functional, embodies the prairies, the foothills and the mountains.
“He really identifies with the landscape and both the colours and the shapes and forms and rhythms and the glazes he puts on. All of the textures relates to the Prairies, mountains and foothills and his experience within the landscape,” Sax-Willock said.
With Grounded, she said, Keys is exploring the changing sense of the three-dimensional landscape within each piece. The lid of a jar, for example, represents the surface of the ground and the jar’s body goes through the geographical layers.
Willock & Sax has also teamed up with the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies to bring the travelling exhibition Les Manning: Common/Opposites to the Whyte Museum from Nov. 7 to Dec. 5.
The Whyte, meanwhile, is hosting an opening reception for Common/Opposites on Nov. 24 at 7 p.m. and Willock & Sax, meanwhile, is hosting a gallery talk with Manning and exhibition curator Joanne Marion on Nov. 24 from 3-5 p.m.
Willock & Sax will have a few pieces of Manning’s work, as well.
The Makings III features the likes of Luke Lindoe, founder of The Banff Centre’s ceramics program; Ed Bamling, The Banff Centre’s current ceramics facilitator of that program; along with work by John Chalke, Barbara Tipton, Robin Dupont, Emily Schroeder Willis, Do-Hee Sung, Priscilla Janes, Sean Kunz, Fran Cuyler and Reed Weir.
“I often, when somebody comes in and we’re talking ceramics, shift into art history mode and I do a little history lesson. There’s Luke Lindoe and he founded it, and there’s Les Manning, he developed it and there’s Ed Bamling, he’s continuing it,” Sax-Willock said.
Willock & Sax plans on building on Month of Ceramics for 2013 by offering more artists’ talks and other similar events.
For more information on the Month of Ceramics go to www.willockandsaxgallery.com
