Winkler Arts and Culture’s latest exhibition invites art lovers to come together and consider the role pottery plays in all our lives.
Photos by Ashleigh Viveiros/Voice
Renae Hildebrand (above) and Kristina Lik (right) with some of their ceramic art pieces now on display at Winkler Arts and Culture
Gather features the pottery of artists Kristina Lik, Renae Hildebrand, Val Zacharias, Lori Friesen, and Jane Reimer, ranging from intricate board game sets to beautiful but functional tablewear to purely artistic pieces.
“I’ve been thinking about the word ‘gather’ for years, thinking about how it comes up so much with clay,” said Hildebrand, who spearheaded the show alongside Lik. The duo co-own Winkler Clayworks, from which they sell their varied ceramic pieces and also offer classes.
Clay, in its many forms, is with us through every phase of our life, Hildebrand observed.
“It’s something that we hold quite a bit when we’re sitting together and talking,” she said. “If we’re gathering our thoughts, we might write in a journal with a cup of tea or coffee beside us.
“At birth, people will often do handprints or footprints of their kids in clay,” she continued. “And it also carries us around to funerals with the urns we might use at the end of life.
“And when thinking of the word ‘gather’ I also think how we were created from dust, and we go back to the earth as dust. It’s really just full circle.”
Hildebrand and Lik reached out to other ceramic artists in the area and invited them to ponder a bit on the theme and submit a few pieces to the show.
“There was a lot of eagerness,” Lik said.
“People were really excited to be able to showcase their work here in such a beautiful space,” Hildebrand added, noting pottery and sculpture have been on display at the art gallery before, but often as a smaller part of a larger show, not as the main focus.
“Endless possibilities”
When an artist has a ball of clay before them, it could become literally anything, Lik said.
“It’s just endless possibilities. There’s not a specific way to do something or a specific way it has to look—it’s really you just sit down and sometimes you don’t even know where that ball of clay is going to take you. It can be anything you want.”
It’s neat to see how different artists will approach common pieces, Lik noted, putting their own unique spin on things.
“You can really see a person’s personality or style come out in their work.”
Hildebrand hopes gallery patrons will walk away from the show with a greater appreciation for pottery as an art form.
“I just hope they realize how much heart goes into homemade pieces compared to factory-made pieces,” she said, noting there’s a personal connection that comes when you know a piece you love and may use every day was crafted by another human with care and consideration. “People will say, ‘That’s the mug I go to every time because I love the way it feels.’ You don’t say that about mugs you get at a store.”
For Jane Reimer, who dipped her toes into pottery a couple of years ago and quickly fell in love with it, it’s the mix of beauty and function that draws her to this medium.
“There’s something about making something I can use,” she said of the vases, planters, bowls, and mugs she has on display in the show. “There’s something so satisfying about it.
“I don’t always know before my hands touch it what it’s going to be,” she said. “I might have an idea sometimes, but not always. And then all the sudden it’s ‘I have to do this’ and it’s where did that come from? It’s all coming through my hands.
“I always liked Play-Doh as a kid,” she added, laughing. “This is just the adult Play-Doh.”
She hopes visitors to the gallery will see “that pottery’s not just one thing. It can be functional but it can be fun and it can be art as well. It can be tiny and it can be big.”
Gather is on at the Park St. gallery until Feb. 10.
