High Country Pottery Show 2024
Article & Photos by Jerre Paquette
I was looking for the Kazy Farm tent at the Sorrento Farmers’ Market in late July when I came across Mark Hemmingson’s and Sheryl Wilson’s pottery and stoneware tent. I stopped to take a peek at their wonderful work and got caught up in a conversation with Mark.
Our engaging chat led him to invite me to consider linking my fine art photography with the upcoming High Country Pottery Show initiated by the pottery family Mud, Sweat, and Tears. Seems like he had taken note of some of my work and thought it would fare well at the Hi-C show, maybe even contribute something to it.
I welcomed his offer, but I was uncertain how photography and pottery would fit—it was a pottery show after all! —how would impressionist landscapes, bird and animal images, clouded skies, and human portraits contribute to a showing of simple pots for home kitchens?
B.C. POTTERY HISTORY
Well, I was soon to learn that the pottery artisans were thinking far more broadly about art than I was.
After visiting Mark’s and Sheryl’s studio in Sorrento, Sorrento Stoneware, to learn more about them and their work, I researched the history of the show itself and had my first introduction to what pottery was really all about and what the owners of Mud, Sweat, and Tears had long been contributing to our local lives and communities abroad, beginning in New Zealand some 35 years ago.
Kyle Cosford Glass Art
Now, I do not have the space here to share all I learned about pottery and the Mud, Sweat, and Tears pottery family so I’m inviting all SCOOP readers to visit three on-line sites rich in the history of B.C. pottery artisans, including Bruce and Laura Nyeste’s entire artistic family. I know you will be as amazed as I am—be ready to browse patiently; you will find it worth your while:
Mark & Bettina Wong Metal Art
Here is a very brief summary of what you’ll learn:
“Bruce Nyeste and Scottish born wife, Laura, have run a full-time production pottery in Sorrento BC supporting their family and serving their community.
In 1981 they returned from New Zealand and moved to Kamloops and later moved to Shuswap Lake and set up their pottery, Mud Sweat &Tears in 1986….
THE BOWL METAPHOR
DMorgan Bialkowski Painter
My response to all I read and learned by participating in this August’s pottery show can best be offered here through what I saw as the metaphor that spurred the Nyeste family to invite me and so many other artists to their long-established “Pottery Show”.
Think of their show in a poetic way: the entire show is an enormous bowl they have designed and built over decades and across continents. They fill it with their community’s artistic people and their eclectic art works, and they pass it along and around for everyone to enjoy and benefit from and even make livings from.
They fill that bowl with Guest Artists who create a wide variety of pottery ranging from high fired stoneware to raku, sculpture and porcelain; metal sculptures; fabric arts; jewellery; oil and water colour paintings; photography; felted wall art and sculptures; hand-fashioned glass pieces; ecoprinted textiles and paper products; ceramic floral designs mounted on driftwood—I’m certain I left some out, so put the show on your calendar and attend their next presentation of their arts bowl.
Meanwhile, and so you get a sense of the people and the energy and the colours and the textures of all that is offered at the High Country Pottery Show, have a close peek at the article’s photo offerings. Find more photos from the show, when you check out this article on the SCOOP WEBSITE, www.shuswapscoop.ca/
And breeze through the following names of all those who filled the bowl with their art:
Artists: Morgan Bialkowski, Lisa Durant, Kyle Cosford, Jerre Paquette, Mark & Bettina Wong, Rebecca Shepherd, Isabelle Gervias.
Potters: Gabrielle Labbe; Lynda Jones; Sue McLeod; Sheryl Willson; Grant, Laura and Bruce Nyeste; Jude Prevost.
See you next time!
Jude Prevost & Sorrento Stoneware Pottery
Mud Sweat and Tears, Pottery
