Featured Artists

Katherine Kingdon is quite a special potter. I use the word potter to be deliberately archaic. I made pots for 20 years and sold them to galleries all over the country, but that was back in mid-seventies to nineties. Most of us clay makers were “potters” back then. But things started to change as the old century bowed out, and potters made way for ceramicists, ceramists, and then the ubiquitous ceramic artist. “Ceramist” always make me think of an air freshener. And having opened Bluestone in 2000 I watched many a talented potter decide to go to art school, and come out a “ceramic artist” making items that were “idea driven” and often plain emabarrasing.

I have to say the tide has turned and we are blessed with scores of potters who produce beautifully made, attractive and creative pots which people love to own, use, or simply admire. Which brings me back to Katherine. Because she actually is a ceramic artist. Her pottery suggests stories, mysteries with an atmosphere that is puzzling and strange. The characters somehow have a medieval air, yet the props are modern, beer cans, headphones and the like. Groups gather, couples converse, but nothing is clear and everything is there to stimulate our imagination. These are pieces that reward observation, that will never grow old and dull, and they put to shame great swathes of so called “art”.