Peter Powning: Elemental Clay and Glass

In the past 25 years, Peter Powning has earned respect among connoisseurs of fine craft as one of Canada's most innovative ceramists. Many people recognize his distinctive and commercially successful raku pottery, but few realize that he is also a sculptor with an international reputation. Gloria Hickey has curated the first national solo exhibition of Powning's sculpture for the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, and Peter Elemental Clay and Glass documents this exhibition with 40 colour and 12 black and white photographs.Powning has exhibited his clay, glass and bronze works in over 60 galleries in the Canada, the US, Germany, Scandinavia, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan. He has brought home international honours from the Fletcher juried competition in Australia and the Mino International Ceramics Competition and the Kanazawa International Exhibition of Glass in Japan. In New Brunswick, he won the 1991 Deichmann Award for Excellence in Craft and the 1993 Strathbutler Award.

Gloria Hickey's curatorial essay tells how and why Powning made the pieces in the exhibition. Candid yet sensitive, it assesses Powning's importance among Canadian ceramists and glass artists, and it interprets the interests and values that permeate not only his pottery and sculpture, but his personal life as well.

Peter Powning's studio is at Markhamville, near Sussex, New Brunswick. He has served on the New Brunswick Arts Board, the Premier's Advisory Council on the Arts, and the New Brunswick Craft Council, and he has been a visiting artist at the Banff Centre. Gloria Hickey, a St. John's writer and curator, twice won the Betty Park Award of Merit for her contributions to criticalwriting about craft in North America. In 1994 she was nominated for the Imperial Oil Award Excellence in Arts Journalism.