Toronto Potters’ 23rd Biennial Exhibition
November 7 - December 20, 2025
Reception: November 8, 2025, 2-5pm
Craft Ontario Gallery, 401 Richmond St West, Suite 108, Toronto
Toronto Potters’ 23rd Biennial Exhibition 'Common Ground' evokes the idea of shared experience, especially the deeply rooted, tactile connection found in working with clay. This exhibition celebrates the coming together of artists from diverse backgrounds and with varied styles, unified by the communal spirit of ceramic practice. Through our individual stories and approaches, we aim to forge new paths toward understanding, connection, and community - both with one another and with the wider world.
Toronto Potters is a volunteer-run, non-profit association of community-oriented clay enthusiasts consisting of makers, teachers, and collectors. Since 1979, the Association has provided a platform for the professional development of members through guest lecturers at monthly meetings, educational workshops, newsletters, sales of members’ work and more recently through Toronto Potters Studio at Artscape Youngplace, Studio 107-180 Shaw Street in Toronto.
Exhibiting Artists:
Alison Brannen is an artist, educator and sailor who has been producing art for 35 years. She has exhibited her large scale ceramic vessels at the Gardiner Museum 2020 and presents workshops in saggar firing in an electric kiln and contemporary Kintsugi gold repair locally and internationally. She is represented by Gagne Contemporary Gallery Toronto / New York. Her work has won many awards and been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Burlington, Carnegie Gallery, Todmorden Gallery and Oeno Gallery among others. Alison is Vice President of Fusion: The Ontario Clay and Glass Association and holds a MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and BFA from York University, Toronto.
"My pieces bridge the space between intimate object and abstract large scale sculptural form. My recent Artist’s residency at the Skopart Foundation in Skopolos Greece has opened up new possibilities in my ceramic practice. I am inspired by ancient Greek artifacts. I have many Greek neighbours and Toronto celebrates Greek culture and heritage. Together we share and experience common ground."
Andrea Poorter discovered wood firing at Sheridan College, Ceramics Program and has been engaged with this firing method ever since. She has been looking for friends with kilns and always willing to take on a stoking shift. The process of firing is something she enjoys, being with community and sharing time with similar minded individuals. Andrea likes the outcomes of the atmospheric firing and is constantly looking for different forms, making a series of items for each firing and hopefully building on existing forms and ideas. Andrea has recently re-discovered this firing method. Looking at glazes and glaze application is another step in the ceramic learning that is of interest to Andrea.
"The name of the exhibition entitled Common Ground, resonates with me as a woodfire maker. Community is an essential aspect of the firing process and requires compromise, discussion and grace. It only works when each member of the team is happy and involved. The outcomes require further discussion and reflection in order for us all to learn and grow. It is a community that is incredibly supportive and important. “Let’s Talk” consists of nine porcelain cups representing a group getting together to discuss, commune, converse, gossip, organize or to just be together, perhaps to achieve a common perspective and to learn from each other."
Barbara Banfield: "A life-long passion of working with my hands and a twenty-year span working in the garment industry, as a hobbyist I discovered the extensive world of ceramics. The intrigue led me to Sheridan College graduating in 2010. The endless exploration of the materials and the countless ways of creating forms is the foundation of my practice. Building both functional and sculptural pieces, primarily in porcelain rich with texture and glaze, through use I encourage the user to get closer to the handmade objects. My personal interest in the outdoors allows me to draw visual inspiration from both nature and architecture. With a personal interest in human behavior, I aspire to create groupings of forms that create a dialogue or tell a story.
"Hold Each Other" combines high fired, copper red slip cast porcelain cups nestled into a wheel thrown and hand-built tray using black stone ware. The cane handles nestle them all together so they can be securely transported. explores ideas of our environment, human nature and our relationships to one another. Through these sculptural yet functional forms, I attempt to create a dialogue from one pot to another, from one of us to another, and leave us with something to consider."
Brenda Nieves studied ceramics in the Craft and Design program at Sheridan College. She exhibits and sells at the Gardiner Museum and in her studio in Toronto Junction area. Brenda has won several awards including Pottery Supply House award from Toronto Potters Biennial 2016. Best in show in ceramics at the Art Gallery of Burlington all guild show 2017 and 2018, Fusion Fireworks two year touring Exhibit 2019, Fusion design award- 2021, emerging artist award at the Canadian sculpture gallery 2022. Nieves has participated in many exhibitions among them. “Come up to My Room” at the Gladstone Hotel 2020, Gardiner Museum, Arta Gallery, Ingram Gallery, Petroff Gallery, Art Square Gallery, Leslie Grove, Micak Contemporary and a solo exhibition at Celebration Square, Mississauga City Hall.
"In a season of loss, I found my family in art. What began as clay beneath my hands grew into something greater, a circle of kindred spirits who share the joy of shaping clay, of listening to the material, and speaking without words through touch. Clay is our common language, tactile grounding, fluid -holding our stories. In my clay community, as in my sculpture, we are like branches of a tree, reaching in different directions yet rooted in the same earth. Here knowledge flows easily. We teach, learn, and collaborate creating not only vessels of clay, but vessels of connection. My ceramics family is like a vessel. It holds what we pour into it-participation, joy of creating, and celebration. So too does our community hold us, offering support, and the courage to continue creating. Together we form a circle that is both sanctuary and catalyst: reminding us that art is never solitary. Through clay, we create belonging, through belonging we create our lives."
Deborah Hatanaka: "My practice is experimental by nature, with a background in textiles and graphic design, extending to slow labour and cross-disciplinary craft. I pursue inspiration from the natural world, reflecting and reimaging landscapes that hold personal meaning. My most recent works involve layering and cutting pigmented clay to form Nerikomi blocks. My past experience with fashion design galvanized an interest in perceiving how things are put together; I think of Nerikomi as a fabric from which I can cut and assemble, similar to garment creation. I am fascinated by how the infinite pattern-making possibilities of Nerikomi can become a conversation between control and chance, where the material itself holds onto moments of transformation. I capture moments: geological formations, patterns of water and sky, interplays of light and colour. By eliminating horizon lines and grand panoramas – which mark the dominant landscape convention – I wish to reveal intimate and ever-shifting details of nature."
Hana Balaban-Pommier is a Toronto-based ceramic artist and educator. Originally from Bohemia, she took her first pottery class shortly after immigrating to Canada and found in clay a perfect medium for expressing her ideas and interests. Hana’s educational background includes Post-Graduate Certificate in Ceramics from University of Massachusetts, Sheridan College Art and Design Program in Ceramics, the Fine Arts Program (Drawing) at George Brown College, and Art History Program at Harvard Extension School. She holds a degree in Occupational Therapy from University of Toronto. Hana’s award-winning work has been exhibited in the United States and Canada. She was a featured artist at The Gardiner Museum Shop 2021, and she was a recipient of Ontario Craft award in 2014. Her work was also exhibited at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Carnegie Gallery and The Fusion Fireworks, among others.
"I enjoy exploring the materials and methods of firing where chance and control intersects. Discovering the powers of fire and smoke or exploring simple surface enhancements allows me to feel connections to nature and history. I imagine living in ancient stories or mysterious ecosystems where the authority of nature dictates the final outcome. I contemplate the power and beauty of earth and fire to find a common ground with all life forms."
Carolynn Bloomer grew up in the Montreal area, where she studied Fine Art at John Abbott College.She moved to Toronto to attend Ontario College of Art to focus on design and material techniques related particularly to ceramics. Carolynn’s work has included installations in residences and a corporate office, a commission for a cosmetics company, and coffee ware for use in a local coffee roastery. It is in the collection of Scotiabank and has been purchased by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. She has taught art and pottery workshops in secondary and elementary schools, and she currently teaches adult pottery classes. Carolynn maintains a studio in Toronto’s west end, where she juggles clay, paint, and found materials. She’s interested in exploring form, function, perceptions of value, and our coexistence with nature.
"We have a symbiotic relationship with nature, and it’s often a blurry line between the “natural world” and our interactions with it. The materials we ceramists work with literally come from the ground, and I used them here to talk about nature and human activity; evoking a natural thing (i.e. a bark-covered tree-growth, or burl), and expressing the idea of human incursion. I poked repeatedly into the stoneware with my fingers, leaving human prints, then I incorporated a rusted metal object – an automotive part that, like our clay, is made from material taken from the ground. It was refined, fabricated, used; and having served our purpose, discarded – and is starting to return to the earth. Inserted into the pod form, its earthbound qualities are enhanced. “Natural” and “Manmade” coming in and out of focus."
Catharina Goldnau explores ceramic traditions, often adding non-conventional materials in her sculptural work. Following a life-long passion, she left a teaching career to study Ceramics at Sheridan College under Linda Sormin and Laura Kukkee and graduated witih a BA in Ceramics from the Craft and Design Program. Catharina was awarded the Gardiner Museum Award for her work at the Graduating Show in 2018 and was subsequently featured in a solo exhibition at the Gardiner Museum. Catharina continues to explore non-traditional ways of working with ceramic materials and forms. Her work often uses small batches of custom clays that are enriched with a selection of organic and inorganic additions. Mixing alternate materials and post-firing treatment of the surface enhance the unusual texture and earthiness of the material. Oxides, glaze rubs and gold luster provide depths of colour in the multi-fire process at temperatures that range from 700 to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Her sculpture, “Venus Balancing” is an abstracted clay female body in a balancing yoga position mounted on a rock.
Heidi McKenzie is a ceramic artist based in Toronto, Canada. Heidi completed her MFA at OCADU in 2014. She uses photography, digital media, and archive to forefront ancestry, race, migration and decolonization. Heidi’s indentureship series with archival image on porcelain, reclaims Heidi’s father’s Indo-Caribbean heritage where half a million Indians sailed from Calcutta to the British West Indies between 1838 and 1917 to replace the slaves on the sugar plantations. Her work is collected by the Royal Ontario Museum, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, and most recently, the Gardiner Museum’s newly reimagined Contemporary Canadian Ceramics Gallery. Heidi curated ‘Decolonizing Clay’ at the Australian Ceramics Triennale, 2019, and participated in the World Indian Diaspora Congress in Trinidad, 2020. In 2022, Heidi exhibited with the Shantz Emerging Ceramics Award finalists. She was inducted into the International Academy of Ceramics in 2022, invited to the 2024 Indian Ceramics Triennale in Delhi, bringing the stories of the Kalipani Crossing ‘home’.
"Homelands consists of 3 wooden window frames with hand-rolled porcelain panes and ceramic decals that tell the double diaspora South Asian story of crossing from India to the West Indies and re-settling in Canada through archival photograph, maps and ship's manifests."
Jacquie Blondin is guided by themes of familial and interpersonal dynamics. She articulates these observations in red stoneware, using a geometric vocabulary. Balancing calm and tension, she joins curved slabs so contrasting edges define the form—edge, seam, and shadow are the finish. An interdisciplinary ceramic artist and educator in Mississauga, she works across sculpture and functional ware, blending printmaking, textiles, and collage. With 30 years in visual arts education and a midcareer turn to ceramics, she now teaches locally and online. She has exhibited across the GTA, including the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair; has received the Longo’s Design Award (Mississauga Potters’ Guild, 2016); and has had work carried by the Gardiner Museum Shop. Her current focus explores balance and rhythm in forms with two, three, and four lobes inspired by Venn diagrams. Working from her home studio, she synthesizes lessons from mentorships, critiques, and workshops.
"Through geometric assemblage, my red clay sculptures map how people meet and hold. I think in Venn diagrams: intersections mark common ground where we listen and learn together, while open areas signal boundaries where growth and resilience emerge. My process is iterative—small, measured adjustments that gather into resolved forms. I segment leather-hard arced slabs—every segment accounted for—then reassemble and mend beveled, scored/slipped seams with compressed coils, leaving the groggy, iron-rich clay’s texture exposed. The seam is the context for connection. Symmetry and rhythm set the cadence as arcs meet and overlap; crossings propose new possibilities; separations hold tension. With an oxidation-fired, quiet finish, the geometry reads through light and shadow; in select works, gold glaze and thin oxide washes heighten contrast. Within this process I contemplate my relationships—when to support, when to withdraw, and how to find common ground without excluding others or losing myself."
Jamie Bennett is a ceramic artist whose work reflects a lifelong engagement with image-making. After studying Graphic Design, she spent many years as an award- winning illustrator before turning her focus to clay. Her sculptures weave together myth, memory, and observation, exploring the beauty and unease of the world around us.
"My journey with clay grew naturally out of my background in illustration. Moving from drawing into a tactile medium opened up new ways for me to explore my visual language in three dimensions. I draw inspiration from nature, people, folklore, myths, and the social realities of the world around us. My process often begins with sketches, capturing
silhouettes that later take form in clay. I work toward simplified shapes with rough, textured surfaces. Using hand-building techniques such as pinching and coiling, I push the clay into forms that balance structure and irregularity. Each piece carries traces of the process, celebrating imperfection as a source of character and beauty. “Medusa” is a bust of a rather complacent Medusa, she isn’t about horror so much as a reminder of how stories shift meaning over time. “Cerberus” is my not-so-monstrous, multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld, preventing the dead from leaving and the living from entering."
Lisa Gwen Robbins is a Toronto-based ceramic artist who owns and operates the Q.I. Clay Club, a community studio where she teaches and creates her one-of-a-kind ceramic pieces. Lisa has been working with clay for over 20 years combining her formal education in Craft and Graphic Design with varied hobbies and interests to create work that pushes the boundaries of ceramics through the exploration of materials, techniques, and inspirational focus. Lisa hopes to continue creating work that provokes curiosity and invites interaction.
"My work explores the universal structures that connect all things—a common ground shared by every form, pattern, and vibration in existence. Inspired by metaphysics and the recurring designs found in mathematics and nature—cymatics, the Fibonacci sequence, and growth fractals—I create vessels that echo the underlying blueprint of reality. Each piece is a meditation on the interconnectedness of mind, matter, and energy, revealing how everything is constructed from the same vibrational forces. Through my art, I invite viewers to recognize the ordered chaos and hidden harmony that bind us to one another and to the world around us. In this way, my vessels become a visual language for the shared foundation beneath our diverse experiences—a celebration of the unity and continuous transformation present in all things. “LACUNARITY: The Empty Space Between Fractals” is layered with fractal and vibrational patterns on the outside while the inside is black, exploring lacunarity: the spaces within and between fractal forms, inviting viewers to contemplate the unseen structures and silent rhythms that shape our reality."
Mary McKenzie, in her ceramic tile/textile integrations, considers the complexity of community engagement and survival. Her abstracted, not literal, imagery provides space for viewer-personal interpretation. McKenzie mark-makes and dyes her textiles with iron objects, clays and oxides as a connective vocabulary between textiles and ceramics. Ceramic and textile form a material-dialogue of distinct differences, each with specific survival needs and cooperative strategies. McKenzie's membership in Toronto Potters, and various other ceramic groups, provides crucial connections and engagements with a community of other artist. 10 years ago McKenzie started, and has maintained, a group of ceramic artists, a crit group, to discuss technical, aesthetic, as well as wider issues of meaning and purpose. Mary McKenzie's solo exhibition Metamorphosis in the Gardiner Museum foyer and shop contained integrated textile/ceramic pieces and was featured in Ceramic Art + Perception. Sheridan College (Ceramics), University of Alberta (BFA Painting).
Nancy Solway studied with Robin Hopper and Roman Bartkew in the 70's at Georgian College. Beginning her career as a production potter near Terra Cotta Ontario, she moved to Toronto in 1977 and became a part time teacher at George Brown College. She co-founded Clay Design Studio Gallery in 1980. She was on the Board of Directors at the Ontario Crafts Council for a number of years, and chaired the Crafts Advisory Committee, an important communications link to the maker community. Nancy continues to make work sold through Clay Design and Craft Ontario.
Peidi Wang’s current works focus on detailed wildlife sculptures, balancing realism with a dash of artistic interpretation. Her use of porcelain gently reflects nature's fragility and resonates with the delicate equilibrium of ecosystems. Each piece imbues its subject with unique charm and personality through subtle expressions. Her vision is to cultivate a personal bond between the viewer and the creature, placing emphasis on the individuality of each subject. This approach invites viewers to reflect on their personal interactions with wildlife, encouraging a deeper understanding and respect.
Peidi's art uses nature as a mirror for self-reflection and introspection, urging viewers to rediscover their true selves and find grounding in the tangible world. While aligning with broader conservation goals, Peidi's artistic perspective celebrates the individual journey of each creature within our shared natural world.
"Another Spring" is a captivating scene featuring two distinct characters of the natural world. The sculpture shows a red-winged blackbird, identifiable by its bright red and yellow markings, perched atop a resting red fox. The bird is busy collecting molted fur from the fox for its nest. The fox, nestled comfortably with eyes half-open, looks up at the bird, displaying a mix of annoyance and curiosity. The sculpted fur textures and expressive faces add depth to this portrayal. This porcelain sculpture highlights the individuality of these animals, showcasing their distinct "personalities" as they navigate the changing season. The detailed textures and vibrant colors bring out their unique traits, encouraging a deeper connection between the viewer and the subjects.
Born and raised in Mexico City, Shayne Berlin is a ceramic artist and pottery teacher living in Toronto. She has taught hundreds of children, adults, and seniors, helping them grow their creativity and skills. After completing an undergraduate psychology degree, she followed her passion and enrolled in the full-time ceramics program at George Brown College. After graduating, she got her first teaching job, where she discovered that teaching ceramics engaged her natural people skills and artistic talent in equal measure. For the next 30 years, she taught at schools, camps, pottery studios, and community centres. She also founded Show and Tell Pottery, a mobile pottery studio she ran for 10 years, facilitating workshops at schools and organizations that didn't have access to pottery equipment. Today, she has shifted her focus to creating her own art and sharing her creative projects online. She loves to create both functional and decorative sculptural pieces, and she’s most interested in the creative potential of hand-building. She is inspired by textures found in nature, modern architectural spaces that flow and curve, and the aesthetics and design of Denmark, where she lived for several years.
"Three distinct vases, curved and imperfect, stand together to find a common ground and create a shared perspective."
Silvana Michetti is a Toronto based mixed media artist currently working with clay. She studied Visual Arts at York University (BFA and BEd) and taught Visual Arts in Ontario high schools. The potential of ceramics to reflect personal experiences and convey ideas through material explorations makes it an engaging medium for her ongoing work in clay.
"I am exploring the relationship between structure and surface by shaping luminous porcelain into vessels for light. The structural forms have evolved from my interest in architecture, garment patterns, shells and leaf curls. Textural surfaces are influenced by textiles in which structure and surface are integrated to create patterns revealed by the light passing through the thin walls. I was inspired to create the three-part sculpture grouping “Sirens” to express the beauty and harmony of combined voices in song."
Talia Silva is a ceramic artist and designer from Toronto who uses hand-built and slip-cast clay forms to explore the expressive potential of surface treatments. Her introduction to clay came during her studies in environmental design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She has developed her craft in ceramics through extensive studio experimentation, specialized workshops with established ceramic artists, and a 2024 residency at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions and juried art shows in Ontario. She is a recipient of The Gardiner Museum Shop Award, 2023.
"My work explores intricacies of hidden worlds, reflecting on the temporal and cyclical nature of being and our interconnectedness with the natural world and each other. I am drawn to quiet, curved forms, which provide me focus for the rhythmic forming of hand building and the meditative process of carving clay. The incised portions are intended to be accentuated by the interplay of light and shadow. My work draws from intricate patterns in nature ranging from waterways, root structures, fossils, earth formations and ancient architecture. With my ceramics, I hope to inspire moments of stillness and contemplation, to invite a closer look at the often-overlooked details of wonder all around us."
Tanya Atkinson is a ceramic/mixed media artist based in Toronto working from her studio which she established in 2011. She lived and worked in several countries, including Russia, Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates. After completing her MA in Geography/Environmental Studies at the University of Toronto in 1995, she followed her husband on his work assignment to the UAE where she worked in her field and also started taking her first ceramic classes. After returning to Toronto in 2003, she continued attending ceramic programmes resulting in the establishment of her own studio, from which she is currently working.
"I am specialising mostly in hand-built sculptural work. My love for nature results in wildlife sculpture while my abstract sculptural work is based on the human body and reflects the beauty of human figure lines. The fact that I lived and worked in many different parts of the world helped me to form a global understanding of art and culture and has tremendously influenced my work. My recent sculptural pieces intend to address environmental and socio-economic issues affecting all aspects of our world and often caused by human activities."
Teresa Dunlop is a Newmarket, Ontario based ceramic artist. For thirty-two years, she was an elementary school teacher. Watching her students' creative exploration of material made Teresa want to be a maker as well as a facilitator. Seizing this dream, Teresa went back to school and completed the Craft and Design Ceramics program at Sheridan College. With this diploma, she began a second career as a potter/ceramic artist. For three years Teresa was an artist in residence in the Ceramic Studio at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.
In addition to this long-term residency, Teresa has also participated in two mentorships and an international residency. In 2017, Teresa opened her own studio in Newmarket, Ontario where she creates finely crafted objects intended for use and contemplation. She is a member of several arts organizations including: Toronto Potters, The Newmarket Group of Artists, Pine Tree Potters’ Guild, and Fusion: The Ontario Clay and Glass Association.
Born and raised in Argentina, Vanesa Trillia is an artist who calls Canada home. She is a graduate from the Ceramics Program at Sheridan College. Highlights from recent years include: the MPG Mentorship with Susan Low-Beer (2022), one of the Craft Ontario Retail Feature awards (2023), one of Fusion’s 50th Anniversary Scholarships (2024). In 2025, she was awarded the First Prize Adult Category by the BMFA (Blue Mountains Foundation for the Arts). Her work is shown in juried shows across Ontario.
The clay, shared material and common ground of ours, is undoubtedly a source of endless possibilities. What the unfired or fired results do not necessarily express, is the depth of friendships and community that are built because of this shared interest. Meaningful, supportive and longstanding. The sometimes easily available clay has taken eons to become -time and the elements have played a role. “The wind, the sun and the water” imagines some of those.
