2026
It is January 2026 and clearly time to update my news. On a personal and important note – Terry and I are now grandparents to six beautiful grandchildren, ages 1.5 to 6 years.
In October 2025, Ying Yueh Chuang and I adjudicated the Potters Guild of BC 70th Anniversary Show, Earth Fire and Form, November 2025 to January 2026. Angela Clarke curated the show at the Italian Cultural Centre. We were so impressed with the quality of the works presented, and the range in ages of the artists. At the end of the show, in mid January 2026, Carol Mayer, Amy Gogarty, Angela and myself gave a talk about publishing and critical writing around ceramics. Next month I will be adjudicating the Fraser Valley Potters Guild, and their show will be on display for the Canadian Clay Symposium in March 2026.
2025
For much of the summer and fall, I was working with Phyllis Schwartz and Edward Peck of Sassamatt Publishing, writing the final drafts of two biographies that have been on the back burner for years, Bill Rennie, His Realms and Havens, Architectural Marvels Realized in Clay, and Enduring and Enigmatic, the Work of Thomas Kakinuma. Both were published in late 2025 and are available on Amazon, the only affordable method to publish. The editing absorbed several very focused months, and Ed was a whiz at formatting the texts and images.
Also in the fall, my practice was included in a publication, Craft & Craftivism: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Ceramic, Fibre, and Glass Artists in Canada, funded by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University, a three volume e-publication co-edited by Loren Lerner, Janice Anderson, Shannon Stride, and Karine Antaki, which was unexpected and delightful news. My work was also included in a national online exhibition, CONNECT ONLINE 2026, developed by FUSION, Ontario Clay and Glass, and adjudicated by Teresa Dunlop.
In the summer of 2025, the Leach Pottery recorded an account of my finial classes, projects for the Leach, and the ‘Up on the Roof’ publications, and the near 70-year connection between BC potters and The Leach Pottery. On that note, I attended Glenn Lewis’s 90th birthday party at the Western Front in the fall (Glenn was a Leach apprentice 1961-63, and we crossed over at the Leach in 2017). In 2026, Glenn, Dr. Alex Lambley and myself, with Sassamatt Publishing, will be working on an undated edition of Seeking the Nuance . The first edition was in 2009.
VAG banner for the 2025 exhibition.
I was also invited to contribute an essay, A Home for Objects, about John’s collection and the importance of collections, for the accompanying publication A Place for Objects, edited by Stephanie Rebick and Michael Prokopow. For the same publication, Assistant Curator Andrea Valentine-Lewis wrote an essay about my practice, A Glass Person and a Mud Person. This image is courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
In July I wrote an article about the Written in Clay exhibition, and it was published in Ceramics Now Magazine, Collectors and Collections, Ceramics Return to the Vancouver Art Gallery. I believe the exhibition reveals an important shift in how public galleries are re-thinking the place of material arts in the realm of the visual arts, instead of dismissing them.
In January 2025, at long last, after years of being involved in the iMPACTS project, a vast SSHRC-funded investigation into sexual violence on Canadian campuses, headed by Dr. Shareen Shariff at McGill University, was reaching its conclusion (2016-2025). In Vancouver, the CCBC and professors Lisa Smith and Jaime Yard of Douglas College joined forces to mount an exhibition, Walking Alongside Trauma that was first displayed in the Amelia Douglas Gallery at Douglas College. It then travelled to Quebec and was included in the final symposium, iMPACTS – Collaborations to Address Sexual Vionece on Campus, held at the McGill Faculty Club in March 2025. Raine McKay and I travelled to Montreal and set the WAT exhibition up twice, and we participated in the symposium. The McGill Faculty Club is a beautiful facility.
2024
Much of 2024 was spent working on the figurative pieces I was contributing to Walking Alongside Trauma, and the writing for the accompanying catalogue. After my Dames show, a lot of attention was also required by the NWCF to manage our new endowment from Richard Younker, establishing potential new awards and scholarships.
The exhibition, Les Grandes Dames, went very well and I sold nine good pieces. Paul Mathieu corrected my French title, and made sure I put a ‘s’ on Grandes. Embarrassing, I should have known. Amy Gogarty wrote an article for Ceramics Now, Les Grandes Dames, Review, Amy Gogarty https://www.facebook.com/ceramicsnow/.
Our sixth grandchild, Arabella, was born, May 29, 2024, while we were driving though Nanton, Alberta, during our road trip back to Vancouver. One of those great phone calls.
Wallace Stegner writing Residency in April 2024, Eastend, Saskatchewan
In 2023 I applied for a solo exhibition at CCBC, which opens late June 2024 and runs for the month of July. I also applied for a residency at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend Saskatchewan, and was accepted for May 2024. I applied a number of exhibitions, rejected by most, and was accepted into FIREWORKS 2023, Ontario, and my piece received Best Of Show, to my surprise!! I now have some works for sale at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. During 2022, Raine McKay/The Craft Council of BC hired an intern who found a programme and assisted with setting up the BC Ceramic Mark Registry, now functioning at https://craftarchive.ca/s/bccmr/page/home. It took several months to write out the research and fill in many biographies and Allan Collier wrote many of the more historic biographies. It is not a perfect site, But, at least the 400 or so biographies along with marks are finally stored and are assessable.
The Dance/Craft performances were very successful, with music, a light show, Joe’s new choreography and the craft objects. It was a very immersive experience held at teh Milton Wong Theatre downtown in the SFU compass.
ARTICLES
Dance/Craft Joe Ink Poster Photo-Michael Slobodian
The Bill Rennie biography, and Cautionary Tales – on my response to the Koerner Collection, and connecting with Canadian Craft Councils on behalf of BCCMR and in response to the interest in BCCMR expressed by Martha Vida of the American version – The Marks Project.
Vasi Hirdo of ‘Ceramics Now’ has been very supportive of NWCF endeavours, and he got in touch interested in any future zoom talks, and so Amy Gogarty and I will be planning, selecting topics, and finding international panels. Perhaps plan 3 talks over 12 months.
One of my masks for Dance/Craft Video-Michael Slobodian
2022
By the end of the Playing with Fire exhibit (2020/21), the pandemic hit, and we all retreated to our homes and studios. I used the time to work on large pieces for the upcoming Dance/Craft performance and collaboration with Joe Ink Dance Co, engaging five craft artists – Patrick Christie, Stefanie Dueck, Deborah Dumka, Hope Forstenzer, new choreography – Joe Laughlin, music – Jesse and Josh Zubot, and a light-show – James Proudfoot. Accompanied by Claire Sanford’s virtual Reality films of our studios. They used 4 large figures, 4 heads, 2 masks and one dog! These dynamic multi- sensory performances were realized in the spring of 2022 and the work has been installed in the CCBC window on Granville Island.
The BC Ceramic Marks Registry is now ONLINE
During 2021/22 I also used the time to catch up on the BCCMR project and started to work on the artist biographies. Immediately after the Dance /Craft performances we were issued with a mid-July deadline to get the new BCCMR platform ready to go online. Allan and I worked extensively on the artist profiles with the help CCBC intern Tatiana Povoroznyuk who has created an entirely new platform. To our amazement BCCMR, along with the CCBC Craft Archive was launched in July 2022. Work will never stop on BCCMR – adding new artists and re-editing artist profiles. Next – urge other Canadian craft Councils to build their own craft archives. The CCBC has created an excellent and functional model.
BORDER LINE, 2018, finial, 2019 Installed, Koerner Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, Playing with Fire Exhibition [/caption]
A Long overdue catchup following the pandemic.
2019/ 2020/ 2021
After Mary and I returned from our residency in Shigaraki, Japan, I resumed my year-long residency at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, MOA, initially intended to study surface decoration on the Koerner tin-glaze collection. However, after absorbing Walter Koerner’s emotional connection to his collection, my ideas behind the MOA residency morphed into responding to religious persecutions and forced migrations, first imposed on many of the 16th/17th /18th C.artists represented in the Koerner Gallery, and then, during the Nazi regime, the afflictions imposed on Koerner’s own family, and presently, persecutions being tragically repeated and causing on-going mass-migrations. About 11 of these works were installed in the Koerner Gallery for the better part of a year, and were included in the seminal exhibition of sculptural ceramics, held at MOA in 2019/2020, ‘Playing With Fire, Ceramics of the Extraordinary’, featuring 11 BC artists, curated by Carol Mayer, with an accompanying Museum Notebook.
For the first time I had work accepted (3 pieces) into an Asian international Exhibition and their collection, the Changchun International Biennial.
Sept 2021
The NWCf put on our triennial fundraiser – this time restricted by Covid. We created an online and in-person auction and small event……That Pottery Thing…our most successful fundraiser ever. Jasper Sloan Yip managed our online and Tatiana Povoroznyuk assisted with filming the auction.
NWCF put on its first Zoom Talks – and were surprised at how many people we reached. Ronnie Watts talk about South African ceramics attracted people in Europe, Africa and N. America.
2019
The year started with an extraordinary 6-week residency at the Shigaraki Cultural Park in Shigaraki, Japan, along with 3 weeks of travel. Terry joined us. I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts – Arts Abroad Project Grant for the residency. My intention was to research the history and creation of figurative roof tiles in Japan, to expand my exploration of roof tile as an interactive platform for figurative work.
2018
My pieces in the 4th Edition of the International Ceramics Biennale in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, were awarded Honourable Mention – much surprised!!
Work on BCCMR continues in collaboration with CCBC. An intern has created a digital platform. Apparently the BC Ceramic Mark Registry is already in use, in its first reiteration, though by no means complete. Work continues with a group of craftspeople and dancers – a collaboration with JOE INK Dance Company – for a performance, installation based community exhibition in 2020. And I am working with Raine at CCBC for another collaboration on a McGill based research project called IMPACTS – about sexual violence, harassment at post secondary institutions.
11 pieces from my 2018 residency at MOA have been installed at the Koerner Gallery, as part of the Playing With Fire, Ceramics of the Extraordinary, exhibition being held at MOA Nov 2019-April 2020.
Donna Hagerman and I have been working on recording the papers and works of the late Bill Rennie (2015). In 2017 John David Lawrence, Jeannie Mah and I met to discuss creating an artist profile for Bill, as we felt his work may be scattered and his provenance lost. Terry has scanned Bill’s papers and slides, and Donna has been photographing Bill’s work and his fascinating moulds. When we have accumulated enough material, I will write about him, as I did for Thomas Kakinuma.
In February 2018 I retrieved an archive of papers, images, magazines and newsletters about ceramics in BC that I had been collecting for 13 years, from the office of the Gallery of BC Ceramics. The Gallery was being shut and the PGBC was losing its space on Granville Island. Magazines and newsletters were deposited in the Special Books and Rare Collections of the UBC Archives, and 13 boxes of other archival papers were organized and stored in the Craft Council of BC Archives in June.
Craft Council of BC Intern, Sarah Duggan, started work on digitizing the Registry of BC Ceramic Marks, BCCMR, in the summer of 2018. I have been collecting the marks since 2005 and delighted to see some progress on this.
2018 opened with an exhibition of Thomas Kakinuma’s work at the West Vancouver Museum. Interest in Kakinuma increased after the publication of my essay about him on the Studio Ceramics Canada Website in 2016…the whole event happened so quickly. I was able to meet up with Mrs Kakinuma and her daughter in November and after finding out so many new facts about Kakinuma, I felt I had to rewrite some of the original essay, and Darrin Morrison of the West Van Museum asked me to write for the catalogue.
I was also heading off to teach once again at the Leach Pottery in March, and felt that enough new information had come my way about the Leach Ridge tiles, that I should revise that publication as well. Phyllis Schwartz helped me to produce the poster about the ridge tiles for the Restated Clay Conference in York, UK, also in March. It was a wonderful, thoughtful conference.
Upon return from the UK I coordinated the fundraiser in May – From Oven and Kiln for the North-West Ceramics Foundation. It was our most successful to date!
I finally was able to concentrate on my residency at MOA . I am working there 2 or 3 days a week – to study and work on embellishment ideas. I have until Feb 2019. It is fascinating to be in the MOA so frequently and to walk around the collections. I will remain in town until Mary and I head off to Shigaraki in Feb 2019.
2017
In January 2017, Mary and I left for the ICS in Hungary for our 3rd residency. Later in 2017 I returned to St Ives to teach a sculpture class. Our eldest son was married in Sept 2017.
Mary and I have both been accepted for a residency in Shigaraki, Japan in February 2019, and have also been invited to a collaborative residency at the ICS in Hungary in October 2019., called Muscle Memory. Five other Canadians, a couple of Hungarians, and some Turkish artists will all participate. I am really looking forward to that.
Ceramic Arts and Perception published the Horse and Rider article in #106, that came out in December 2017. I will also be teaching at MISSA on Vancouver Island. Our second son, Maxwell, was married in June, another wonderful event.
The underpinning theme for 2018 will be my residency, just accepted, at MOA, the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, where throughout 2018, I will spend time studying the Koerner collection and the other ceramics in the collection. Looking at two things, surface decoration of the Anabaptist work, and at the nature of the overall collection at MOA – as the collection been donated through immigration.
IN 2017 in Hungary, our first week we studied mould making with master mould maker, Gabriella Kuzsel, in a small village near Oriszentpeter in western Hungary. After a week in snow and ice with Gabi and Steve Mattison, we travelled onto Budapest- ice on the Danube – and then onto the ICS. I hoped to work with Zsolnay materials for making coloured ridge tiles, but the factory has stopped production of these specialized clays. I ended up working with antique Hungarian roof tiles that were located by Jakab Kis, one of the technicians at the ICS.
Glenn Lewis – one of the 2017 GG Award recipients [congrats Glenn!!) Phyllis Schwartz and I published the Second Edition of Seeking the Nuance, and it was launched it in March 2017.
Finally after 3 years the final draft of UP On the Roof Bernard Leach and the Tradition of Equestrian Tiles, written with Peter Smith, was published in book form JUST before I left for St Ives in 2017. [Thank you to the NWCF for their publishing grant!] I taught the first sculptural class ever held at the Leach in June 2017 – Keeping Up the Tradition. Later I presented a talk at the Tate St Ives about Peter’s and my research.
The Mansfield’s – new editors of Ceramics Craft and Perception – will be publishing a version of the Up on the Roof book in the October 2017 #106.
In September, Joe Laughlin and Heather Dotto, of Joe Ink Dance Co came to my studio to make a video , “Dance Craft Interpretations and Connections” organized by the Craft Council of BC, and presented at the 2017 Canadian Craft Biennial in Ontario. An experience about the connections that exist between all forms of the arts. In the case of dance and ceramics, both relate to the body – terms often used for pottery – clay body, belly, foot, lip, shoulders. Good pots express captured movement. Both dance and ceramics relay narrative. And of course the radical differences – the fleeting experience of dance, and the permanence of clay – even as shards. It was extraordinary to watch a dancer move, with contained power, inside the confines of my studio.
Two family marriages, my nephew, James, and my eldest son, Jasper. Great events.
In October 2017 Mary Daniel and I opened a show about our residencies Stepping Out
and then we will apply for Shigaraki residency in 2018…we’ll see if we are successful…?
SOFA Chicago 2017
2016
2016 opened with the news that one of my pieces in the Ceramart Collection in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, was selected for an exhibit, “Inner Connections” in Bucharest.
Barry Morrison of Studio Ceramics Canada invited me as a guest writer, to write about Thomas Kakinuma. It was published in July 2016 https://studioceramicscanada.com
The interminable article “Bernard Leach’s Equestrian Roof Tiles and Their Location in the West Country.” [What a title!!] co-written with Pwter Smith, was published in FUSION in 2016, though there are errors in some of the labelling which have not been corrected. It is an online version only.
It was lovely to see everyone at the Leach in the fall of 2015, and spend time with Alex Lambley – she is still working on the final drafts of her PHD on the BC Leach apprentices. Yeah!
The Leach Pottery never stops giving….John Bedding has just let me know that the potters at the Leach wanted one of my equestrian sculptures as the MOJO, or kiln god, to ride on top of their new gas kiln. Now responsibility for the good, the bad and the ugly will be passed onto my Horseman.
2016 ended with the marriage of my lovely daughter.
2015
In November 2015, the CCBC nominated me to the Mayor’s Arts Awards, [City of Vancouver] as the 2015 Honouree for Craft and Design. In turn, I was asked to nominate an emerging artist, and was delighted to nominate Samantha Knopp, an inventive and highly skilled ceramicist, and active volunteer. My son, Jasper Sloan Yip, accepted the award on my behalf, as I was in Rome at C.R.E.T.A., for a six week residency with my travel buddy, Mary Daniel.>a https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/mayors-arts-awards.aspx
Earlier I was the recipient of the ‘Hilde Gerson Award’ by the Craft Council of BC. Mary Daniel nominated me. Thank you Mary. Hilde Gerson, herself a fine weaver, was an exemplary craftsperson and volunteer for the the Crafts Association of BC. she and I became good friends during the early 80s, when Gail Rogers was the Executive Director, and we were all fundraising to move the CABC to Granville Island. The CABC became the Craft Council of BC in the 2000s.
https://craftcouncilbc.ca/blog/2015/07/hilde-gerson-award-2015/
Mary and I attended a 6-week residency at C.R.E.T.A. in Rome, September to November 2015. We shared the space with Irish American sculptor, Nuala Creed. Thank you to our generous and knowledgable hosts, Lori-Ann Touchette and Paolo Porelli,….[they are currently at Kansa City at the Red Star Studio, for their own residency]…We had a grand time with Nuala! and we are still shaking our heads….were we really in the Eternal City???
ARCH-BC – ARCHIVAL RECORDS OF CERAMIC HISTORY IN BC – In 2011- 2012 – We embarked on a project to protect the history of BC ceramics, and one method was to preserve and make accessible the extensive newsletters published by the Potters Guild of Canada, published from 1965 -2003. We created ARCH – BC, which is a website dedicated to the newsletters of the PGBC, which is the oldest provincial ceramic guild in Canada. The newsletters trace the evolution of the ceramic art practice in British Columbia after WWII and include previous histories. This archival material, made available to the public, has been collected and made searchable by volunteers. In 2011, Jinny Whitehead, then President of the PGBC, instigated ARCH-BC, through contacting the History Digitization Project grant, at the Irving K Barber Centre at UBC. Linda Lewis volunteered her competency with computers, and Debra Sloan managed the project. The hardcopy newsletters were digitized, and from 2011-2013 the three volunteers uploaded the metadata and made the material searchable. Newsletters from 2004 can also be found on the PGBC site newsletter archive. With gratitude to the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC for their grant and support. Thanks also go to the North-West Ceramics Foundation.
LINKS
North-West Ceramics Foundation
Bill Rennie: His Realms and Havens, Architectural Marvels in Clay
Enduring and Enigmatic: The Works of Thomas Kakinuma
ARCH-BC, Archive, Records of Ceramic History in BC (PGBC newsletters 1965-2003)
CONNECT ONLINE 2026 – Fusion, Ontario Clay and Glass, exhibition
The Who, the Why, the What, FUSION MAGAZINE, vol 48, as Featured Established Artist
PGBC newsletters from 2004
https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/mayors-arts-awards.aspx
Debra would like to thank KENJI NAGI and GORAN BASARIC and TED CLARKE of ‘Image This Photographics Inc’, for their beautiful images, and DR. MATT TYAS for his photography of St Ives work and the traditional horse and rider tiles.
Debra Sloan is married to Terry Yip, with four children – all Sloan Yips – Isabel Evelyn [1985 ] Jasper Vandervoort [1987] Maxwell Alexander [1989] and Cooper Sills [1989]
four in-law children, Patrick Truman, Amanda Colquhoun, Inesha Viswakula, Lucia Alonso
and now Grandchildren – Axel River Sloan-Yip, Phoebe Marie Sloan Yip Truman, Ody Coyote Sloan Yip, Archer Makai Sloan-Yip and Arabella Ocean Sloan-Yip