CLAY ROOTS:
The Potters Club and its Legacy at the Visual Arts Center
 

 

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Clay roots recounts the beginnings of the Potters’ Club in 1946, the first women’s clay  collective in Canada, tracing its evolution from an artist run collective to an independent  art school, the Visual Arts Centre, and documenting its contribution to the development  of ceramics in Canada.  

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Excerpt: (Reclaiming a history)

“The Potters’ Club began in a coalbin basement on Aylmer Street in Montreal in 1946. For
almost three decades the group thrived as an artist-run working collective with clay as its raison d’être. Clay Roots recounts the Club’s beginnings, shared ambitions, creative struggles and glorious heydays. It attempts to give voice to the strong women who brought the Club into being and kept the fire going all those early years.
 

The Potters’ Club was founded following the end of the Second World War, a time in which the role of women was being re-envisioned, relationships between French and English communities in Quebec were being redefined and, in the broadest context, ceramics was claiming its status as art and discovering new inspiration far beyond Quebec borders. All these contexts coalesce to inform the story of the collective, its contribution to the development of ceramics in Canada, and its evolution into an independent art school – the Visual Arts Centre.”

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