Mother and child reunion
There is something a bit oceanic about Amanda Buder’s ceramics.
When I first came across Buder’s work at the Arnica Artist Run Centre, I was struck by two organic squid-like ceramic invertebrate pieces hanging on the wall.
The pieces almost seem alive, their bodies shining glossy sea-foam blue with delicate colouring and shell-like tide pool decorations.
Long tentacles fall gracefully down the wall, while one clasps a smaller sea creature in a hungry embrace.
These pieces are called Mother by the artist and she has also created children for her imagined invertebrate.
“I do everything I know how to do texturally and intellectually with them,” says Buder.
“I make the mothers first and the babies are reflections of them.”
Buder graduated with a bachelors of fine arts in 2008 from Thompson Rivers University.
Since then, she has volunteered for the gallery, as well as managing Rivers Art Gallery.
Today, Buder has focused her energies to production of her pottery line and ceramic sculptures.
I had a chance to catch up with Buder at the craft sale held at the Old Courthouse Cultural Centre this weekend, where she had a wide selection of mugs, plates, pots and an array of useful ceramic items for sale.
Like her sculptures, each piece of her pottery is meticulously built and has a great deal of hand-done oceanic details.
Some of her newer bowls are coiled with sensitive hand-pinched parts and moulded fish bones integrated right in the piece.
They remind me of a salmon run, where we see beauty in the cycle of life, birth and decay all put into a delicate vessel.
“Random patterning in nature is a large influence and something I look at very closely and attempt to imitate,” Buder says.
“I study the skins of vegetables and gardens of flowers for example.
“I enjoy comparing bones and porcelain by casting sprig molds of skulls and fish bones. I am fascinated with hybrids of plants and animals and fantasize about creating mutant life-forms from combining plant and invertebrate DNA.
“My pottery and art work are a celebration of growth and fertility combined with the unexpected. I push the clay to form delicate shapes and parts as far as it will go.”
Buder lives in Kamloops and has her work showing in the prestigious Craft House Gallery on Granville Island, as well in the Kamloops Art Gallery.
She is showing her Mother pieces at the Arnica Artist Run Centre at the cultural centre now and will be showing her ceramcis on Dec. 7 at the Woman’s and Business Craft Fair at the Kamloops Curling Rink.
She will also be at my gallery at 607 Victoria St. on Dec. 15.
For more information, go online to amandabuderceramics.ca.
Karla Pearce is the director of the Karla Pearce Art Gallery located downtown Kamloops, where she also teaches art classes for all ages.
karlapearcegallery.com
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