The Ceramic Wizardry of Osler
by Sally Hansen
Susie Osler’s ceramic pottery celebrates her life-long love affair with nature. Both her highly decorated ornamental pieces and her more functional pieces invite the viewer/user to share their creator’s delight at the ingenuity and sensuality of the natural world.
Osler fashions complex ornamental pieces that evoke a sense of wonder and engender curiosity about humanity’s relationship with nature. There is a strong subtext evident in many of her pieces. The stunning flower vase she created after 9/11, replete with pistols, is a striking example. Many of her ornamental pieces explore the themes of excess, of abundance gone a bit too far, of over-ripeness. In some of her works, nature’s fecundity threatens to overwhelm humans, and in others, she suggests that human excess threatens to overwhelm lessons available from the past.
Osler’s finely-wrought, utterly imaginative and abundantly decorated objects have won her numerous awards from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council and the Ontario Crafts Council. She recently participated in an exhibition of contemporary Canadian ceramics at the esteemed Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and completed a solo show at a gallery in Sweden, with the “much-appreciated support of the Ontario Arts Council.” The project comprised a series of slab-built ceramic pillows resting on fabric pillows suspended from the ceiling. The theme of the show was dreaming, and Susie leveraged her annual winter garden-deficit-disorder to create a ceramic dreamscape of the natural world replete with flowers, birds and bugs.
Osler’s work is very intuitive and she loves the flexibility her medium provides. “There are infinite possibilities when working with clay. It is very malleable, compared to something like wood, which allows me to play a lot.” Her pieces are often very complex and fraught with physical uncertainty, but she accepts an occasional kiln casualty to freely express her subliminal creative energy. She frequently uses multiple techniques to create a single piece, combining wheel thrown, press molded and hand built elements. Many pieces are fired several times, with the final firing dedicated to the application of ceramic enamel or handmade ceramic decals, and a variety of lustres.
Since 2000 Susie Osler has participated in over thirty exhibitions across Canada, the US and Sweden. She was profiled in the April 2006, edition of Canadian House and Home; several of her pieces appeared in the Disney production Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, and she just completed a wall installation for a room in Toronto’s newest boutique hotel, The Gladstone.
Dreams that you dare to dream…
Susie Osler was born in Toronto, but her family’s move to a farm when she was eight years old kindled a lasting desire to live in the country. She “always had a fantasy of becoming an artist,” and when she tried ceramics in high school, she thought “Ooooh – I really like this.”
After receiving her BA in Communications and Film from McGill University in 1990, she worked briefly for the Toronto Film Festival. When her dad died, she moved to Seattle and worked as a gardener for a landscape company. She subsequently moved to Vancouver and realized her longstanding ambition to pursue a Fine Arts degree, obtaining her BFA from the renowned Emily Carr Institute for Art and Design in 1999. She returned to Ontario for a residency in the ceramics studio at Toronto’s Harbourfront Center where she worked as a ceramist and taught ceramics for two and a half years.
Then her brother bought a cabin in Brooke Valley near Perth and Susie attended a Blue Skies Music Festival. Her reaction was, “If they have a festival like that, I can live here.” She bought her Maberly farm in 2002, and she now helps to organize musical events at the Maberly Hall, collaborating with Juno-award-winning singer/song-writer Jenny Whiteley.
It’s a moot point whether this ceramist’s eclectic art imitates her life or whether her multi-faceted life imitates her art. She is a farmer, a gardener, a Slow Food activist (an international organization “to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life”), and an appreciative member of the vibrant arts community surrounding her rural home in Maberly. “I feel so lucky to have landed here,” she tells me.
Follow the Perth Autumn Studio Tour Signs
This Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 7–9 from 10AM to 5PM, potter Susie Osler hosts artist Karen Phillips Curran at her barn/studio/gallery/garden at Studio Location #5 of the annual Perth Autumn Studio Tour. This popular Tour features the contemporary fine crafts of 20 artisans presenting their works at nine different rural studios clustered near Perth in accessible and beautiful locations. There is a very informative website with a great map and previews of participants’ works, or you can call Riverguild Fine Crafts at 267–5237.
From November 10–12 Osler is participating in 260 Fingers – a short, sweet show of really worthwhile clay art at Glebe Community Centre, 690 Lyon St., Ottawa. This invitational exhibition and sale of the work of 26 outstanding clay artists and potters opens at 6PM on Friday, Nov. 10, and everyone is welcome to attend the reception.
Susie is represented at Riverguild Fine Crafts, 51 Gore St. E., Perth, 267–5237; at Lafrenière & Pai Gallery, 13 Murray Street, Ottawa, 241–2767; and at galleries in Toronto and Waterloo. You can contact her by email. She hopes to launch her own website soon; until then, you can see previews of her works at the Ontario Crafts Council website.