Book – My Life as a Potter

Part I of Mary Fox’s lavishly illustrated My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques charts the artist’s career beginning with the hand-built figurative sculptures she fashioned out of found clay as a young teenager, to her first experiments of making wheel-thrown forms in her middle teens, to setting up her first walk-in pottery studio in 1981, from where she launched a career whose experimentations with new forms, new techniques, and new mediums knew no bounds. Woven into the story of her professional career as a potter is Fox’s life as a gay woman shared with her long-time partner Heather Vaughan. Their struggle in the late 1980s with autoimmune disease, which led to Vaughan’s early death in 2007 and took five years away from Fox’s own work, offers a heart-wrenching account of this devastating disease. (Read more)

This book was so helpful to me as an early days potter to see what an actual full life of being a potter might look like. Mary was so generous in sharing her recipes, techniques and advice in this book. I love that the proceeds of this book benefit her apprenticeship charity. I didn’t expect to also get a heartbreaking love story as well. 💗 “ ‘By enjoying the process,’ Mary says, ‘you are crafting your life.’

This is a book about Mary Fox’s personal and professional life as a potter. It is exquisitely written, it is full of terrific photographs, it provides ideas, instructions, techniques, and inspiration. It is a must read for aspiring and experienced artists of all types. Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. You won’t regret it.

This book is visually stunning, and such a pleasure to read. Mary takes us on a journey down her personal and professional path as an artist, sharing her challenges, strengths and growth along the way. Lovingly photographed and beautifully art directed, this is a volume to which I will refer for inspiration again and again.

Mary Fox’s stunning coffee table book is an unusual portrait of an artist. Sure to fascinate potters and ceramic artists, it will also appeal to artists and art lovers of all kinds, to entrepreneurs, and to anyone interested in the life stories of people passionately engaged in the pursuit of excellence. Fox was thirteen when clay claimed her. Now an internationally recognized ceramic artist (and long time resident of British Columbia, Canada), she tells the story of her development as a potter, shares her techniques, and expresses her philosophy of art and life. Fox’s unpretentious writing style and personable voice quickly engage the reader in her stories, and make the discussions of pottery techniques in the second section of the book interesting and accessible to the layperson.

This book is beautifully written and illustrated. It has become a treasured possession which I am proud to show everyone who visits.

Sure to fascinate potters and ceramic artists, it will also appeal to artists and art lovers of all kinds, to entrepreneurs, and to anyone interested in the life stories of people passionately engaged in the pursuit of excellence. Fox was thirteen when clay claimed her. Now an internationally recognized ceramic artist (and long time resident of British Columbia, Canada), she tells the story of her development as a potter, shares her techniques, and expresses her philosophy of art and life. Fox’s unpretentious writing style and personable voice quickly engage the reader in her stories, and make the discussions of pottery techniques in the second section of the book interesting and accessible to the layperson.Anecdotes from Fox’s early years as a potter reveal her immersed in the study and practice of her craft, and full of gutsy determination. Working in the art room at school, and at her family home in Victoria, she was selling her work to the Victoria Art Gallery and teaching pottery to adults, while still a teenager. She then spent years working in make-shift studios in rental accommodations, developing her craft. A later, brief, stint at the Banff School of Fine Arts was hugely inspirational for Fox; for the most part, however, she has been self-taught, learning from books, from studying the work of other potters, and through experimentation.From the outset, Fox was aware of the need to structure her time, so that she could balance her need to support herself through the sale of functional ware with her desire to do more experimental and creative work. This practical streak, combined with her ability to stay creatively engaged and open, is a recurring theme in her story. Similarly, time and again we see her curiosity and persistence in solving technical problems leading to experimentation and new creative paths. Her character is also revealed in the way she rebuilt her strength and stepped back into the creative flow of her work after a debilitating illness rendered her unable to work for five years, and in how she navigated the devastating decline and loss of her life partner.The photographs are superb and comprehensive, affording the reader the opportunity to appreciate the range and depth of Fox’s artistic expression and technical mastery. We see the evolution of her functional ware with its graceful lines and signature bold, solid glazes, and also the development of her decorative ceramic works, including her thrown and sculptural vessels and her hand-built sculptures. Of particular interest is the evolution of her chalices, a form that has intrigued Fox since she saw a priest using one in church as a child. The chapter illustrating her recent collaborations with glass artists, Lisa Samphire and Jay Macdonell, to create her chalice forms in glass conveys the intensity and creative dynamism of these sessions.Along with the purity and precision of her lines, it is perhaps Fox’s innovative glazes and glazing techniques that create the impression of what might be called her style. Many photographs illustrate her unique lithium glazes which contribute to the unearthed antiquities look of much of her earlier work. Others showcase her distinctive crawl glazes, which she says awakened in her the desire to create work with a modern feel. The textures, patterns and colours of Fox’s glazes evoke the natural processes of Earth, sea and sky—and sometimes the mysteries of space.Fox is appreciative of those who have helped and inspired her along the way, and she is generous in her advice to beginning potters. She shares her techniques, her hard-won wisdom for working efficiently and injury-free, advice regarding the business end of things, and even some of her glaze recipes. In the chapter devoted to her legacy project, she details her plan to leave her studio and home to be used as a residency for new potters after she is gone. She wants to give future potters what would have helped her when she was starting out: a place to live, work and sell, all in one.In one of the loveliest chapters of this book, Fox describes how she works and lives according to the rhythms of the seasons. Of the aesthetic that inspires her, she writes: “Beauty has permeated my life, spreading through it like a lovely vine, shaping and influencing, not just my creations but everything about how I live.” This book is an opportunity to experience the visual feast of an art gallery from the comfort of your home. Step into the flow of Mary Fox’s world to glimpse how the creative process shapes a life, and how a consummate artist shapes a world in the here and now.

Mary’s new book is amazing… I could not put it down – her life, her philosophy, her techniques and her future thoughts. Have known Mary for many years but learned so much more about how and why she is one of our outstanding potters and her tenacity to do what she loves!!!! Buy the book!!!

“My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques” by Mary Fox offers fascinating insights into the life, work and career of one of Canada’s premier artists in the medium of pottery making. Impressively informative, exceptionally ‘reader friendly’ in organization and presentation, “My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques” is especially recommended for personal, professional, community, college, and university library Contemporary Canadian Art collections in general, and Mary Fox supplemental curriculum studies reading lists in particular.

I first encountered Mary Fox’s pottery while waiting to order a cinnamon brioche at the Old Town Bakery in Ladysmith. High on a live edge maple shelf in the busy cafe stood an array of the most elegant, gorgeous vessels, combining an airy lightness of form with the burnished, smoky glazes of the inner earth. Who made these? Sorceress, genius, mystic?Ladysmith’s own Mary Fox, of course. Who might be all of the above, but is also a very hard worker, dedicated to taking her practise to the highest of levels. From the age of thirteen, when she was introduced to ceramics in a junior high art class, she knew that pottery would be her life. Her recent book is a stellar example of an artist’s autobiography: the personal and professional story, lots of breathtaking photographs, and, so generously, technical details and glaze recipes!Mary’s career might seem on the surface to be a classical pattern of success: inspiring, supportive early teachers and mentors; being able to make a living from her work early on; national and international shows; recognition and respect from her peers. Her family’s scepticism about her prospects didn’t faze her – she quit high school and worked on fishing boats and in canneries for a couple of years until she had saved enough to set up her first studio in Victoria, intending to be a production potter.The real heart of the book can be found as she describes meeting Heather Vaughan, her wife and life partner, to whom the book is dedicated. Their early years together were full of youthful possibility, but they jointly faced a huge challenge when first Heather, then Mary, became seriously ill with a chronic illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). The pain and fatigue of ME meant that Mary was not able to work for five years, while Heather never recovered. Their love and devotion to each other through the long years of illness is remarkable. Mary describes bringing her latest work to Heather’s care home, where they would discuss the flowing lines and sensuous feel of a piece, in what Mary describes as “an intimate moment of beauty, a sweet break from the reality of life.”It was in moments like these that Heather led Mary in planning a major rebuild of her studio, and to start a foundation that would provide a residency program for young artists. After Heather died, Mary did in fact achieve both these things, as well as continuing to innovate with forms and glazes, to collaborate with glass blowers in developing hybrid clay and glass pieces, run a beautiful studio and gallery in Ladysmith, and to write this book! Her ability to not just persevere, but to thrive and grow, regardless of health limitations, is so inspiring.There is also lots of good practical information for artists of any discipline on running a studio, business practises, and balancing life and work. The book is exquisitely designed and laid out – a real pleasure to hold and leaf through. I borrowed my copy of the book from the library, but it is at the top of my “Must Buy” list. I also plan to visit her studio next time I am in Ladysmith – her website says she is open!