Olga Turok - Pottery

Olga is both a wheel thrower and hand builder, it’s like being ambidextrous. While each method requires a completely different skill set, they inform each other technically and artistically. She has had her hands in clay for over 40 years so she speaks the language of ‘clay’.
Her basement studio is a clean concise space chock full of her pieces finished and in progress with space left over for new ideas.

Originally from Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, she came to Canada 50 years ago to help her aging father and ended up staying. Olga joined the Abertheau Potters Guild at their beginning in 1975 and has been a member ever since. Her first pottery class was with renowned Sam Kwan. Over the years she has fanned out to be involved with 3 different groups that accommodate her 3 different firing methods.

She fires her hand built sculptural and vegetable and seed pod pieces in a hard wood sawdust kiln up on her land near the Cariboo in central BC . These highly burnished ‘black pots’ are low fired once to remove the moisture from the clay then packed with sawdust and any other vegetation, orange or banana peels, bits of sticks or leaves and left to slow fire in her hand made brick kiln. There is lots to experiment with and it is all fairly unpredictable which is what she loves about it.

She salt glazes some of her functional wares at the Shadbolt Centre in Burnaby. This is an old technique where during the firing salt is injected into the hot wood fired kiln. The sodium mixes with the the fly ash to create a vapour that creates a strong unique glaze. Each piece fires a bit differently depending where it is placed in the kiln.

She does reduction firing up in Whistler with a group that has been firing together for years. All in all she is part of a very active and long standing group of fellow potters which she cherishes.

She still enjoys making functional ware on her wheel but is slowly moving on, as artists tend to do, to more sculptural work .

It’s the sculpting of seed pods that excites her these days. She creates these organic forms by studying their exquisite details and then she renders them into clay sculpting them looking carefully for their wonder within. When they are leather hard, almost dry, she takes out her little basket of semi precious tumbled smooth stones. Finding just the right on to fit the contours of the dips and rises, she rubs the clay smooth as velvet creating a very beautiful, very smooth matte finish. Now they are ready for her sawdust firing.

As I leave this catches my eye, 2 fish swimming in between golden seaweed or streams of sunlight.

Her water colours are memories of where she grew up in Czechoslovakia. They are rustic and comforting even to one who has never been there here.

Olga has been potting for so long, she has become one with her narratives and her medium. Her simple and clear work stand on to the depth of her stories. This invites and allows one onto a great sense of contemplation and admiration for her skill. Each piece isn’t just holding form or function, it holds years of musings and knowings.