Articles & Videos

LOUISE PENTZ

Trailer for SILENT NO MORE - Louise Pentz: A Voice for Social Change - A new film about Louise Pentz's clay sculpture.

For more information about this 25-minute film, see Art for Social Change.

Mother Earth from Breakwater Studios Ltd.

From Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council News

For 30 years, Louise Pentz was a production potter producing functional wares from her studio in Pentz, NS. "I loved it up until the last year," says Louise, "And in the last year my heart went out of it."

But stepping away from her pottery wheel did not mean that Louise stepped away from working with clay. She continues, "At the same time there seemed to be so many stories in the media daily about the atrocities and injustices being put upon women around the world. And I thought, 'Am I contributing to the problem by my silence?' And I came to the conclusion that I was."

Mother Earth is the third video in a six-part series entitled Life's Work: Six Conversations with Makers. Mother Earth introduces us to ceramic artist Louise Pentz who takes us through the four meanings of the word 'vessel' and how it has related to her life working with clay. Louise's interpretation of the human form as a vessel for the spirit, along with her investigation of gender and social issues, drove the creation of her most recent body of work featured in the video. "The material is capable of saying more than a functional pot, so use the material to say something you care about," she says.

Finding her voice of protest for the way women are treated around the world, Louise adds "Artists have an important role in bringing about social change. Each of us needs to find our honest way of speaking. I do clay. That's all I know. If everyone did what they could, change would happen. I think those who perpetrate hateful things on others are banking on our silence. We all have power. What are we going to do with it?"

Life's Work: Six Conversations with Makers is a project of Craft Alliance Atlantic Association and the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council, in partnership with Breakwater Studios International Ltd. All the partners wish to acknowledge the support and assistance given to this project by ACOA Nova Scotia and Film and Creative Industries Nova Scotia.

A review of the exhibition RESTRAINED, written by Grace Butland, appeared in the March 2014 issue of STUDIO CRAFT AND DESIGN IN CANADA.

From Ceramics: Art and Perception, No. 83, 2011: