Janet Doble
Featured Artist, November 8-21, 2021
“Sometimes I press crabs, shells, rocks and seaweed into the clay, mimicking the fossils that are found on the beaches. In a way, I am making instant fossils, pressing these found objects into the soft clay and heating them to high temperatures reflects a process that in nature takes millions of years.”
Janet Doble
Janet has always been actively involved in the arts community. For eight years, she was president of the Nova Scotia Potters Guild. She was Chair of Visual Arts News and was on staff as Ad Sales Manager for the magazine. She helped compile the Halifax Art Map and the Guide to Craft and Arts in NS, art publications aimed at promoting the arts in Nova Scotia.
She is currently on the Board of Directors as Vice Chair of Parrsboro Creative and sits on the Parrsboro International Plein Air Festival committee.
Janet was born in England and immigrated to Canada when she was five years old. She grew up just west of Montreal, and in 1995 she made Halifax, NS her home. It was a move in 2017 that brought her to Parrsboro.
Janet has a Diplome d’etudes collegiales en Arts Appliques Ceramiques, from John Abbott College, and a BFA in ceramics from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Her work has won awards including Best Body of Work, Nova Scotia Designer Craft Council summer festival 1998, and the Peoples’s Choice Award, Fireworks Exhibition 2003.
She has done several artists residencies, Banff Centre for the Arts in 1990, A.I.R Vallauris, France in 2013 and Art Lab artist residency in Parrsboro 2016.
VASES
“Taking clay slabs to the beach, I roll the clay on rocks and logs that I find there. I bring the slabs back to the studio where I cut and join them together as the textures dictates.
Vases are the vehicle for this new inspiration, inspired in part by the Japanese aesthetic of ikebana and by the rocky cliffs and outcrops that define this amazing shoreline. They are not the pretty vases of tradition, but rather an examination of raw texture, of subtle colour and of how vegetation can grow in the most inhospitable of environments. They are a contrast to the flowers and branches that they hold, they cannot hold a huge bouquet, only a few strong stems can flourish in this harsh cragginess.
“Vases are the vehicle for this new inspiration, inspired in part by the Japanese aesthetic of ikebana and by the rocky cliffs and outcrops that define this amazing shoreline.”
Vase #1: “This vase is from a free form series I have been working on. Rolling clay on the rocks and logs, I create raw texture. In addition, on this piece I have added the impressions of seaweed and rocks.”
3 Neck Vase: “I did this vase in 2016 when I was doing my summer residency at Art Lab. It was from the first series of work I did, using the clay I had dug from the banks of the Bay of Fundy earlier in the year and the beginning of using the texture I was discovering along this amazing coastline. It also allowed me to continue my investigation of glazes as I played with combining ceramic materials to create glazes that would enhance the found texture.”
Vine Vase: “From my first series of vases done while I was doing my summer residency at Art Lab in 2016. In this piece I wanted to include the vegetation I saw growing on the rocky cliffs, vines and trees clinging by their roots with little or no visible soil to support them.”
Pinnacle Vase (SOLD)
Pinnacle Vase: This “is from a series of vases I entitled "Honouring Scars", the texture was taken from a huge log that had washed up on the beach, it had been burnt, hacked at, and carved on, its limbs were missing and the bark long stripped off. It spoke to me of hardship and uprootedness. Where had this beast of a log started its voyage?”
“[The vases] are a contrast to the flowers and branches that they hold, they cannot hold a huge bouquet, only a few strong stems can flourish in this harsh cragginess.”
Production work
“The Serving Bowl and Teapot are examples of my production work which I produced in my Halifax studios. Inspired by the Italian tradition of Majolica, I painted my floral motifs and patterns on an opaque white glaze. I developed this line of work from 1995 until 2015.”
Not available for sale
Not available for sale
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Janet Doble
Featured Artist, November 8-21, 2021
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