Glass and ceramics in the spotlight as CCBC Craft Awards announced

Prizes go to Vancouver’s Hope Forstenzer, Coral Patola, and Carol E. Mayer

THE CRAFT COUNCIL OF BC has just announced the winners of its 2023 awards—and they’re all names on the Vancouver glass and ceramics scenes.

Glass artist Hope Forstenzer has won the $1,000 Grace Cameron Rogers Scholarship, which she’ll put toward exploring the relationship of glass with wood. Forstenzer teaches and works out of Terminal City Glass Co-op, a prominent part of the Eastside Culture Crawl each year. She’s known for sculptural works as well as blown homewares, as well as pairing blown glass paired with stained glass techniques, as well as using images in glass – through sandcarving or photosensitive glass. Forstenzer wants to work toward making wood sculpture bases, and to build basic glassblowing molds and cabinetry.

Elsewhere, BC ceramics artist Coral Patola will put the Micki Mackenzie Educational Craft Bursary toward an artist residency at Medalta in Medicine Hat, Alberta; at that museum, she intends to develop a personal collection of heirlooms documenting her maternal family history. Through her own ceramic work, the artist—of Piton Pottery—aims to create “utilitarian art that inspires people to slow down and appreciate the complexities and interconnectedness of ourselves and the outer world, spanning generations through materiality and form”.

And the Citizen of Craft Award has gone to Carol E. Mayer, a supporter and advocate for ceramics for over 35 years, dating back to research work at UBC’s Koerner Gallery of Ceramics. The current curator of ethnology and ceramics at the UBC Museum of Anthropology has written book such as The Potter’s Art (UBC Press, 1997) and Made of Clay: Ceramics of British Columbia (D&M, 1998). She has worked closely with BC potters to understand the technical virtuosity of ceramics and has a vast experience in ceramics curation, research, as well as ceramics publications. Says the CCBC of the prize: “This award is specifically for someone who is not a craftsperson, but without whom the craft community would be sorely diminished.”

You can find more on the awards here.

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