Join me in welcoming the newest member to the CCC, Gillian McMillan.
Artist’s Biography:
Visitors to the Craft Galleries on Granville Island in Vancouver are becoming familiar with Gillian McMillan’s jugbirds. These colourful clay creatures are practical pitchers or supervise kitchen events. They have been Gillian’s main focus for several years now with two solo shows: “Ornithikos: Gk. birdlike” at the Gallery of BC Ceramics in 2003 and “Rara Avis: L. rare bird” at the Circle Craft Gallery in 2007 featuring only wheelthrown birds.
For some years Gillian organised a Port Moody Craft fair, sold from her home studio, taught wheelthrowing at Coquitlam’s Place des Arts and built a natural gas fired kiln in her garden. But by 1991, with the boys almost grown up, Gillian was encouraged to achieve her dream of an Art School education. Three years full-time and earning a BFA at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design proved to be stimulating, influential and the beginning of a new phase of her career. During that time she also had the chance to visit La Borne and other potteries in France, appreciating both traditional and contemporary pottery practices there.
For two years she shared a studio in Vancouver. Then, after helping to establish the Port Moody Arts Centre and its clay programme she was an artist-in-residence there for three years. Since that time she has re-established her studio in her home and relies on an excellent electric kiln to fire the earthenware work. Birds and flowers are encouraged in her garden where evergreen trees try to grow very tall in the coastal rainforest.