Former potter features at Quartz

Raewyne Johnson is probably better known as Whanganui's Sarjeant Gallery Communications and Events Officer, keeping news media like Midweek informed about what's going on at the gallery.
But in another life Raewyne was an accomplished and respected potter, creating practical and decorative items from clay.
Rick Rudd has gathered together a selection of Raewyne's work and presented it as an exhibition at Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics in Bates St.
Called Vessels, it covers work she produced in the 1980s and 1990s.
She no longer works in that medium, having made her last piece in 1992, but this exhibition is a good display of her talent.
"It was a big part of my life ... it was my life," says Raewyne, who was president of Wanganui Potters Society from 1985 to 1988.
"I worked full-time as a potter and supported my family, my three children, for a time."
Raewyne sold off almost everything she had made, so to put this show together she had to call on family members and others to supply her with enough works for the exhibition.
It is only a selection, a glimpse into her career, but enough to show that Raewyne was a fine potter. Along with the three-dimensional works, there are photographs on the walls of other aspects of her pottery. The photos allow a more comprehensive view of what she accomplished over the years.
The trained medical laboratory technologist arrived in Wanganui with her three children in 1971. In 1975 she attended pottery classes and, with her mother, Dulcie, also a potter, set up a workshop.
"We had a marvellous relationship. We worked quite independently but shared the space. She was very good - she made lovely, simple, strong pieces."
From there Raewyne produced utilitarian domestic ware - dinner sets and the like - on an electric wheel and kiln.
"It was the heyday of pottery in New Zealand, and in Wanganui we had a wonderful group of potters that we met with, socialised with, organised garden sales and firings on the beach and different places."
In 1984 she took on a job as part-time tutor in the ceramics department at Wanganui Regional Community College and her potting focus shifted dramatically to a more artistic style.
"I was starting to exhibit quite a bit. I was able to indulge, I suppose, and start hand building terra cotta clay, using stains and slips and various colorants, so it was going in a whole other direction. It was an opportunity to experiment."
One part of the exhibition room is a display of her more practical - but elegant - work, but the other moves into very different territory. A mix of pottery and the bounty of beach combing produced a range of vessels filled with ocean detritus.
At the time of gathering it was an acknowledgement of the importance of the ocean as a food source and a nod to the beauty of what remained after the food was removed. Hence the importance of shells in that work.
"The residue was beautiful," she says.
One looks like a nest - a terra cotta bowl lined with feathers, in which are the bleached, fragile bones of a tiny penguin Raewyne found dead in a rock pool. The feathers are from the penguin.
Rick Rudd, potter of renown and owner/curator of Quartz, has known Raewyne since his arrival in Whanganui in 1984.
"As well as trying to get big names from out of town, it's good to have local work here," he says.
"It was a privilege to be invited," says Raewyne.