Arts and Entertainment

Alton Mill artist creates exquisite pottery for upcoming Headwater Arts’ latest exhibit

March 27, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield 

There are lovely blue and white pottery pieces and textiles on display in the window of Dragonfly Arts on Broadway. Made by potter Annette Hansen and her sister Gitte Hansen, a textile designer, the artistic display will be up until May 25.

An elegant pottery piece, “A Carved Bowl” by Hansen is part of the new show at Headwaters Arts in the Alton Mill Arts Centre.

In an interview with the Citizen this week, Annette Hansen told the Citizen that, as a student, she went to Denmark to school, at the Kolding School of Design for only ceramic design and technology, which was a four-year course.

She reminisced, “I was thinking about what I wanted to; I didn’t like school but I liked working with my hands.”

They have family in Kolding and so, she went to Denmark and took a couple of courses and made “a whole bunch of stuff and took that as a portfolio”. Her pieces were not great, she admitted, but she was accepted into the four-year course.

Potter Annette Hansen gave us a brief outline of how a piece of art is made from clay.

The clay is wheel thrown. Open the ball of clay and shape the curve and the clay how you want it to look. Working on a potter’s wheel, spin the clay and add some water – that has to be done with care – and some pressure. It is all-encompassing; you can’t lose your concentration.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I close my eyes to make sure the clay is centred – it’s kind of magical.”

Next is forming the piece, being aware of how much clay you have.

“My fingers,” she explained, “made the swirl in the middle, which I don’t always keep.”

She cuts in the clay with a scalpel, reassuring us that, over time you learn how to do this well. In fact, as if to encourage her students to go the distance, she tells them, “It actually takes 10,000 hours to learn to do this well!”

As with most endeavours, there is a planning process, ideas that inspire, making a thumbnail sketch. The process for clay is not instant, she assured us. It takes an idea and after the creation is done, then you make the glaze. Hansen does not use one specific clay but uses different ones, from porcelain and stone wear.

“It it is the glazes that make the piece spectacular,” she said.

Hansen has lived in many places but everywhere she moved, she was doing something with clay. In Greece for three years, she had a studio open in the summertime. There were lots of tourists. The end to her marriage there brought her for a while to the US and finally back to Canada, where she has been married to “a wonderful supportive man” for many years.

Hansen had a gallery in Toronto for 16 years on Kingston Road. When the gallery owner wanted to move on, she was asked and agreed to buy the gallery, telling us, “I cleaned it up and exhibited art on the walls. I sold mine and others’ work until Covid shut everything down.”

Then, as curator at the Elora Centre of the Arts until recently, she misses talking to people and the busyness of a gallery. At her home in Hillsburgh, Hansen has a space in which she can continue to make beautiful pottery.

Still eager to teach, Hansen wants to get kids involved in pottery by visiting public schools.

What she would say to aspiring potters is, “Get a good education in a school in that field. Be a little critical about your own work.”

One thing she is sure of – it matters to have good support from people. Pottery might also lead to something else.

“Clay work is architectural, of the earth, sustainable and making things that are appreciated and useful,” she praised it.

To find out where to buy Hansen’s work, visit her website: https://cobaltgallery.ca/where-to-buy/

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