reviews + articles

LATEST NEWS!

See one of Jane's teapots in the March 2009
edition of Home Beautiful

Ceramics: Art + Perfection, No. 73, 2008

"Jane Sawyer’s work is a contemporary interpretation of hakeme brushwork popularisedthrough the Japanese mingei movement.The mingei movement was founded in the 1920s by Soetsu Yanagi and celebrates the beauty in everyday, utilitarian objects. For the past 20 years Jane Sawyer has been creating work with its roots in mingei. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and in 2007 was chosen to represent Australia at the prestigious Collect exhibition at the V&A Museum in London with a range of hakeme and terracotta teawares."
Shannon Garson, Australian contemporary ceramist and writes a blog on craft and design at www.shannongarson.com

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Fresh Instincts, catalogue essay, Freeland Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2007

"These teasing vessels are finely balanced between awkwardness and elegance, indolence and vitality, playfulness and solemnity. They are forever in a state of becoming."
Peter Timms

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View the exhibition archive www.freelandgallery.com.au

Craft Culture website, 2004

"Jane Sawyer has created a language of humility... though she maintains a Japanese rigour in her work, she breaks certain traditions attached to materials."
Kevin Murray, director Craft Victoria, The Fundamentalist Urgin in Contemporary Ceramics

www.craftculture.org

Ceramics: Art + Perception, Making Sense, No. 43, 2001

"quote to come"
Shane and Jane Kent

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Sense: An Intimate Response 2001, adapted from Artist to Artist, 2000

"Intimacy implies a close and knowing relationship. The bond between partners of any kind and especially between an artist and her work is firmed by the depth of passion, commitment and respect developed over time. Sawyer’s intimacy with her materials is like an affair of the heart and the flesh. In her hands the clay is not there to be fashioned but a collaborative partner and mentor. The demands of the artist are guided by the response of the material."
Chris Marks

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Australian Ceramics, Volume 39, No 1 March 2000

"The use of slip as decoration has been a constant source of motivation - the inviting, fluid quality that it takes on just before it dries - no longer shiny, yet not quite matt; the way that the surface of a pot can convey the freshness of the touch of its maker - confident, fluent and vigorous."
Prue Venables

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www.australianceramics.com