Monica Johnston

Monica Johnston’s pottery brings a delightful pause to modern day life. Often we move at a hectic pace with few opportunities for a moment of joyous calm. Hand-made pottery can provide this by making us stop and appreciate a beautiful cup of tea, bowl of soup or plate of fruit.

Monica’s work begins as pure white porcelain. Voluptuous pottery shapes are thrown on a potter’s wheel, then carved and /or altered. Underglaze colour is applied directly to raw clay, and fired on prior to glazing. Semi-transparent glaze seals over the underglaze colour, ensuring the decoration will never fade or wear away with use. Further, the glaze’s mysterious translucence adds variation to each area of pattern.

Her joyous sense of decoration is apparent in the lyrical patterns she draws on her pots. Leaves and spirals, olive branches, lemons and dragonflies festoon her wares that are as appropriate for special occasions as they are for daily use. Her generous use of colour celebrates life as much as it adds life to celebrations.

Monica Johnston and her husband glassblower Paulus Tjiang own Frantic Farms Gallery in Warkworth, Ontario. That’s where she can often be found, hard at work in the pottery studio out back.