Jeff Oestreich and Pat Burns Exhibition

Saturday 15 to Sunday 30 October 2016

Following on from their highly successful residency and exhibition in 2014, the Leach Pottery welcomes back American potters Jeff Oestreich and Pat Burns for a new residency and exhibition of work.

Oestreich trained with celebrated American potter Warren MacKenzie, who previously studied in St Ives with Bernard Leach, and in 1969 Oestreich himself took up a two-year apprenticeship at the Leach Pottery. Working from his rural studio at Taylors Falls, Minnesota, Oestreich has since become a prolific and internationally recognized potter whose work is strongly influenced by Leach and the principals of eastern ceramics. In this show he re-visits the forms and materials of his Leach Pottery apprenticeship, creating what he describes as ‘the Oestreich spin on Standard Ware shapes. I want to be unrestricted and play with shapes in my head from the 1970s’.

Long-time friend and fellow potter Pat Burns, who now works from her studio in Portland, Oregon, studied ceramics in Kentucky before training in England with respected British potter Bryan Newman. In 1974 she began working alongside Jeff Oestreich and became strongly influenced by the Leach philosophy. For this exhibition she intends to ‘let the clay determine the forms, by playing with similar shapes and patterns and responding to the clay as I make the pots, so that the process is open-ended’.

The potters will be blending two of the studio’s clays; a local stoneware and an English Porcelain. By improvising with the studio’s slips, glazing and firing, the pair are aiming to discover new variations in their work. In homage to his late friend and colleague Trevor Corser, who died in 2015, Oestreich will also be making ‘friendship towels’ for the staff of the Pottery, using fabric from Trevor’s work apron.

All works are for sale.