For everything he’s learned, and to the community that’s embraced him, a Nanaimo artist will host a farewell show starting this week.
Artist Joe Lyons will have plenty to share at his Sacred Spaces exhibit, which opens Friday, July 12, at the Nanaimo Ceramic Arts Studio and Gallery on Chapel Street.
The ceramic artist first joined the collective in 2018, and at that time, was one of its youngest members. Alongside his teaching duties, he also completed his artist residency at the studio in 2021.
Lyons hopes his farewell will help lessen his workload so that he can focus on his own work for his home studio, although he will still teach at the Hub at Cowichan Station in Duncan and at Brentwood College in Mill Bay.
“A place like Nanaimo Ceramic Arts … really brings a lot of positivity, not only to our Nanaimo community but to the ceramics world … I personally have benefited so greatly in my journey with clay, and I’ve seen it happen for my students, in so many ways,” he said.
Before Lyons, who originally hails from Seattle, landed in Nanaimo in 2016 and attended Vancouver Island University, he held an apprenticeship for approximately four years on the Hawaiian island Kauai. The artist said he looks back at that being a formative time in his life.
Before the apprenticeship, Lyons only saw clay and pottery as a fun distraction from his job as a bartender and DJ, and had no aspirations of becoming a professional ceramic artist. As luck would have it, Dean McRaine, the artist who took him under his wing in Hawaii, was the one to launch Lyons into the professional direction when he sold a few of his pieces without Lyons's permission.
“I will never be mad at him for that,” Lyons said.
As a reflective show, the Sacred Spaces exhibit will feature nearly everything the artist has created and designed, such as mugs, bowls, bottles, fridge magnets, “the biggest pot ever made” that stands roughly six feet tall, and spray-painted pieces.
“We are all blends of a lot of different influences. To make something truly unique, you have to take all those influences and create your own expression, and for me, to spray paint on a pot, is just the most natural thing ever,” Lyons said, adding that while growing up in Seattle, he would often render graffiti art that wasn’t always legal.
The collaborative work of Nanaimo author and illustrator, Lindsay Ford, and painter Denny Provost, will also be available at the show.
Lyons’s Sacred Spaces will run July 12-27 at the Nanaimo Ceramic Arts Studio and Gallery, with an opening reception planned for Friday, July 12, at 6 p.m.
The ceramics artist’s work can also be viewed at the Commercial Street Night Market on Thursdays from 7-9 p.m. until Aug. 22, and at the Cedar Farmers Market.
Photo by Lawrence Phillips
