After 42 years of living in the Cariboo, Christy Richardson continues to be inspired by the nature around her to create her popular stoneware pottery, Rose Lake Pottery, featured at the Station House Gallery and Williams Lake Farmers Market.
It was family and a career in teaching that brought a young Richardson to the Cariboo after being raised in Vancouver, but it’s been the “good people and beautiful country” that has kept her and her husband, David, here.
“The Cariboo is definitely home,” she said.
In all, Richardson has been honing her pottery skills for the past 50 years, ever since taking a summer program as a teenager.
“But I’ve only really now been able to focus on it,” said Richardson, who took art education at UBC, worked as a high school teacher in the lakecity and raised a family of three boys with her husband before retiring.
Richardson said she loves everything there is to love about pottery — from the feel of clay in her hands, to the challenge of developing the forms and surface designs to the art of glazing. And her style, which currently involves making “functional things” for the market such as cups and platters, is always changing.
“It evolves continuously,” she noted, adding she’s looking forward to putting her hands to sculptural pieces in the coming months as the farmers market winds down and winter settles in.
READ MORE: Cariboo Potters Guild fall sale coming up Saturday, Oct. 3
Richardson has set up her pottery display at the farmers market for the past three years on Fridays and said she has enjoyed watching the market grow more every year. David, whom she’s been married to for 42 years, supports her love of pottery and helps with all the heavy lifting on market days.
The couple also, after years of Richardson making due with a space in her home for making pottery, built a new, independent studio at their Rose Lake home which she is enjoying.
Richardson will have her work on display and for sale at the Friday, Oct. 2 Williams Lake Farmers Market, as well as the Cariboo Potter’s Guild annual fall sale Saturday, Oct. 3 outside the Central Cariboo Arts Centre.
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