Janaki Larsen
“I love dirt. Everything about it, the colors, the smell, the feel,” says Vancouver based potter Janaki Larsen. “It wasn’t the academic aspect of art that really interested me, I just wanted to make things.”
Daughter of established potter / painter, Patricia Larsen, and painter / stonemason, Ron Crawford, Janaki was raised amongst a community of artists in Alberta and on BC’s Salt Spring Island. Hanging out in studios and absorbing conversations on the politics of making art she grew up believing everyone was an artist, but it was while completing her studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (1995–1999), in making ceramic bowls required for an installation piece, that her chosen craft was confirmed.
Larsen’s work is modern and minimalist in design and simple in form and content. She uses gentle lines as opposed to heavy detail and her pieces have a sense of quietness to them. “I love objects and especially ones with a previous history,” she comments. “I want my work to feel as if it has survived from another time and place, that perhaps they are made of something other than machines.”

I am a potter and a mess maker. Although my work is considered functional my primary interest is in process and exploring the limits of clay as a material. I love to throw and as a result I love to push clay it’s absolute limit before and sometimes including collapse. Clay is a beautifully responsive material and I often use it as a way of recording my thoughts and emotions at the time of making. Although they are plates or bowls that can be used simply to eat from, they are often the physical manifestations of thoughts as I work out issues in my daily life. The imperfections, points of weakness, awkwardness and instability in the work are what excite me the most.

pitted plated
stoneware
Janaki Larsen

Janaki Larsen

Pitted Plate
stoneware
12"
Janaki Larsen

Porcelain Vases
porcelain
Janaki Larsen

Janaki Larsen

White plates
stoneware
11"
Janaki Larsen

Janaki Larsen