“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.”