Joey is Canberra Potters’ Technical Manager, but also a fantastic potter and teacher in his own right who makes functional and non-functional work and has a passion for wood-firing.

Joey Burns is based near Gundaroo, New South Wales. He first trained in a production factory making pottery before deciding to study, receiving his Diploma Of Ceramics from Northern Beaches TAFE Sydney. After working as a ceramics technical assistant at the Ernabella Art Centre in outback South Australia, he now works from his home studio making functional pottery. Joey has been an assistant teacher for Canberra Potters’ children’s classes since early 2020.

The works Joey makes are simple reflections of his surroundings, whether it be influences taken from the people and cityscapes of the cities he has lived in, places he’s visited, or landscapes from the rural area he grew up and now lives in. He tries to incorporate a sense of character and personality into his pieces, which he gathers from interactions with people, animals and architecture.

The malleable nature of clay allows Joey to spontaneously create abstracted gestures of these visual, tactile and aural influences. He fires his work in wood burning kilns in order to achieve a non-contrived reference to the colours and surface textures from the original inspiration behind the forms.

View his Facebook here and his Instagram here.

Jackie is a ceramic sculptor who is passionate about making life-size animal characters. An artist in her own right Jackie hand-builds her forms – not using props or armatures but working with the clay as it slowly firms and dries. She uses layers of oxides and coloured engobes to accentuate surface textures and marks to enhance her forms. The firing techniques Jackie uses make her sculptures strong and durable. Like many people she loves to relate to dogs. They have simple honest emotions and live in the moment. They come in all shapes, sizes and characters and have been an endless source of inspiration for her ceramic sculptures, lately joined by roosters and hens.

View Jackie’s Instagram here.

Helen is passionate about pottery and started as a teacher at Canberra Potters in 2020.

Pottery has been Helen’s passion for about 20 years. In 2005 she completed a Diploma of Ceramics at the ANU, then continued her study by completing multiple ceramic courses at TAFE up to the end of 2010.

Upon the closure of the ceramics TAFE courses in Goulburn, she decided to build a studio at her home. She now runs her small business “Woodbine Cottage Pottery” (named after her small 1880s cottage) through which she teaches and makes thrown functional ware with a variety of coloured glazes.

View Helen’s Facebook here.

Georgie combines beauty and function in her wheel thrown tableware, and has a passion for sharing her pottery skills with others. 

Georgie has been teaching at Canberra Potters since 2014. She has a Masters of Teaching and a passion for sharing her skills and knowledge with others. Georgie enjoys teaching introductory classes, which she loves for the fun, discovery and enjoyment that comes with introducing students to working with clay. She teachers regular wheel throwing classes at Canberra Potters, where she works to develop her students’ technique and help them reach their goals. 

In her own practice as Linburn Handmade, she combines beauty and function in her wheel thrown tableware. Linburn Handmade is used by numerous restaurants and cafes in Canberra and Sydney as well as by individuals for home use. Georgie is ever keen to experiment with new techniques and to keep learning! 

View Georgie’s Facebook here or her Instagram here.

Fran is a ceramic artist and trained social worker who brings a unique perspective to her teaching and student-centred approach. 

With a background in community-work around Canberra, Fran Romano has always had a passion for clay. Since indulging that passion more fully and enrolling at ANU School of Art in 2011, Fran has made clay central to her life.  In her own art practice she explores ideas of decay, memory and nostalgia through use of layering and surface decoration as well as mixed-media installations. Her production arm, FRATTEMPO, embraces one-off decorative homewares and vessels embracing the same themes. 

As a trained social worker, Fran brings a unique perspective to her teaching and a student-centred approach.  She feels that the process is just as important as the outcome and aims to make her classes inclusive and friendly. 

Currently teaching children’s classes at the Canberra Potters, she looks forward to taking her own adult’s classes in the future. 

View Fran’s website here, Instagram here and Facebook here.

Erin makes both functional and non-functional ceramics with linear patterns and references to nature. 

Erin Kocaj was first involved with Canberra Potters in her school years, taking classes during college with the aim of getting into art school. After graduating with Honours in Ceramics from the ANU School of Art in 2011, she joined the Canberra Potters teaching staff in 2016. During this time, she also initiated ‘Claybodies’- a group of local ceramic artists who support, showcase and celebrate ceramics in the community through discussion groups, exhibitions and workshops. 

As an artist she likes to make highly patterned objects, both functional and non-functional. Her works are recognisable by their linear pattern and references to nature that she employs. The quality of the linear pattern can be organic or constructed; often she places the two alongside each other in a contrastive display of balance and tension. 

View Erin’s Instagram here.