Join celebrated studio potter Mark Hewitt (a former apprentice to legendary British potter Michael Cardew) and art historian and potter Sequoia Miller (PhD candidate, History of Art, Yale University) for an evening of discussion that will be followed by the screening of two documentary films from the 1970s about Ladi Kwali and Michael Cardew.
Films:
“Ladi Kwali” (1971, 12 minutes): Shot on location at Abuja Pottery, Nigeria, in 1959, the film features Michael Cardew and looks at the work produced at the pottery training center that he set up in 1958. The film also shows a demonstration of basic potting techniques by Ladi Kwali, a potter from the Gwari region in Northern Nigeria and one of Cardew’s students. Kwali was the first female potter to join the pottery training center in Abuja and went on to become Nigeria’s best-known potter.
“Mud and Water Man” (1973, 50 minutes): The life of the English potter Michael Cardew is told in his own words. The film begins by exploring his work in England before tracing his experiences in West Africa, where for the next thirty years he undertook a series of unique projects that attempted to give the surviving traditions of African pottery a viable twentieth-century form. Directed by Alister Hallum.