Current teacher at Place des Arts (2025/2026 season)

Biography

Laura Vanderlinde is a full-time ceramic artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, with over 35 years of experience working in clay. She maintains an active production studio, creating functional and garden wares that reflect both craftsmanship and artistic expression. Her work is featured through Circle Craft and the Craft Council of British Columbia on Granville Island.

In addition to her studio practice, Laura is a dedicated educator who teaches pottery to students of all ages. She currently instructs at Trout Lake, Douglas Park Community centres, and Place des Arts in Coquitlam, and has previously taught at numerous locations across the Greater Vancouver area. Her teaching extends beyond regular classes to workshops, demonstrations, and guest instruction at institutions such as the Metchosin International Summer School and the Northern Clay Symposium in Prince George.

Laura’s work has received notable recognition, including two Artist Recognition Awards for excellence in clay at the Edmonds Arts Festival in Washington, as well as Best Booth at the Out of Hand Craft Show in Victoria. She has also been awarded grants supporting her continued artistic development.

An active member of the Crafts Association, the Potters Guild, and Circle Craft Co-op, Laura contributes to the ceramics community through both participation and volunteer work. Her pieces have been commissioned by restaurants and businesses, blending functionality with artistry.

Working primarily in white clay, Laura views her medium as a canvas for storytelling and connection. Her pottery celebrates the intimacy of everyday objects, bringing joy, energy, and meaning into daily life.

Artist Statement

This work of the hand is both obsession and devotion. After years, I remain drawn to the quiet rhythm of making—the turning, shaping, listening. In this slow attention, something unseen begins to surface and take form.

I work with white/cream clay for its openness, its willingness to receive. It offers a canvas in the round where gesture and movement remain. Every mark becomes record; every surface holds evidence of presence. What is usually invisible—the energy of the hand, the passage of time, the intention within the act—reveals itself through form.

Clay remembers. It carries more than structure and colour; it gathers fragments of culture and traces of identity, bringing them into the intimate spaces of daily life. These objects are not separate from us. They are lived with, touched, held, and returned to again and again. In their quiet presence, they hold time, shaping how we inhabit the everyday.

There is a subtle energy in handmade work that can shift awareness in quiet but real ways. To eat from a handmade vessel is to enter a small ritual—one that reconnects us to touch, earth, and presence, slowing perception and returning us to attention.

Here, the invisible becomes visible in gesture, surface, and use.

I am deeply honoured to shape a life through this process, following what comes from within and giving it form. In the end, it begins as mud, as earth, holding everything it has ever been, waiting to be seen in quiet ongoing transformation through time always.

lauravanderlinde.com

Facebook: facebook.com/lauravanderlindepottery

Instagram: @lauravanderlindepottery

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