Sandra Dolph

Sandra has known since she was 17 that she wanted to spend her life working in clay. To that end, she obtained a BS in Art Education from New York State University College, and when she graduated she taught ceramics at the Adirondack Center for the Arts. As well, she owned and operated a pottery gallery in upstate New York where she sold her first ceramic wares.

After emigrating to Canada in 1974 and “living the dream” of building a back-to-the-land homestead in the Rockies near Jasper, Sandra taught and ran a clay studio specializing in salt/wood-fired pottery.

In 1989, she relocated to Galiano Island, British Columbia, where she has spent the last two decades making a home for her small family and establishing her studio and gallery set within beautiful red cedars. She has also hosted and presented numerous workshops which have focused on various pottery techniques such as throwing, hand-building, raku firing, and most recently, ceramic wall landscape/seascape reliefs.

Currently, an important aspect of her work in the ceramics field has to with apprentices: Each summer she hosts a new student, to whom she can pass on her knowledge of clay, business, and gardening.

Sandra’s visits to Japan began in 1998, where she studies, makes pots and meditates in a Zen Buddhist temple. Her ongoing studies with her teacher, Shodo Harada Roshi, is an extremely important part of her life, offering her the foundation for all her artistic undertakings.