Hello!
My name is Dana Wheeldon, I am a part time potter living in Port Alice, a small village on the north end of Vancouver Island. I spend my spare time adventuring the backroads with my family and fueling my craft with the endless inspiration that surrounds my home. I make, decorate and fire everything with my bare hands in my small studio. All of the photography used throughout my website has been taken by myself or my talented friend Andrew Dieter.
Artist Bio
Dana was born and raised in the beautiful Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. Her first artistic medium was acrylic painting on large, beach rocks found around her hometown. She discovered pottery while escaping the cold winters in Ottawa, ON. She started taking classes at the Ottawa School of Art with a talented ceramic artist, Meagan Pethick. Meagan helped build her skills as her new hobby became a creative passion and career path.
Following her time in Ottawa, she moved back to BC and worked out of community studios in Victoria and Burnaby for 7 years before enrolling in the Ceramics Program at Kootenay Studio of Arts in Nelson, BC. Dana’s work saw tremendous growth at KSA, working with Canadian pottery legends, Robin DuPont and Martin Tagseth. She completed the "Ceramics Certificate", and found her way back to Vancouver Island settling in a small village in the North called Port Alice. She has been working out of her small studio for over 3 years, focusing mostly on custom orders and attending the North Island Farmer's and Artisan's markets. She plans to continue to work on custom orders, while maintaining her website with consistent stock of her core collections.
Dana’s current work is heavily influenced by the local wildlife around Northern Vancouver Island. She often uses nature in her process to decorate her pots and showcase the natural clay body. Dana's always experimenting with her glazes and techniques to capture the colours and textures of an old-growth rainforest or a rugged, west coast beach.
It all begins in my studio, where I shape and fire each piece by hand using Canadian made "Plainsman" clay. Most of my pots are formed on the potters wheel but I do enjoy slab and hand building as well. I source elements like cedar, ferns, and seashells to make molds or to imprint textures into my pots, I also use coloured underglazes to paint whale images, mushrooms and flowers etc. During the making process, most of my decoration is completed before the first firing. Each pot gets fired twice in my electric kiln; the first firing transforms the clay pot into stone, and the second firing fuses the glaze onto the surface of the pot. A typical glaze firing for my kiln takes about 24 hrs. All of my pottery is fired to cone 6 which is roughly 1220 degrees Celsius!! I carefully study, measure and mix all of my own glazes with food safety, functionality and coastal beauty in mind.
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Making my pottery is a fun, but slow and intentional process. Hope you enjoy!
