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Walter Auer

Walter’s inspiration of form from nature is immediately evident in his work. Precariously piled ceramic stick installations and intricate fossil cones with delicate opalescent glazes are just some of the delights this artist produces. Trained in Faenza, Italy, and Turkey, Walter has also travelled and studied traditional methods in Japan and North America. Historical precedents and influences also include Etruscan and Greek smoke-fired black ware but his strongest influence comes from Africa, its people and landscape. His involvement with Africa has been intimate and ongoing, from teaching wheel skills in a Leper colony to working with communities in Ethiopia and Eritrea amid war, death and the daily struggle to survive. In such contexts, pottery is made as part of life, an everyday need, produced as required with whatever materials are available, but importantly, retaining through a vital sense of ceremony, the life-affirming rituals of creation. African pottery produced under these conditions is never far from its origins. The pieces retain the evidence of their making in their forms and surfaces.