Main Street Gallery

As a kid Kari played with terracotta in her Dad’s studio. He never fired it to her liking! So she re-explored ceramics beginning in 2000, achieving an Advanced Diploma of Ceramics at Sunshine Coast TAFE. Her ceramic artwork has won awards and been exhibited in SE Queensland and Japan. Her installations have appeared in dance concerts, at environmental festivals and in galleries.

Finding clay has been a coming home, a medium in which to blend many of her creative skills. Working from home pottery studio with husband ceramicist Stephen Roberts, Kari explores a light hearted feminine view of an ancient herstory of clay, re-examining and perhaps reclaiming cuneiform writing for women. Kari’s classes and studio work explore many techniques of hand building and wheel thrown work and engage different firing techniques including wood fired work, gas fired stoneware, and low fired surfaces. Her connection to environment is seen in much of her work.

She is currently a professional Marriage Celebrant and a performing musician as well as ceramic artist. She specializes in combining art-forms; dance, music and ceramics. In recent years she exhibited at the Noosa Regional gallery in a solo show, at Fusions Gallery, Brisbane, and Barratt Books Gallery, NSW, featuring works entitled Cunei Forms referencing ancient Phonecian cuneiform text.

Kari has worked in a variety of professions including lecturer at QUT, event director for Maroochy Waterwatch, performer and workshop co-ordinator and teacher, and has done some unusual things; been a concert-organ grinder at Victoria Markets, a wardrobe assistant at Victorian Opera and performs as a frog!

Artist CV

Education

1990 Batchelor of Arts, Melbourne University

2006 Advanced Diploma of Ceramics, Sunshine Coast TAFE

2008 Celebrancy Qualification

2010 Certificate IV Celebrancy

Exhibitions

2011 Watermark, Gallery Nona, Brisbane

Embrace, Rosebed Gallery Eudlo

Floating Land, Lake Cootharaba/ Noosa Regional Gallery

Resilience, Rosebed Gallery, Eudlo

Small Works, Small Town, Rosebed Gallery, Eudlo

Celadon, Incube8er, Brisbane

2010 Piccabeen Pride, TreeLine, Sunshine Coast, QLD

2009 Giant Kingfisher Puppet, Ceres, Victoria

Temple of Kuntas, Fusions Gallery, Brisbane, QLD

2009 Quixotica Artists, Gallery @ Eumundi, QLD

2009 Cunei Forms, Noosa Regional Gallery, QLD

Firings on the Lake – Floating Land, Noosa Regional Gallery @ the lake

2007 Saltwater:Freshwater, Nambour QLD

Ceramic installation & dance performance commissioned by choreographer Linley Boyle

2007 Hand of friendship, Tatabayashi, Japan

2007 Japanese Inspired, Eudlo, QLD

2006 20:20, Graduate Show Sunshine Coast TAFE, Tewantin, QLD

Three substantial installations for graduation inspired by the herstory of the

kunta temple priestesses and the origins of cuneiform text.

2006 Curve, Noosa Regional Gallery Shop

2006 The Joining Festival, Sunshine Coast, QLD

2005 Vagina Monologues Foyer Exhibition, Sydney, NSW

2004 Vagina Monologues Foyer Exhibition, Nambour, QLD

2004 Women in art, Mossman, North QLD

Publications

2007 “Kuntas of the Shrine”, Ceramics TECHNICAL, Vol 25, Nov, 07

Prizes

2006 Ceramics Technical Award

Highly Strung Award