By Barb Brouwer
OBSERVER STAFF
Aug 03 2005

Like the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, Stephen Plant has found a way to marry his mind's need for the scientific and his heart's need for the artistic.
Though they may seem opposite, the Gardom Lake potter says science and artistry are both critical to his art and his personal satisfaction.
Plant, who has mined his own clay from the earth, maintains there is a visceral connection between the potter and his material that is affected by a myriad of things.
"Everything makes a difference when I start putting my whole being into it, it's like what I ate for breakfast, what music is playing," he says. "Sometimes the clay is perfectly in tune and I'm responding to the material itself. If I'm making a vase and it wants to be a plate, I can force it into a vase, but it won't be as good."
An opera-trained singer, Plant says to him, potting is a lot like music. The best singing happens, he says, when the ego is dropped, allowing a higher power to kick in.
An air force "brat," Plant has seen much of the world and attended both B.C.'s Royal Roads and Universite de Nancy in France. This was followed by a stint at Simon Fraser University where he "hung around the theatre" and enjoyed the political energy of the late '60s.
Aiming for a career in engineering, Plant says he was astounded by an aptitude test that revealed he was better suited to art and music.
"My heart was telling me one thing, while my head was looking at other things."
Married to a Vancouver woman, Plant moved to Sicamous, where he worked in a mill, and encountered a man who showed him a new way to focus his creative energies. A professional potter, whose work Plant describes as exquisite, was returning to England and sold his entire operation, including a giant kiln, to Plant for $300.
"The science caught my imagination," he says. "Why does this melt, why does this break, what temperature suits what?"
Plant says his training, straight from the only available book of the time, was a matter of trial and error - with lots of errors.
There was nobody else to learn from as studio pottery in the area was in the pioneering stage. But he responded to what he terms "pure divine intervention," quit his job and opened a small studio called the Pottery Plant. However, intervention in the guise of massive flooding in 1972 and '73 shut his growing business down.
He also lived in Revelstoke for a time, doing surveying and engineering work on the dam, and managed an office at Rogers Pass when two tunnels and five bridges were constructed on the rail line.
When the project ended, Plant took his studio out of storage and re-opened the Pottery Plant in Revelstoke, discovering, he says with wonder, that he was indeed a potter.
But the studio had to go back on the shelf when a second marriage and growing family meant Plant had to resume the more lucrative engineering work in Victoria.
Never able to work and pot at the same time, Plant re-opened his studio, now called Heaven in Earth, when he returned to Salmon Arm in 2001 with his wife, Lauren.
Having moved from earthenware and stoneware into porcelain, he took his mostly functional, high-quality porcelain items - mugs, cookware and sculptures on the show circuit.
But hip replacement surgery reduced his ability to pack heavy items around.
While he still makes occasional appearances at art shows, Plant's work is available at his Gardom Lake gallery - by appointment or chance - or at The Pots Store at DeMille's.
Plant has produced kits for kids of every age to explore their creativity with clay. Each kit contains clay, with how-to pictures and information.
"There's enough information there to create something and fire it in a campfire."