(Photo courtesy of Sara Mills)

Sara Mills

A profile by Heather Paterson

When Sara Mills sinks her hands into clay, she feels a primal satisfaction. “I love to feel my hands forming a piece," says the ceramist, whose work is currently on display at Studio Georgeville (20 Carré Copp, Georgeville). "They have an intelligence of their own. I like to leave the marks of my hands and fingers on a piece, so whoever owns it can see my mark.”

With her husband, fellow ceramist Michel Louis Viala, Mills makes affordable kitchen and dining stoneware, which forms the basis of their income and clientele. They work together on the design and production at their Pigeon Hill studio, and through the years have established a strong customer base. “Our stoneware is often a client’s first introduction to hand-made pottery,” says Mills. “We have developed lasting relationships with many people who come to the studio to buy it.” 

Of course, both Mills and Viala do individual work as well. Mills works in raku, making hand-built sculptures and pinch pots.

Studio Georgeville president Louise Abbott recently finished a short documentary about the restoration of a historic covered bridge in Eustis, not far from North Hatley, and the video was featured on the blog of a company called Studica, which distributes technology education resources. You might like to take a peek: A New Life for an Old Bridge. Louise is also producing a full-length documentary on the history of covered bridges in Quebec. We'll keep you posted on the progress!

Studio Georgeville

présente / presents

Le café hivernal / The Winter Café

Tous les samedis matin du 5 novembre 2011 au 31 mars 2012

De 8 h 30 à midi

Saturday mornings from November 5, 2011, to March 31, 2012

8:30 a.m. until noon

Du café et du thé frais et des produits de boulangerie-pâtisserie vendus par Andrew Seitz et Lynnette Choo de Stanstead.

Freshly made coffee and tea with baked goods sold by Andrew Seitz and Lynnette Choo of Stanstead.

If you feel like curling up with a good book over the winter, don't forget that Studio Georgeville carries both fiction, like Louise Penny's latest mystery novel, A Trick of the Light, and non-fiction, like Eeyou Istchee: Land of the Cree, by coop members Louise Abbott and Niels Jensen.

Other recent releases include Even the  Owl Is Not Heard: David Thompson's 1834 Journals in the Eastern Townships of Quebec by Townshippers Barbara Verity and Gilles Péloquin and Haiti: A Shattered Nation by Elizabeth Abbott.

The latter book received an outstanding review by Martin Fletcher in The Times of London on December 19. Fletcher wrote: "Ms Abbott’s description of the Duvaliers’ reign is a real-life version of Graham Greene’s The Comedians, full of detail that one suspects only an insider could obtain. Ms Abbott, a former journalist, was married during the 1980s to the brother of Baby Doc’s successor, Lieutenant-General Henri Namphy.

"Ms Abbott also explains how the Duvaliers had a vested interest in keeping millions of Haitians in abject poverty, using them as “visible objects of misery that  (they) peddled to the world in return for the gigantic handouts that could then be stolen”. They were helped by absurd US policies such as sending huge quantities of surplus rice to Haiti, thereby destroying its agricultural base. ...