CERAMICS SA is a non profitable, public benefit organization founded in 1969 for the purpose of promoting the art and craft of ceramics in South Africa. We have 4 regions: Gauteng, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Eastern Cape and Western Cape. They have about 500 members of which the Western Cape has about 220. Their objectives are to promote, market and educate. Every region has an annual exhibition of members work and every 2 years they have a National Exhibition. In the Western Cape they have two: "Members Only Potters Market" and an "Annual All Day Workshop" where six invited experts in their fields give workshops on their speciality. They have a skills training programme called the Noordhoek Pottery Village where we they are teaching candidates various aspects of pottery to give them skills to produce their own work for selling and thus becoming independent.

All planning and organization, as well as running of the CSA is done by volunteers, except for their administrator. They exist solely on membership fees.

JEFFREY OESTREICH, American Master Potter will visit South Africa in September/ October 2010 as the guest of the CSA . JEFF will be the award judge and opening speaker at the 2010 National ceramics exhibition which is opening on Sunday 10 October at The Gallery, Grande Provence. This exhibition will be on view until 27 October 2010. Visit www.oestreichpottery.com to view this international artist's works as well as the many sites that cover his biography and ceramics.

Fragile Earth in The Project Room

10 October - 1 December 2010

JEANNETTE UNITE travels and collects soils / terra / terroir that she incorporates into her art making. Visual explorations include journeys to the Rift Valley Kenya and to Namaqualand, Simon van der Stel's copper mine, the first colonial mine from 1685, to harbours and construction sites and visits to active gold, coal, salt, manganese, titanium and platinum as well as obsolete and archaeological mine sites and various wine valleys and estates. UNITE takes photographs and images but the most significant treasures from farm and mines are the sands soiled with history. In the glass she uses volcanic molten temperature to catalyze colour.

In the words of Ashraf Jamal "That UNITE literally transfers the subtle tinctures of earth to her surfaces speaks reams about the intimate links she draws between drawing, painting, and earth or land art. As the American cultural analyst, WJT Mitchell, observes: "Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the natural, the self and the Other. As such, it is like money: 'good for nothing in itself, but expressive of a limitless reserve of value'" (cited in Ancient & Modern, 71). "

JEANNETTE UNITE was awarded a multi panelled public art project for integration of the African Landscape into glass artworks about landscape at the Department of Science and Technology, CSIR buildings in Pretoria.

In 2009 UNITE was awarded a prize at the Tashkent Biennale in Uzbekhistan for the most unique use of materials and her work was presented at the International AICA Art critics conference in Ireland.

UNITE's 'Fragile Earth' exhibition of transmogrified glass works will be exhibited in the Project Room. The exhibition opens on the 10th of October and will be on view until 01 December 2010.