Throwing Clay and Pulling Prints at the New Bodega Gallery
Images by Terri Potratz
9 years ago, Rolando and Kasumi Lampitoc set off from Toronto with no particular destination in mind. They had packed up a moving truck and headed west in pursuit of a new home where they could pursue art full-time. Rolando had been working as a graphic artist, a career which he initially began as a means to "support my hobby as an artist,” but 30 years later it had morphed into a full-time job. It was time to fully commit to being an artist.
“We didn’t know where to go, but we put all of our stuff on a one-way truck,” said Kasumi. Rolando adds, “We just drove west. I guess you have to just do it and jump right in!” They made it all the way to Victoria and then began island hopping, settling on Galiano Island where they built the first iteration of the Bodega Gallery. They lived there for 7 years before turning their sights to Salt Spring.
We didn’t know where to go, but we put all of our stuff on a one-way truck.
Fast forward another 2 years, and Rolando and Kasumi have recently put the finishing touches on the new Bodega Gallery, with beautiful custom woodwork that Rolando built himself. The warm smell of cedar envelops you when you enter the gallery space, Kasumi’s natural-hued pottery lining a low sideboard to the left, and Rolando’s diverse array of artwork on the walls.
When asked if he had experience with woodworking, Rolando chuckles and admits, “No, everything I did here I sketched it out first, and then from that sketch I just built it. It actually turned out nicely. It doesn’t usually turn out that way.” He used recycled materials for these furnishings, giving ‘free lumber’ rejects from the Salt Spring Exchange a second life. Rolando obviously has innate talent not just as a woodworker, but through his other art projects as well. He is self-taught, (though he learned a lot through observation from his father, a portrait artist) and seems able to just figure out whatever it is he needs to execute on his next idea. “He doesn’t have many tools,” says Kasumi of Rolando. “He’s really good at inventing…it’s a quality I admire.”
“He’s really good at inventing… it’s a quality I admire.”
-Kasumi Lampitoc, on Rolando
Kasumi has been a potter for 21 years, originally studying Craft & Design at Sheridan College in Ontario and winning many awards since. Most of her pieces are functional pots and vessels that have been thrown on the wheel, though there are large hand-built sculptural pieces on display in the gallery that are stunning both in their form and size. Her pieces are natural, earthen, and subtly wild.
You’ll find a lot of Kasumi’s work within Rolando’s work: a woodblock print of a collection of her brushes and tools; encaustic paintings of her vessels; another print of her hands trimming a piece on the wheel. The encaustic painting process is an interesting one: pigments are added to liquid beeswax which is then applied, or “burned in” to a surface, often wood. The result is layered, multi-dimensional, and a bit abstract. But encaustics are just a portion of what you’ll find on the walls at Bodega Gallery: oil paintings, ink drawings, watercolour, plus a variety of prints including woodblock, reduction linocut, monotype and more. Not to mention the multitude of tables featuring all shapes and sizes of Kasumi’s pottery.
Bodega Gallery is now part of the Salt Spring Island Studio Tour, and usually open on weekends for drop-in visitors (check their Instagram for studio hour updates), or by appointment.
