Inspiring Women Winter 2017

Inspiration from Australia
KATHERINE BALFOUR
American Women’s Club of Perth, Australia
From: Allentown PA, raised in Spokane WA,
USA
Lives: Perth, Western Australia
I’m a former art teacher and studio potter,
now retired and working in mixed media art. I
loved art in school and never wanted to
become anything but an art teacher. My
dream came true and I graduated from
Eastern Washington State College with art and
education degrees in 1970, majoring in
ceramics and textiles.
After a couple of years working in public
schools, I put teaching aside and spent 3 years
traveling the world on my own, eventually
settling in Australia. There I met my husband
David, who was a fellow lecturer at a small
community college.
We lived in the outback gold mining town of Kalgoorlie, where I headed the college art
department for 6 years before we moved to Perth in 1982. Here, I began producing
“Potterucci,” my own brand of bright majolica-style earthenware, inspired by the colourful
pottery I had seen in Mexico, Italy, and
Turkey, but unique to Perth at the time. For
nearly a decade I supplied kitchen and
giftware stores all around Australia. I was
busy and the right side of my brain was also
very happy.
But by the late 1980s, computer courses
come into the colleges, pushing aside the
art subjects, and my teaching work
disappeared. On top of that, colourful
pottery from overseas arrived, nudging my
work off the shelves. Time for me to retrain!
In a complete life-style reversal, I sold my
studio, enrolled in law school, and
graduated at age 50! I then worked in the
Australian Tax Office, a large but pleasant
government department, for 13 years,
saving as much as possible for my
retirement. All the while, I eagerly revisited
“Quilt”
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