Cranmer, Judy Christine Tweedie
Item
Maker Name
Cranmer, Judy Christine Tweedie
Biography
Judy Christine Tweedie Cranmer’s ceramic/design practice was dedicated to the study and exploration of Northwest Coast art and design, about which she received instruction from significant Indigenous artists, like Chief Tony Hunt. Her work sold well, particularly in galleries that did not specialize in ceramics.
According to her daughter, Judy was probably born in Vancouver, raised part in Victoria and the Malahat, and she was descended from a Manitoba Cree, Nahovway, who married William Sinclair - 1794-1868. (A notable Manitoban of Scottish and Indigenous descent who joined Hudson’s Bay 1808).
Judy attended the Vancouver School of Art (VSA) during the mid-1950s, studying graphic design, and graduated with honours in 1956. After graduation she briefly freelanced in textiles and graphic design before she left to travel in Europe. In some biographies it is said her lifelong love of Northwest Indigenous design was ignited while at the VSA. (Which is credible, with Bill Reid’s campaign to revitalize Indigenous culture reverberating around Vancouver and the VSA, throughout the 1950/60s.) In other biographies it is stated that Judy first became interested in Northwest Coast art when she encountered it in European museums during her study/travels 1958-61. Common sense would suggest that her interest would have been triggered while at the VSA and amplified when she saw Northwest Coast carvings and poles in the context of great museums. The opportunity for her to see great poles in a ‘natural’ (outdoor) setting in BC would only happen upon her return.
Judy returned to Canada in 1961. She resumed her graphic design textile practice and married the renowned multi-faceted Modernist Kwakwaka'wakw carver Douglas Eugene Cranmer. During those years Judy developed long-term friendships within the Indigenous community and though not of Coastal Indigenous heritage, she immersed herself in the study of formline with Cranmer and with artists like Bill Reid, John Livingston and Tony Hunt - son of Chief Henry Hunt.
Note: In the late 1970s Tony Hunt also taught formline to BC ceramicist Laura Wee Láy Láq of the Stol:lo Nation.
Note; From 1958 -1962 Douglas and Bill Reid worked on a reconstruction of the Haida Village that is now situated outside of the UBC Museum of Anthropology.
Judy was with Douglas Cranmer during the years he was co-owner of the Talking Stick Gallery (1962–1967) on Granville Island.
“The Talking Stick was” Vancouver’s first commercial gallery for contemporary First Nations art, and through his connections with Modernists at the Vancouver School of Art - through his second wife, the late artist Judy Tweedie … (Douglas) Cranmer was also thoroughly embedded in the art world” (Eugenia Kisin - Erudit. See Links to Further Resources) According to the same writer…” Tweedie worked hard to generate publicity for Doug’s work, and supported Doug’s incursion into areas such as silkscreen work and abstract imagery.
It is probable that Judy took some pottery classes with Reg Dixon while at the VSA (1958-61). Twenty years later, in the 1980 catalogue for ‘Retrospect Ceramics 80’, Judy mentions that it was only after her eight years with Doug Cranmer (1961-69) that she began to combine designs with a ‘renewed’ interest in pottery under potter Brenda Davie. It is also probable that she was well acquainted with potter David Lambert, former instructor who frequented VSA repairing kilns, and with potter Ruth Meechan, a fellow student at VSA. During the 1970s Judy became a member of the ceramic community and she is mentioned in the Potters Guild of BC (PGBC) newsletters as a volunteer for the Hycroft sales, working alongside Lambert, Davie and Meechan, and they all volunteered for, and had work selected for the seminal exhibition ‘Retrospect Ceramics 80’, held at Robson’s square celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Potters Guild of BC.
In the Retrospect catalogue Judy went on to say that …” the ten years with pots and potters had given her a great deal of challenge and satisfaction, and ever widening interests, clay puts no limits on imagination, but demands a kind of discipline…” Ceramic processes and the pottery forms provided the structure and opportunity for Judy to mobilize her knowledge and love of Northwest Coast design.
During the 1960s David Lambert and Ruth Meechan had also studied with Indigenous artists and received permissions to use some Indigenous Coast designs on their pottery. Both Lambert and Meechan inscribed information about the designs on the back of their pottery and both used the designs on their commercial ware intended for tourist trade. (As had Chief Henry Hunt during the 50s/60s, and as had painter Emily Carr during the 1920s.)
Judy Cranmer’s evocation of Northwest Coast design is distinct from Lambert’s and Meechan’s. Her impetus appears to have been an innovative exploration of a design tradition. She focussed on making functional, minimalist pots whose shapes would not subsume her design work. Judy’s palette was simple. She used a contrasting black slip that she applied with precise care (similar to the exactness of Indigenous carving) and she only occasionally used glaze. Similar to how formline design wraps around Northwest baskets and bent boxes, Judy’s formline painting was clean, abstracted and mobile, engaged with harmonizing pattern to form. Her best pieces are open, large pots emulating basket or feast-dish forms that provide expansive surfaces for her designs.
By 1973 Judy had started to market and exhibit her ceramics in Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle and Toronto. In 1997 her work was still available at the Winchester Gallery in Victoria, at Creekside Gallery on Granville Island, and at the Rembrandt Gallery in Vancouver, but for reasons unknown, and despite her earlier affiliation with the PGBC, she did not exhibit at the Gallery of BC Ceramics (1986-2018) As she developed her ceramic practice she maintained her connections with the Indigenous community. In 1985 she was invited to exhibit in a 2- person show with the renowned Susan Point, ‘Salish Dreams’, at the Legacy Gallery in Seattle.
In Judy’s words… “I have always been intrigued by the designs applied to a variety of traditional objects of the Northwest Coast such as dance blankets, baskets and painted wooden containers. As a potter and graphic designer, I have endeavoured to go a step further and adapt the classic formline elements to the medium of clay.” Which is exactly what she did, and the effectiveness of her practice is being recognized in that her work is increasingly capturing interest and at the time of this writing can be found on auction sites across North America. Interestingly her work is rarely mentioned alongside other ceramic artists of her generation in Vancouver after 1980, perhaps because she ceased to be involved with the Potters Guild and did not exhibit with other BC ceramicists. It appears she stepped away from the ceramic community, sold at a variety of shops and galleries, exhibited with other craft mediums, and in Indigenous galleries and with Indigenous artists. Judy rather wistfully said, in 1980…” Somehow I feel an evening out of time past, present and future.”
A lifelong friend of the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) Judy Cranmer designated a gift in her will which helped build a lab to support research, teaching and artistic practice in ceramics. It is used by both MOA and the UBC Archeology Department. From 2017 to 2022 the Judy Cranmer Ceramics Lab has housed five long-term ceramic residencies with BC artists; Lisa Henriques, Debra Sloan, Holly Ratclife, Sharon Reay and Denise Jeffrey. In 2026 MOA and the NWCF established an annually funded 3 -month ceramics workshop. The first resident in the Cranmer Ceramics Lab, supported by the NWCF and MOA, will be Jai Sally-Carrington in the fall of 2026. Also in the fall of 2026 the Victoria Arts Council will host an exhibition, curated by Kegan McFadden, of Judy’s work at Carr House. Judy’s work is held in the MOA Collection
In 20/21 Judy Cranmer's work was included in the seminal Vancouver Art Gallery's ‘Modern in the Making’ exhibition, where VAG curator Daina Augatis said…“The West Coast received influences from a lot of different places in the world, Modernism from Europe, American aesthetic from draft dodgers, values from Asia, and of course the indigenous people, the very foundation of culture in BC… . “This exhibition is one of the very first in Canada to include indigeneity in a survey of the modern movement.”
In light of that statement, Judy Cranmer’s unique contribution of uniting ceramics and Northwest Coast Indigenous design could be an opportunity for conversations around cultural and artistic appropriation, emulation and influences.
According to her daughter, Judy was probably born in Vancouver, raised part in Victoria and the Malahat, and she was descended from a Manitoba Cree, Nahovway, who married William Sinclair - 1794-1868. (A notable Manitoban of Scottish and Indigenous descent who joined Hudson’s Bay 1808).
Judy attended the Vancouver School of Art (VSA) during the mid-1950s, studying graphic design, and graduated with honours in 1956. After graduation she briefly freelanced in textiles and graphic design before she left to travel in Europe. In some biographies it is said her lifelong love of Northwest Indigenous design was ignited while at the VSA. (Which is credible, with Bill Reid’s campaign to revitalize Indigenous culture reverberating around Vancouver and the VSA, throughout the 1950/60s.) In other biographies it is stated that Judy first became interested in Northwest Coast art when she encountered it in European museums during her study/travels 1958-61. Common sense would suggest that her interest would have been triggered while at the VSA and amplified when she saw Northwest Coast carvings and poles in the context of great museums. The opportunity for her to see great poles in a ‘natural’ (outdoor) setting in BC would only happen upon her return.
Judy returned to Canada in 1961. She resumed her graphic design textile practice and married the renowned multi-faceted Modernist Kwakwaka'wakw carver Douglas Eugene Cranmer. During those years Judy developed long-term friendships within the Indigenous community and though not of Coastal Indigenous heritage, she immersed herself in the study of formline with Cranmer and with artists like Bill Reid, John Livingston and Tony Hunt - son of Chief Henry Hunt.
Note: In the late 1970s Tony Hunt also taught formline to BC ceramicist Laura Wee Láy Láq of the Stol:lo Nation.
Note; From 1958 -1962 Douglas and Bill Reid worked on a reconstruction of the Haida Village that is now situated outside of the UBC Museum of Anthropology.
Judy was with Douglas Cranmer during the years he was co-owner of the Talking Stick Gallery (1962–1967) on Granville Island.
“The Talking Stick was” Vancouver’s first commercial gallery for contemporary First Nations art, and through his connections with Modernists at the Vancouver School of Art - through his second wife, the late artist Judy Tweedie … (Douglas) Cranmer was also thoroughly embedded in the art world” (Eugenia Kisin - Erudit. See Links to Further Resources) According to the same writer…” Tweedie worked hard to generate publicity for Doug’s work, and supported Doug’s incursion into areas such as silkscreen work and abstract imagery.
It is probable that Judy took some pottery classes with Reg Dixon while at the VSA (1958-61). Twenty years later, in the 1980 catalogue for ‘Retrospect Ceramics 80’, Judy mentions that it was only after her eight years with Doug Cranmer (1961-69) that she began to combine designs with a ‘renewed’ interest in pottery under potter Brenda Davie. It is also probable that she was well acquainted with potter David Lambert, former instructor who frequented VSA repairing kilns, and with potter Ruth Meechan, a fellow student at VSA. During the 1970s Judy became a member of the ceramic community and she is mentioned in the Potters Guild of BC (PGBC) newsletters as a volunteer for the Hycroft sales, working alongside Lambert, Davie and Meechan, and they all volunteered for, and had work selected for the seminal exhibition ‘Retrospect Ceramics 80’, held at Robson’s square celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Potters Guild of BC.
In the Retrospect catalogue Judy went on to say that …” the ten years with pots and potters had given her a great deal of challenge and satisfaction, and ever widening interests, clay puts no limits on imagination, but demands a kind of discipline…” Ceramic processes and the pottery forms provided the structure and opportunity for Judy to mobilize her knowledge and love of Northwest Coast design.
During the 1960s David Lambert and Ruth Meechan had also studied with Indigenous artists and received permissions to use some Indigenous Coast designs on their pottery. Both Lambert and Meechan inscribed information about the designs on the back of their pottery and both used the designs on their commercial ware intended for tourist trade. (As had Chief Henry Hunt during the 50s/60s, and as had painter Emily Carr during the 1920s.)
Judy Cranmer’s evocation of Northwest Coast design is distinct from Lambert’s and Meechan’s. Her impetus appears to have been an innovative exploration of a design tradition. She focussed on making functional, minimalist pots whose shapes would not subsume her design work. Judy’s palette was simple. She used a contrasting black slip that she applied with precise care (similar to the exactness of Indigenous carving) and she only occasionally used glaze. Similar to how formline design wraps around Northwest baskets and bent boxes, Judy’s formline painting was clean, abstracted and mobile, engaged with harmonizing pattern to form. Her best pieces are open, large pots emulating basket or feast-dish forms that provide expansive surfaces for her designs.
By 1973 Judy had started to market and exhibit her ceramics in Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle and Toronto. In 1997 her work was still available at the Winchester Gallery in Victoria, at Creekside Gallery on Granville Island, and at the Rembrandt Gallery in Vancouver, but for reasons unknown, and despite her earlier affiliation with the PGBC, she did not exhibit at the Gallery of BC Ceramics (1986-2018) As she developed her ceramic practice she maintained her connections with the Indigenous community. In 1985 she was invited to exhibit in a 2- person show with the renowned Susan Point, ‘Salish Dreams’, at the Legacy Gallery in Seattle.
In Judy’s words… “I have always been intrigued by the designs applied to a variety of traditional objects of the Northwest Coast such as dance blankets, baskets and painted wooden containers. As a potter and graphic designer, I have endeavoured to go a step further and adapt the classic formline elements to the medium of clay.” Which is exactly what she did, and the effectiveness of her practice is being recognized in that her work is increasingly capturing interest and at the time of this writing can be found on auction sites across North America. Interestingly her work is rarely mentioned alongside other ceramic artists of her generation in Vancouver after 1980, perhaps because she ceased to be involved with the Potters Guild and did not exhibit with other BC ceramicists. It appears she stepped away from the ceramic community, sold at a variety of shops and galleries, exhibited with other craft mediums, and in Indigenous galleries and with Indigenous artists. Judy rather wistfully said, in 1980…” Somehow I feel an evening out of time past, present and future.”
A lifelong friend of the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) Judy Cranmer designated a gift in her will which helped build a lab to support research, teaching and artistic practice in ceramics. It is used by both MOA and the UBC Archeology Department. From 2017 to 2022 the Judy Cranmer Ceramics Lab has housed five long-term ceramic residencies with BC artists; Lisa Henriques, Debra Sloan, Holly Ratclife, Sharon Reay and Denise Jeffrey. In 2026 MOA and the NWCF established an annually funded 3 -month ceramics workshop. The first resident in the Cranmer Ceramics Lab, supported by the NWCF and MOA, will be Jai Sally-Carrington in the fall of 2026. Also in the fall of 2026 the Victoria Arts Council will host an exhibition, curated by Kegan McFadden, of Judy’s work at Carr House. Judy’s work is held in the MOA Collection
In 20/21 Judy Cranmer's work was included in the seminal Vancouver Art Gallery's ‘Modern in the Making’ exhibition, where VAG curator Daina Augatis said…“The West Coast received influences from a lot of different places in the world, Modernism from Europe, American aesthetic from draft dodgers, values from Asia, and of course the indigenous people, the very foundation of culture in BC… . “This exhibition is one of the very first in Canada to include indigeneity in a survey of the modern movement.”
In light of that statement, Judy Cranmer’s unique contribution of uniting ceramics and Northwest Coast Indigenous design could be an opportunity for conversations around cultural and artistic appropriation, emulation and influences.
First name
Judy Christine
Last name
Tweedie Cranmer
Career dates (start and end)
1961
Date of Birth
1935
Date of Death
2009
Place of Birth
Vancouver, BC
Place of Death
Studio location
Formal Education
Apprenticeships
Mid 1960s - Formline - Doug Eugene Cranmer, Tony Hunt, Bill Reid, and John Livingston
1970s - Ceramics - potter, Brenda Davie
Major Exhibitions
1980 Retrospect Ceramics 80, PGBC 25th Anniversary
2020/21 Modern in the Making, Post-war Craft and Design in British Columbia, Vancouver Art Gallery, curators; Daina Augatis, Allan Collier, and Stephanie Rebick.
2026. Carr House in Victoria, Victoria Arts Council, curator, Kegan McFadden
Collections
Museum of Anthropology at UBC
Museum of Vancouver
University of Victoria
Affiliated organizations
Links to Further Resources
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/remembering/obituary.aspx?n=judy-cranmer&pid=133719241
http://www.hills.ca/Native-Artists-Biographies-New-22.html#Judy%20%20Cranmer
https://www.4thmeridian.ca/shop-art-and-studio-pottery/p/judy-cranmer-signed-canadian-studio-pottery-plate-1980s-t952a
https://coppershieldtribalart.com/product/northwest-coast-artist-judy-cranmer-large-pottery-canoe-shaped-bowl-haida-design/
https://dokument.pub/moa-magazine-issue-07-spring-2019-flipbook-pdf.html
https://moa.ubc.ca/2012/03/no-man-is-an-island/
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/racar/2017-v42-n2-racar03379/1042947ar.pdf Eugenia Kisin
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100012809/1536599568315
Source
Debra E. Sloan
Linked resources
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