Working with locally sourced wild clay, he moves away from industrial materials toward a more direct relationship with the land. His practice reflects a broader position: a push toward balance, vulnerability, and the recognition of marginalized identities, including queer experience, within both material and cultural spaces.

These works are made from wild clay sourced at Oasis Beach, a historic gay cruising site near Wreck Beach at the University of British Columbia. Jonathan O’Leary creates wheel-thrown, sculptural, and hand-built ceramic works that embrace irregularity, asymmetry, and the visible mark of the hand. Working with wild clay, he treats the material’s texture, impurities, and unpredictability as essential to the finished work rather than flaws to overcome. His practice questions ideals of control, perfection, and hierarchy, proposing a more open understanding of beauty rooted in vulnerability, difference, and the handmade. Through this approach, O’Leary reaffirms art as an essential part of human experience.

Jonathan O’Leary is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist and co-founder of Pot Spot Studio established in 2021. A self-taught maker, his practice spans ceramics and painting, with a focus on irregular, hand-formed work that resists refinement and control. His ceramic pieces—wheel-thrown, sculptural, and handbuilt—embrace asymmetry, texture, and the visible mark of the hand. His paintings extend these concerns into two dimensions, often incorporating layered surfaces and shapes. Across both media, Jonathan O’Leary is interested in how value is assigned—what is considered resolved, beautiful, or complete—and how those standards exclude difference.