Walter Ostrom has been described as an “innovative traditionalist,” a disruptive force shaking up ceramic conventions while simultaneously enriching them. Hired to teach studio and Asian art history at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1969, Ostrom was one of many American artists who moved north to Canada in the fallout from the Vietnam War.

Ostrom’s work, from his embrace of conceptual art in the 1970s to his current exploration of the vast history, hybridization, and social foundation of ceramics, marks him as a major force in the development of contemporary ceramics. As Ray Cronin writes, Ostrom’s works “declare themselves to be art and craft at once, tradition and innovation merged, beauty and function reconciled, thought and action combined. What more could one ask from any work of art?”

Accompanying a major retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia opening in May 2020, Good Earth features essays by leading scholars and curators along with full-colour reproductions of over fifty examples of Ostrom’s works.