News Release

FREDERICTON (GNB) – New Brunswick College of Craft and Design ceramics instructor Karen Burk has been invited to meet the Queen.

Recently several of Burk’s large ceramic platters were purchased by the federal Department of Foreign Affairs for the permanent collection of embassies and consulates abroad. One of these art pieces is now installed at Canada House in London, England.

Burk has been invited to participate in the Canadian High Commission / Canada House official opening on Feb. 18, where she will have the rare and distinguished opportunity to meet Queen Elizabeth II.

“We are proud of Ms. Burk, whose internationally-recognized talent reflects on the high-quality of instruction at the college,” said Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Francine Landry. “Ms. Burk, together with her colleagues, has spawned a generation of New Brunswick potters and has helped to make the craft college a growing destination for instruction in fine art and design.”

Burk has been a ceramics teacher and artist for more than 38 years. She has lectured and given workshops on ceramic technique as well as on the creative process in colleges and universities across Canada and has acted as artist-in-residence in ceramics centres in Alberta and France. She is currently the head of the Ceramics Studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.

Burk has served on the board and as a juror for the New Brunswick Craft Council, the New Brunswick Arts Board and the Nova Scotia Potter’s Guild.

Her work can be found in public and private collections in North America, Great Britain, France and China. Her art has also been featured in several books and ceramic periodicals and was nominated by her peers for the prestigious $10,000 Strathbutler Award in 2004 and shortlisted in 2013. In 2008 she received an “A” grant from the New Brunswick Arts Board for senior artists who have made a nationally or internationally-recognized contribution to their discipline.