Jan Cannon Films

Jan Cannon began his film career in South Florida in the early 1970s working on feature, commercial, documentary and industrial films. His primary experience was as a cameraperson and editor. While in Boston in the mid 1980s, working as an editor at Cinemagraphics/Video One and WGBH, he discovered pottery and pursued that as a studio artist for the next twenty years (www.jancannonpottery.com).

During that period he studied ceramics at the Radcliffe Pottery Studio in Somerville, MA, traveled extensively throughout Asia studying ceramics in China, Korea and Japan. He was an artist-in-residence in Calhoun College at Yale University and also head of the ceramics program at Creative Arts Workshop, also in New Haven, CT. In 1993 he established his pottery studio in Charlotte, Vermont. He has served on the board of directors for the Vermont Crafts Council, The Ferrisburgh Artisan’s Guild and the Shelburne Art Center.

In 2005, having become interested in sustainability issues, he decided to return to making films. Vermont was teeming with progressive ideas about sustainable living and he felt it was imperative that those voices be recorded. Observing that many people still didn’t understand that the earth’s resources were limited and that their over-consumption had seriously negative consequences he decided that he wanted to be more actively involved in working for positive change in the world, especially by promoting ideas of sustainable living.

As a studio artist he was primarily moved by beauty; as a filmmaker he is no differently motivated. For him the expression of beauty is the primary goal of his work.

Link to June 28, 2007 Charlotte News profile

JAN CANNON FILMS