My niece Tasha is a Statistics Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, too far away! Recently when one of her friends mentioned how much fun she is having in beginner pottery classes, Tash told her that her aunt is a potter and somehow four firm friends plotted to leave their husbands and children and fly to Vancouver for a four-day holiday! What a splendid idea.
Tasha warned me that Mara was hoping to have a go at the potters’ wheel but the other three of them would be happy to do whatever I suggested might be fun in my studio.
These four busy career women took themselves to a Vancouver hotel on Thursday evening. Then they spent a fine sunny Friday being tourists, renting bikes to ride around Stanley Park and enjoying good local food. The three friends, Rebecca, Helen and Mara spent another day in town, finding Granville Island and shopping and staying another night there. But Tasha took the skytrain out to Lougheed Town Centre where I met her and she spent a super, if sometimes rainy day with all of us McMillans.
She and I walked down to Clarke street to join in a little part of Port Moody’s Culture Days. I wanted to attend the official launching of the City’s newest Art Gallery, Silk Gallery. The owner Gaetan Royer, the mayor Mike Clay and MLA Linda Reimer cut a white silk ribbon and we admired a good selection of paintings, leaded glass work and flute accompaniment by TriCity Potter Gay Mitchell. It’ll be good to see each upcoming show in this new addition to the City’s cultural offerings.
But I believe Tasha had really engineered the Vancouver trip to check up on her Uncle Al and for some family time so I was delighted that Steve, Jen and their three little boys and Mike could all join us for a chaotic supper time. Here’s just one photo of Jen with her little people taking advantage of their wellies. Tasha stayed with us for two nights and I was very happy to have aunt time.
On Sunday the three others taxied out here, we had some lunch and finally we descended to the studio for what turned out to be a very casual tile-painting workshop. And after I’d briefly given a demonstration of some ways of applying coloured slips to pre-made leather-hard red earthenware tiles, I gave Mara a short demo of wheel-throwing. She had a go, and in what I think is her first wheel-throwing effort, produced a round, more-than-beginner form. After that she hand-built a fitting lid and then turned to tile-painting too. Later we dried her thrown piece with a hair-dryer and she was able to paint it with slips too.
As usual I was pleased with the variety of ideas participants came up with. There are paper stencil designs, loose painterly areas and sgraffito. Tasha chose to carefully paint and later carve an eagle image she found online. I think they all enjoyed a departure from their busy adult lives, doing what they usually encourage their children to do. I certainly enjoyed their company, and still can’t believe they came all this way for a clay day!
Afterwards, and before we ended our day with a salmon dinner, I took them down to Rocky Point Park in pretty evening light so that they could know that Port Moody is on the Pacific too.
Next day I took them out to Vancouver Airport for their flights home to Austin and took the chance to check out my stock at Domestic Departures Crafthouse. There are still some jugbirds there, thank goodness, but the same day I got a request for more stock for Victoria’s Eclectic Gallery. So now I must get started on new jugbirds to fill the kiln and get my US guests’ work fired.
