Santo attended the Art Institute of Florence for a degree in painting and then took a further year of clay sculpture. He immigrated to Canada in 1957 and in Vancouver potter Olea Davis took him under her wing. Santo showed us slides of Sicily and its historic ruins, many photos of his sculpture over the years and some interesting photos of early days of the BC Potters Guild. Olea Davis travelled with him back to Sicily at one point. After some wonderful successes having his sculptures and hand built vessels win awards, including representing Canada at the Smithsonian Institute, he was hired to teach in Calgary for twenty years. During that time he took a leave to attend New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred for a masters degree.

On retirement Santo returned to the Vancouver area and he has been active for many years giving workshops and being an important inspiration to the West Coast Clay Sculpture Association.

He brought some portable samples of his work for us to hold. Many are much too big to transport. He expressed regret that he doesn't know where some of his favourite pieces are now. We also were shown treasured samples of ancient Greek and Roman pottery shards from his home country. He has great respect for the skill of ancient Greek potters. And he brought samples of reduction-fired stoneware pots that he makes. He has a gas kiln on his property and has plans to be making more pots to give to his friends. His grandchildren Miranda and Nicholas live in Port Moody and were in the audience for his presentation and are obviously very proud of their grandfather. I do hope they can take a hoped-for trip to Sicily with him one day soon.

Thank you Santo for a most interesting talk about your career and adventures in clay. We are lucky to have had Susan Gorris take a video of the evening so we will all have a record of his contributions to clay in BC for the BC Potters Guild archives. Debra Sloan came out from Vancouver to hear him and to take notes too.

Members brought bowls to donate to 'The Loving Spoonful's Empty Bowl Fundraiser'. Thank you to all the members who did that and thanks to Sue Griese for taking them in to the organizers for us.

To see the invitation and read the curator's statement and biographies of the 5 featured artists go to this link:

http://www.satellitegallery.ca/

Paul was invited to give us some information on how his work came about, why he uses porcelain and his intention in the creating of his elegant bowls at JingdeZhen, China. He has been a resident artist in this porcelain-manufacturing area of China several times and has found exactly the right artisans to make his bowl designs, paint his digital photographs precisely or apply ceramic ink photographic decals. It's almost impossible to detect the difference between these two decorating methods. Why porcelain? because it is the whitest of clays to enhance his colourful surfaces. His intention has to do with the perception of inside/outside, cultural expectations and art world traditions regarding images. His bowls are one aspect of Elegant Disorder.

Brendan Tang, another of the artists invited to be part of this conceptual show, was in town for the opening. His Manga/Ormulu pieces are intended to surprise the viewer with their combination of Oriental products. The traditional-seeming blue and white vessels (which are not porcelain) appear to stretch, bulge and fold over shiny 3D constructions inspired by Japanese Manga cartoon drawings. In his take on Elegant Disorder he has us consider the earlier cultural overlay of Chinese porcelain which became Ormulu with baroque embellishments when all things Oriental were highly sought-after in earlier centuries, but further altered by being married with very contemporary Oriental Cartooning.

Shelley Miller's work is not porcelain either. She has taken 3 large photographs of a blue and white tiled wall. These tiles could have been Turkish, Spanish, Mexican or Dutch but she has made them like Portuguese tiles and installed them in (I think) Brazil. They are made, not in clay at all, but in sugar. So the inevitable deterioration of the surfaces and even the 'glue' as they smash on falling is recorded and serves to bring our attention to the imbalance of power in global trade versus the usual permanence of ceramics. Here is her Elegant Disorder.

Sin-Ying Ho's work is much like what we have come to expect from artists who take advantage of the amazing facilities and abilities of the porcelain makers in Zhing de Zhen. She has chosen vases from the stock available there and applies unexpected images with decals on their surfaces. The forms are elegant but we come closer and see that she has taken religious, commercial and cultural images, applying them to glazed and unglazed areas and over peeling terra sigillata. Not as comfortable as the traditional all-over consistent blue and white design we expect. Her Elegant Disorder.

The 5th artist, Elizabeth Zvonar's two pieces followed the theme of the show. Her forms are taken from fingers and elbows and clear glaze drips over some parts. This Elegant Disorder contribution made me feel uncomfortable, but then I am a person, like Paul Mathieu, who is fascinated with the functional object.

I enjoyed the opportunity to see and touch most of the work in the show, as is the case with ceramics usually, unlike the hands-off rules normal in galleries. Reading Louis-Alexandre's notes subsequently has made me think about these Perspectives and I think the show warrants a visit. And I wish the curator success in his chosen career, especially as he seems interested in using ceramics in a Fine Art setting!

These 3 plates are quickly decorated using a stencil I cut from newspaper. I paint the plate first, apply the dampened stencil, paint another colour slip over it, perhaps sponge here and there and then lift off the stencil. The process leaves a good crisp edge to the design.

Al took these photos and the artists seem pleased with the results.

I make them by slumping a slab of red earthenware clay into my wheel-thrown bisque moulds. After finishing the edges I apply background slips and leave them to become bone dry. My visitors then paint using commercial underglazes. I bisque fire and then clear-glaze them with along with my own work.

In my next blog I'll post photos of my plates which I slip-paint, using newsprint stencils, when the pieces are leather hard.

Run the cursor over each photo to see which artist painted the plate. Or, in order down the page they are by Eli 2, Eric 2, Monique 1, Sally 3 and Monique 1. (I find it hard to control the order pics are inserted into a blog if I have more than 3 or 4 images).

It's always so interesting to see how each person makes use of a painting surface that is not rectangular or flat!

www.artsconnect.ca/artsconnect/images/pdf/ac.artwalk2012.1inside.pdf

My kiln is reaching temperature as I write, tomorrow is cooling day so I'll be opening it on Thursday - rather lastminuteish for adding to my display on Friday for the weekend. Even though my selection of work is rather limited this year, due in part to the fact that Alan and I have been travelling Down Under, I'll be happy to have friends visit. In a rush of working last week I painted 5 jug birds in one day, somewhat of a record for me! Here they are drying.

On our recent trip Down Under we were interested to find more work by the artist, Konstantin Dimopoulos, who came to Port Moody to get our trees painted. This work is called 'Red Centre' referring to that hot, red-earthed middle of Australia. We found this public sculpture in the centre of Melbourne and we came to understand that the Red Centre i.e. Alice Springs and Uluru (Ayer's Rock) are central not only to the country but to the hearts of Aussies.

I am compiling an album of lots of public art Alan and I photographed in Feb and March of this year and will put a link here asap. Meanwhile I need to get my one kiln load glazed tomorrow for this weekend's ArtWalk, 4 plates to donate to Oven and kiln and all the plates made by the 4 artists who were here last week.

To get a breath of fresh Spring air I tackled a job I want to do - inserting bricks beside another flower bed. I do like bricks! Soon I'll need to scrounge some more old ones.

Today's photos were taken at Walter Keeler's lecture at the Museum of Anthropology last Saturday. They're from his slide show so are somewhat fuzzy, crooked and odd colours - but show some more of his unusual pots. Thank you Debra and Terry Sloan-Yip for inviting us back to your pot-filled home for a snack afterwards and a chance to chat with Walter, his wife Madeleine and lots of other familiar pottery friends.

I simply put out a dozen or so jars of underglazes with sample tiles of each and left them to draw on the bone-dry plates and paint and chat to their hearts' content. Meanwhile I quietly worked on inserting spouts into the seven jugbird bodies I'd thrown earlier in the week.

Here are photos of the artists at work and I will be sure to post photos of the finished plates when they come out of the glaze kiln, hopefully next week when I plan to have had a firing to add to my low stock for ArtWalk. Just for the record, here are some details on the artists.

Sit back and enjoy the show without the drive down to Seattle!

https://picasaweb.google.com/112208740085943894765/InterestingPotsAtNCECASeattle2012