TriCity Potters’ June meeting & new salty pots!
Last Wednesday was the final meeting of the year for TriCity Potters. We were pleased to have about 15 people there seeing it was also the actual Stanley Cup final game. But as it turned out those who came don't particularly care for hockey and we were all better off not watching Vancouver's debacle and the shenanigans afterwards.
To celebrate our first four years in existence we shared an excellent T & T cake. Our local Chinese-Canadian grocery store do make fabulous cakes! Then we looked at a variety of candle-holders and pictures to get inspiration for making some. Just as we started Hazel Postma and Joy Silver arrived to give us a short explanation of Amnesty International. I think members are comfortable with the idea of making candle-holders for their December fund-raising dinner. As mentioned in my previous post about last Wednesday's meeting we are hoping members will make 3 or so over the summer and bring them to the September meeting.
Cone 6 white clay was made available and the rest of the evening was spent with people hand-building and sculpting candle-holders. Hazel and Joy are quite happy with whatever designs are made. Some experimented with incorporating the barbed-wire which can be seen in the AI logo with a candle. Linda Lebrun and I each made one on the wheel. I showed a trick of throwing it hollow right down to the wheel-head, narrowing the cylinder and then inserting a tiny cookie of clay to seal off the lower part. Pics later!
The next day I drove over to West Vancouver to collect my carefully packed pots from Vincent Massey's in-laws. He'd dropped them off there on his way from Whistler to the Interior. I'm so lucky that he comes into Vancouver quite often. The firing was quite salty and there was reduction visible. I am pleased with the way they look. Vincent warned me that he had used about 50lbs of salt to make sure that some large pieces were truly juicy and that a couple of mine maybe had too much. Yes, one jugbird and a mug were on the bagwall and did get a bit much. But a casserole that was refired is now perfect and a large silly bird basket that I made at Medalta is now fired. He has good green on his head - there isn't as much of the fine titanium green on this batch. I wonder if it needed an atmosphere-clearing time at the end? Vincent says he does want to fire the salt kiln again early in the Fall to keep up the momentum and he's happy to include some of mine again. I think the smaller pieces fill his gaps. Thanks Vincent!
This is just a quick snapshot of the group. You can see the orange peel is good on most but a little too much on one or two.
Candle-holder making at Wednesday’s TCP meeting
It's a rainy day today so I'm not tempted to be out in the garden. My clay work began with my inserting spouts in the 4 earthenware jugbirds I threw on Saturday. They'll firm up overnight. Then I threw some candle-holders to reaquaint myself with how I used to do that. Wednesday's TriCity Potters' meeting will focus on the making, either by throwing or hand-building, of candlesticks. Hazel Postma will be there to explain to members about Amnesty International because we are making candle holders for one of their meetings/fundraisers. 75 are needed and will be given to attendees. Our making them should be a fun evening of shared ideas. I popped up to the High School today to make sure that we have a wheel available. I trust we'll have some volunteers to show their hand-building techniques. Cone 6 clay will be available. Come prepared to get white clay on your clothing!
Do please bring along any candle-holders (standard candles, not tea-lights) you have, whether they're made of clay, silver, glass or wood. We might be inspired.
We are asking that members please try to make about 3 each, either at the meeting or later when you have some ideas. Bring them all finished to the September meeting and we'll take some photographs.
Once I'd thrown a few more earthenware pieces I cleaned the red clay out of my wheel ready to start throwing stoneware. Hah! I have just about a week to make, dry and spray with slips 2 1/2 cu. ft of pots for Cathi Jefferson's firing for Fraser Valley potters. First I combined Plainsman H550 and H570. That's the combination I found to work best for me last year at Medalta.
Meanwhile Vincent Massey says he has now fired his salt kiln. I can hardly wait until we can meet up and I can see the results!
Rob Bush presents to TriCity Potters
TriCity Potters' meetings are held at 7pm on the third Thursday of the month at the Port Moody Senior High School 300 Albert St, Port Moody, BC V3H 2M5 All are welcome to attend.
Tomorrow's presenter is Rob Bush. The information below is taken from our newsletter. Thanks as ever Linda for getting the word out to members - in spite of having spent the weekend at ArtWalk.
PORT MOODY SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Our Guest presenter for the evening will be Robert Bush. Rob taught many potters the fine art of throwing clay during the many years he worked at Place des Arts. He now lives in Mission and continues to work with clay in the large studio space he has created for himself there.
Rob graduated from the Vancouver School of Art before it was named Emily Carr. As well as being an extraordinary thrower and maker of functional pottery for many, many years, Rob has more recently been working with, and creating some exceptional crystalline glazes. Rob will demo for us as well as talk about his most recent work.
Please note that as Rob will be using a wheel the meeting will be in the Art Room, Rm 211, not 214. It's right next door. Come and see crystalline surfaces!
Vincent Massey’s platter workshop
Vincent Massey's weekend workshop at Coquitlam's Place des Arts was a great success. 30 keen potters were so happy with what they'd been shown. I popped in at the very end in time for Vincent's critique of their mostly finished slab, texture and extrusions platters. And I saw his demo platters - luscious! I was told I'd missed an excellent video too, taken in Whistler. I'll link a nice Picasa photo album with music that our tech and photographer Christine Eastlick has put together. Thanks Christine! I think it will also appear on http://www.tricitypotters.ca/ along with an account of the workshop.
Here are some of my photos - people moved! 
Vincent Massey workshop in Coquitlam
Tomorrow Vincent Massey will be giving a workshop at Place des Arts, Coquitlam. This is a joint offering between Place des Arts and our TriCity Potters. The event is sold out and will, I'm sure, leave the attendees enthused about new ways to handbuild platters and trays. This was our poster for the event - assembled by our board member Christine Eastlick.
More information about Vincent can be found at his website: http://www.vincentmasseypottery.com/
Heather Cairns spoke to TriCity Potters
Wednesday's meeting of TriCity Potters was another friendly and informative session. I mentioned to the group that we've already been asked if we'd like to make candlesticks/holders for an Amnesty International fundraiser in the Fall. As we like to have a group making session we may well do this at our June meeting.
I wrote a little blurb about Heather Cairns' presentation for the TriCity Potters' website: http://www.tricitypotters.ca/hot2.html
Basically it is this plus some photos of Heather demonstrating to the group. Members had lots of questions. I would hope that speakers I invite will inspire some new ideas or at least a reason to get back to the studio.
When I was introducing her Heather reminded me that we originally met at that important Jeff Oestreich class at ECU in 1992. For several of us local potters it was a challenging and exciting 3 weeks. Jeff worked with us all the time - never mind the class times. We saw movies together, we were given assignments like we'd never tackled before, we ate group meals, collaborated on designs, had group critiques and all pushed our work way beyond the safe into new, personal directions. I thank Jeff for one of the most inspiring workshops I've ever taken.
Since Wednesday June reported that the Gogos Bowl event raised over $11,000. for the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Feels good.
Heather Cairns, next TCP presenter
Tomorrow the fellow executive members of TriCity Potters will meet here to discuss final arrangements for next Wednesday's meeting, the Vincent Massey workshop in a couple of weeks and other speakers and hands-on activities for the rest of the year. June MacDonald spoke to Fraser Valley Potters Guild last Thursday so she can tell us all about that. It was a dreadfully rainy night for June to drive out to Surrey but I gather she had Eliza Wang's company for the drive. Linda and I had tickets to the Opening Gala evening of Port Moody Canadian Film Festival and saw 'Incendies'. It won the best film Genie award that night! And it's a moving, thought-provoking film, set in Canada and Lebanon with a shocking revelation at the end. We heard that we had all voted it the best of the festival this evening.
Heather Cairns of North Vancouver will be TriCity Potters featured speaker at our Wednesday March 16th meeting. 7pm at Port Moody Senior Secondary School. All are welcome. Heather's work is wheel-thrown, functional cone 6, decorated with colours and black brush-strokes. She plans to show pictures of her work and do a demonstration of her painting technique. These photos were taken at the Gallery of BC Ceramics in February.
TriCity Potters’ meeting last night
Last night's meeting of TriCity Potters was a happy evening. There was a good turnout, some new members, lots of conversation, good cookies and coffee. Over 70 bowls were brought and donated to Coquitlam Gogos. Many more, including my paltry 7 will be added to that total. Hannah Diamond was delighted with the number, quality and size of the bowls. Several of us bought tickets at $35 each to attend the evening event on March 8th so we'll bring home a bowl as well! The bowl filled with soup, some yummy bread, a napkin, live music and the opportunity to bid on silent auction items all come with the ticket. This local initiative, like so many other Empty Bowl parties, will benefit a charity. In this case all money raised will be sent by Coquitlam Gogos to the Stephen Lewis Foundation in support of African grandmothers raising their AIDS-orphaned grandchildren.
After we'd taken coffee and had a good chance to catch up on each other's clay adventures we were given a very well organized power point presentation by 5 members who had travelled together to China last October. Grace Siu had initiated the tour and she was joined by Kay Bonathan, Eliza Wang, Carlene Akester and Hannah Chan. Details on their travels will be available on the TCP website shortly.
http://www.tricitypotters.ca/hot3.html
Eliza's daughter Audrey had assembled the photos and Kay was the primary spokesperson. Their travels were most interesting but I was intrigued with two-week Residency in JingdeZhen. I really would have liked to join them. Certainly the fact that three of them are able to communicate in Mandarin was incredibly helpful. They stayed in the Residency accomodation and ate there. They chose workshops (just for the 5 of them) on underglaze and overglaze painting, mould-making, brush-making, pouring slip into said moulds, porcelain flower-making and porcelain carving. They each had a studio space and learnt lots but partly because of the short time and also the limit on luggage weight within China they weren't able to bring much work home with them. Visits to huge kilns, seeing enormous (3-storey high!) porcelain vases, choosing Ming shards at a market, eating really cheap but excellent local food and then travelling to beautiful parks and historic towns nearby made the whole experience something unforgettable.
Thank you Kay, Eliza, Grace, Hannah and Carlene for sharing your great adventure. And thanks to all the members who have so generously made and donated excellent bowls for a good cause.
TriCity Potters meeting tonight
To continue the tale of pots made when there's a deadline! The pots were all dry by Sunday so I started the bisque. Monday saw the kiln cooling and my poor cousin braved pouring rain to visit in Port Moody. She lives in Ontario - I'd really like to get there again - and also reconnect with my good buddy from Medalta, Brenda Sullivan. Anybody there need a workshop or slide talk?
On Tuesday I was able to empty the kiln, wax and glaze all the pots, reload and leave the kiln warming very slowly to dry them all out - while I drove in to Vancouver in the late afternoon. Pouring rain again. Cousin Dennise is staying at Granville Island Hotel so the plan was to take her to Gallery of BC Ceramics and Circle Craft.
First I stopped in at the Ceramics Dept of Emily Carr to donate two non-bird jugs for the students Ceramics Auction soon. Had a nice chat with Paul Mathieu in his office. I distracted him from preparing his next power point presentation. I must try to get to that auction - as usual he is donating a couple of vases and they go quickly!
With chatting and supper with several relatives who'd congregated we didn't get to the galleries but Dennise knows where to go when she has a break from meetings over the next couple of days. Turned the kiln to 100 degrees per hr at 10pm.
Wednesday morning: The kiln had a 20-minute soak at 1922 F, cone 04 and turned itself off at 2pm. Meanwhile the washing-machine in my studio died the other day so while it is pulled out from its home I decided to paint the floor. You know how that goes. I used up the remainder of the acrylic latex floor paint on a large part of the studio area. Feels great but I didn't take the stoneware out of its bag.
And now, this evening, the TriCity Potters meet at 7pm at Port Moody Senior Secondary School. 5 of our members who attended a Residency at Zhing de Zhen last October will be showing us images of their adventure. Do join us!
TriCity Potters November meeting this Weds
TriCity Potters meet on the third Wednesday of each month at Port Moody Senior Secondary School in Room 214. Do join us!
This month's presenter is Don Hutchinson, retired Langara College ceramics instructor and potter extraordinaire!
November 17, 2010 7pm
“A potter for over 35 years, Hutchinson works out of Kingsmill
Pottery on Granville Island, and his own studio, White Rabbit Pottery,
in White Rock. He learned the medium at the Vancouver School of
Art from his mentors, world-acclaimed potters Robert Weghsteen,
Heinz Laffin and Wayne Ngan.
For more than a quarter of a century Hutchinson has shared his
ceramics knowledge with hundreds of people at Vancouver’s Langara
College. Some of these students have gone on to pursue ceramics
careers in Seoul and New York.”
“When Hutchinson retired from teaching a few years ago his
colleague, Vancouver designer Gerald Formosa, remarked: “This man
has never done a day’s work in this place; everything was pure loving
and play.” He describes Hutchinson as a “sometimes biblical Adam
who is all mud and water — pure clay who knows that all the
complexity of life is in the simplicity of a bowl viewed from many
angles.”*
*(M. WHITNEY PIAGGIO wrote this for the Langara College magazine. Taken from the Langara college website)