Saturday was the day we chose to spend crawling around Vancouver’s East Side for the Culture Crawl. It was a dreadfully rainy day but not too cold so we dressed appropriately. I imagine that 1000 Parker Street and the Mergatroid Building were very busy because one could spend all day there and not get wet.

But we started, with son Mike, on Gore Avenue at the store-front of potters Vin Arora and David Robinson. Vin’s wheel thrown work looks as if he trained at John Leach’s Muchelney pottery. David was showing vessels made by pouring porcelain slip into moulds formed around tree-trunks. I told him that I preferred the unglazed white finish to the softer glazed ones. The detail of the bark was clearer. I shall use mine for a tea-light I think.

We were delighted to find Torrie Groening’s beautifully lit studio in an old chapel on Jackson Avenue. She seems to have made Vancouver her home again after some 10 years in San Francisco. I recognized a photo-based montage “San Francouver, Spring” 2008, an edition of 15. It was shown in the Vancouver Sun a while ago. Gorgeous!

I was amused to see some Eric Metcalfe pieces  and a Jack Shadbolt series which she had printed for him.

We walked on to several of our favourite studios, including Richard Tetrault and Arnt Arntzen at Paneficio, before reparking near Clark Drive. Our next visit was to William Clark Studios which has a surprising number of artists working there. Bettina Matzkuhn has made it her studio this year and had many delightful pieces on display.

I photographed a typical East Vancouver sunset from that building before we walked west to finish our day at 1000 Parker. Of course we checked out the potters in Mergatroid too. It’s nice to see that the glass studio is now occupied by a glass collective and the crowds could watch glass-blowing.

A short walk east from our car took us to Commercial Drive for a nice beer and supper before heading home to Port Moody.

A second day might have given us enough time to visit the top two floors of 1000 Parker and all the studios on Powell and further west towards Main. Oh well, next year! I am not participating in any Craft sales this year and so far have not attended one but somehow the walk around the East Side Culture Crawl is always on our list. Seeing people in their studios and in some cases their homes working so hard at their particular artistic skill and passion sends me back home with encouragement to do likewise.

For now it’s helping the TriCity Potters get our show up and opened next Saturday, welcoming Mary Fox to our meeting tomorrow and finishing some more birds I threw yesterday. Next week I’ll be preparing to take my stoneware pots to be salt-fired.