The Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Art Studio Tour takes place over the Mothers’ Day weekend so artists in the adjacent area to our Tri-Cities had their studios open to the public for Saturday and Sunday this weekend.
Having spent much of Saturday morning with our younger son Mike, including brunch on Main Street, and knowing that our older son Steve is completely busy looking after his very pregnant wife Jen and two-year-old son Caleb, so not expecting to see our sons yesterday Al and I took off for an afternoon east of the Pitt River.
I had been hoping Al would be interested in visiting some of the potters on the tour and even though we didn’t manage to get to all of them we did enjoy finding Brigitta, Mark and Jacqueline. Then, with stopping at Triple Tree Nurseries for bedding plants and a good specimen of ‘Stuartia Pseudocamellia’ to replace our removed fir, we had no more time for studio touring.
Brigitta Schneiter is on the executive of TriCity Potters and her work was a big hit at ‘Art in the Garden’ last year, when I invited TCP to show their garden-related work in my garden. Brigitta’s work is really all about her garden and her lifestyle. She and Andres, a woodworker and furniture designer, live in the log house they built on a wooded hillside back in the seventies. They keep chickens and other animals and maintain a big kitchen garden. They are east of the old Albion Ferry dock, between Lougheed and Dewdney Trunk highways. It must have been a quiet peaceful spot to raise their family but now the surrounding area is being quickly developed for housing.
Andres has a large workshop for his woodworking and Brigitta has a pottery studio and a walk-through, semi-outdoor area for her electric kiln. (We saw a photo of a black bear exploring it the other day!) So her pots are chickens and other birds, mushrooms, planters and fairyland teapots. In the photo Brigitta is holding a fantastic teapot and stand, straight out of Hobbiton. There is a photo of a star-shaped planter which was built to hide a large tree stump. What a good idea! And the third photo shows a large jug by their front door amongst an interesting collection of plants and dishes of collected special stones.
A third artist, Mike Stewart, was showing his soapstone carvings in Andres’ workshop too.
We have been told that lots of generous patrons attended this location on the tour and Brigitta was happy to donate half of all sales and contents of a collection jar to help in Nepal.
Not far away, off Dewdney Trunk Road, we discovered Mark Tigges’ home and studio right at the end of a quiet country road. Out here one can safely fire a wood kiln. I was pleased to meet Mark having heard about a man who was firing a wood kiln in Maple Ridge. Dave Dobie joined him for a firing recently. Mark explained to me that his most important teacher was St. George School’s art teacher Rob Stickney (who is now offering a class at Shadbolt Centre I see) and he is most keen on the Japanese aesthetic of tea ceremony and sake vessels. His work is distinctively wood-firing style. The kiln can be fired in less than a day, he tells me, because he has a day job. No many-day firings for him! There are plans to build a little kiln to fire with salt and to insert wood but which will also have a gas burner for the firing. I’ll be interested to see how that works out. We exchanged cards.
Jacq Sheridan spent several years involved with Port Moody Arts Centre, specifically taking throwing and glazing lessons from Clive Tucker and for a while she and Clive shared a studio down here on Murray Street. But not long ago she and John decided to move to quieter Maple Ridge where they could enjoy Pitt Meadows dike walks with their wippets and enjoy the birds around their house half way up a mountain. Like the Schneiters further east this area is not totally rural any more. There are large houses all around them. Luckily they have a fabulous view east over Pitt Meadows and towards the Tri-Cities and Burnaby Mountain. I’m so pleased to have found where her studio is now and will be able to imagine her lifestyle when I read her Facebook posts!
www.jacquelinesheridanpottery.com
Sorry we didn’t manage to find time to visit most of the other people on this well-organized Art Studio Tour. Next year… and especially I want to get to you, Kerry McLaren and Diane Wooldridge. But I will be using their brochure as a good example of map, addresses and info when I get involved in trying to re-establish a similar event in Port Moody. Having folks find their way to one’s own studio is so much nicer than trundling work to a different venue.
