The other artists working here a couple of Fridays ago, during a Christmas Raid, were Eric Metcalfe, Mina Totino, Rebecca Brewer and Philippe Raphanel. Trips out here have to be coordinated with teaching commitments at Emily Carr U or SFU so the group varies depending on who is free. Allyson Clay couldn’t join us as she still had too much marking to do and Elizabeth MacKintosh was jet lagged from a recent trip to England. But I think six people working around our table here, actually a ping-pong table over Al’s long-unused pool table, is enough.
Philippe worked hard all day with experiments on this new-to-him ‘canvas’ but chose to leave completing his four pieces until another visit. They are perfectly safe sitting bone dry in my cupboard until then.
So I am posting photos of Eric’s two now-traditional oval plates first. He decided to use only red over the Naples Yellow slip I’d applied beforehand. The gouache paintings he’s working on at his Western Front studio use a greater variety of subtle colours but here he prefers to stick to tried and true favourites. I think this is the first time he’s used just one colour all day, but he says he’s working on the shapes being equally balanced.
Rebecca hasn’t been here on a Raid for a while, and her work this time was quite different from before. There are gentle overlays of carefully chosen colours. The larger oval one has used the rim as a framing device for the central image. This is something I remember Fraser Valley Potters Guild Juried Show jurors often encouraged us to do – ‘make your design fit inside the plate/bowl/platter and use the rim as a decorated frame’ – and we did. There’s no right or wrong in this. Eric makes a point of never doing it, nor does Renée but I see that Monique did (see her plates in the previous blog) and here Rebecca has.
Similarly Rebecca’s squared plate has black areas emphasizing the rim. She’ll enjoy discovering just how the colours turn out after the application of the clear, shiny glaze.
Her third dish, a small hand built bowl, has more random colours all over it, ignoring the rim.
The group have asked me to design an oval plate that doesn’t have a rim for our next group fund-raising effort for the Western Front. I’ve been thinking out the best way to make a thrown and bisqued mould to simplify the fabrication of these. They need six so I should make several moulds. I could also check Value Village for found forms!
Mina took her time painting a rimmed, footed plate I’d made for her. With its little vertical rim it’s a perfect cake plate and Mina is the cake lady. Again, this plate is inspired by a purchased find. Usually I don’t throw plates for this group – too time consuming and prone to ‘inconsistencies’. It’s much less bother for me to use my slab roller and the now-large selection of thrown and altered bisque forms. I’m still grateful for my ECU Summer workshop leader Walter Ostrem for showing us how to make them (in 1993!).
Mina had taken home a lump of clay for experimentation and for the rest of the day she painted a bone-dry wall decoration and a small randomly shaped dish she’d made, and a tiny dish of mine. I’m only posting plate paintings in this blog. But I’m sure Mina will enjoy her colourful pieces.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve so I don’t expect to find time to put together some more blogs I have in mind until later in the holiday. We are expecting our little local family here in the Lower Mainland to join us in Port Moody. Alan’s brother and sister-in-law and our younger son Mike will come from Vancouver. And Steve and Jennifer will do their very best to manage bringing two seven-month-old baby boys, plus cots and bibs, and Caleb, their two and a half-year-old for the day. We’ll eat when there’s a quiet five minutes! I think the excitement of little people will more than compensate for any chaos and it’s something I’ve waited for a long time.
I hope you all have a Christmas you will be happy to remember.
