It has been a very busy week in my world of clay. A week ago today I took my two cubic feet of pots to the Shadbolt soda kiln for wadding and left them there. The next day Linda, Jay and Tony loaded the kiln and then I saw Linda again that evening out at UBC for the opening of ‘Playing With Fire’.

On the Friday the same Shadbolt ceramic technicians started the soda kiln so that when I arrived there with some of the other firing participants in the afternoon it was almost time to start introducing soda. I had a little while to wait so I strolled down to Deer Lake and then along towards Deer Lake Art Gallery, stopping to notice that the tops of ‘Untitled Blocks’ are reflective, and then was pleased to find that Amy Chang’s show was still on in the little Arts Council Gallery. Amy was there so we chatted, remembering that she had a show at Port Moody Arts Centre recently. This show ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is up just until November 30th. The work is quite extraordinary and it’s hard to realize that it’s all made of clay. Some skill! This is the link to my comments on her show in April 2018.

https://www.gillianmcmillan.com/2018/04/03/industrial-revolution-amy-li-chuan-chang/

I took a brief look at the Deer Lake Craft Festival in the main Shadbolt Centre building before wandering back up the hill to the soda and wood kilns that are near the Burnaby Art Gallery. With guidance we sprayed soda into the kiln and removed draw rings until we were satisfied that the kiln was hot enough and that enough orange peel and glaze had developed on the draw rings. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t sort out names of my fellow soda firers but you can see that we all enjoyed taking turns to assess the progress of the firing.

All day Saturday was spent at MOA listening to the artists’ conversations.

Yesterday I drove over to Shadbolt again and we spent a happy couple of hours unloading the still slightly warm kiln. This is enough photos for one blog so I’ll post pics of salty pots tomorrow.