One week ago Alan and I returned from a wonderful week-long road trip to Banff. Sister nieces from Austin, TX and Boston, MA planned to fly to Calgary with their families and holiday in Banff. What a great excuse to get ourselves out of town and join them there for a few days! Although flying out of the country is still a step too far for us a road trip sounded perfect. I plan to put together an album of selected photos of the amazing mountains, lakes, flowers, animals and people we saw, but first, this blog will show you the atmospheric kilns in the Banff Centre.
We arrived in Banff just too late to join the current artists-in-residence for their final show and celebration, and even missed seeing their work the next day when they were all packing up. When we finally climbed the hill to Banff Centre from the townsite, and found Ceramics director Ed Bamiling in the clay department, the last of the current batch of residents were leaving and the studios were empty. When he had finished his final talks with them he joined Al and me as I took photos of the outdoor kilns.
Ed was happy to show me all the kilns and explained that the current residents had been working on multi-disciplinary projects and had become most excited with the possibilities of raku firing. In fact, he said, there had been time to raku fire three times. He was pleased that artists who’d not worked in ceramics before were thrilled with the almost instant results.
The piece de resistance is the vast new wood kiln, the result of a kiln-building workshop led by Robin Dupont, in 2016. Apparently a keen team built it in two weeks and that left another two weeks for the builders to fire it twice more. Sadly, because of Covid shutdown it hasn’t been fired since.
Ed apologized for the clutter in front of the kiln. For a while we sat and discussed the effects of the Covid shut-down on the Banff Centre, the 284 staffers who were laid off, how things are gradually returning to ‘normal’ with limited residencies, and his life in the beautiful town of Banff, in a National Park.
The next themed and multi-disciplinary residency runs from Aug 2-Sept 2. ‘Ecologies of Precarious Abundance: Queer Life & Natures’.
Check this link to see more of the clay department’s facilities. I didn’t photograph the glazing and kiln room, empty studios etc. The last time I saw them, paper-clay inventor Rosette Gault was in residence.
https://www.banffcentre.ca/visual-arts-facilities
We visited the Walter Phillips Gallery and the current show of Banff and mountain-themed work from their collection, including two pieces by Les Manning. I wasn’t allowed to photograph them.
Thank you Ed, for giving us time and conversation. We saw your work in Willock & Sax Gallery in town the next day.
What an amazing experience.
This is great that you stopped in to see the Banff Centre. I have a passion for raku, too!❤