The last few days illustrate how my life is a blend of pottery-related activities, household stuff and days when family is top priority. Last Thursday I finished applying terra sigillata to the undersides of all my pots, fast-dried some still slightly damp plates in my convection oven (on 'warm'), loaded the kiln for the bisque firing and turned it on. We'd set aside Friday for…
I finally decided that I had enough new plates prepared for another Raid and I sent the first photo to organizer Mina Totino. So she and her friends Cindy Richmond and Michelle Normoyle came out from Vancouver today. My own work seems to have taken forever to finish but with some new mugs, yunomis and plates now painted, and some more test pieces for the…
Last night Al and I braved horrid rain to drive over to West Vancouver. We grabbed an early supper at Park Royal South's Trattoria Restaurant before heading on to the West Vancouver Museum. Renée Van Halm's solo show 'The Shape of Things' was opening. The walls of the two galleries were filled with her large impressive paintings and some smaller works and aha! there were…
A reader of my blogs had wondered if the 'Raids' are workshops. No, they aren't. I trained as a teacher oh-so-many years ago, in London, but actually only taught in elementary schools for four years and then some time substitute teaching, but I have supplemented my pottery income by teaching wheel-throwing for decades. Then, when I became enamoured of painting with brightly coloured slips on red…
One week ago four Raiders were here for the day and, unbelievably, I emptied the kiln this afternoon to see all the finished plates. I had work by Philippe and Mina left from an earlier 'Raid' so I decided to just fill the kiln for the bisque and glaze firings and not make them wait for any of my work to be finished. …