The latest Canadian Clay Symposium took place at the Shadbolt Centre, as usual, on March 21st, and it's taken this long for me to sort my photos and put together my experience of a super weekend. On the Friday evening Jesse Birch of Nanaimo AG gave the keynote speech at the Emily Carr U campus. He spoke about ways of sharing ceramic collections with gallery…
I recently attended the opening of Fired Identity, a show of work by Greater Vancouver Chinese Canadian Artists in Clay. It was co-curated by Kwantlen University instructor Ying Yueh Chuang and Jean Paull. Participating artist and local potter friend Eliza Wang invited me, with the treat of being driven all the way down to Kwantlen Polytechnic University by her daughter Audrey. Eliza was delighted to…
Even though I've made jugbirds since 2003 it seems people still expect me to have some on hand. So I started my minimal production of 2026 by throwing half a dozen jugbird bodies. It takes several days to add spouts/beaks and eyes, paint with coloured slips, dry and then bisque fire them. Here is the current flock. Someone has asked for a Pileated Woodpecker. They…
Some months ago I began to notice wonderful painted porcelain mugs showing up on Instagram. Lori Elling's work is unique in many ways. She cheerfully applies oodles of underglaze patterns, but the interesting thing is that they are broken up by raised shapes, left uncoloured. When I noticed that she is one of the latest artists whose work has been juried into the Circle Craft…
We left our old home in June and now, after six months, we are settled and pleased to be here in Treetops. The turmoil and planning for leaving, after making an old house, garden, study and studio work for us for 54 years, took up many months. I hadn't made pots for so long but in the Fall I threw stoneware pots for an October…