What a day! On Saturday March 25th 2023 hundreds of clay enthusiasts met at Shadbolt Centre, in Burnaby, to watch presenters, see displays, meet vendors and reconnect with friends and colleagues after so long. (CCS takes place every three years and it was obviously cancelled in 2020). It has taken me a week to think about the remarkable occasion and to sort out which of…
New glass display shelves have been installed outside the Spruce Art Gallery at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, just near the Ceramics department. KPU Ceramics instructor Ying Yueh Chuang has been looking forward to their arrival for a while. For the first display she and Fraser Valley Potters Guild past president Pat Schendel decided to invite past and present alumni of the Ceramics department to bring along…
On our way to Abbotsford last Friday to attend the closing sale at Herman Venema's studio (see yesterday's blog) Carlene, Eliza and I stopped in at the ACT art gallery in Maple Ridge to see Fraser Valley Potters Guild's latest show, TRANSFORMATION. We were greeted by the Art Gallery curator and manager Courtney Miller, who showed us around the ceramics show and explained some of…
We were all sad to learn that the Herman Venema studio would be closing after operating in the Fraser Valley for 50 years. Herman has been an inspirational teacher to area potters, offering classes in a large well-equipped studio, with the use of cone 10R glazes and firings in a huge gas kiln. He built an elegant retail gallery on the upper floor of the converted…
I can't resist a challenge so when I read that the Potters Guild of BC were hosting a one-day show of plates during the Canadian Ceramics Symposium I needed to quickly make a dinner plate. Having already made enough pots to fill my reserved two cubic feet of space in the soda firing I decided to experiment with sgraffito again and booked a space in…