The latest show at Port Moody Arts Centre is being taken down today. I attended a closing talk last night, presented by the collaborating artists Kathryn Gibson O’Regan and Robert Shiozaki. The show, Creative Conversations, opened the night before I left for England and I hadn’t taken the time to pop in to see the show since I returned. I’m pleased to have met both artists and grabbed a chance to see the show.

The selection committee for Amelia Douglas Gallery at Douglas College, New Westminster, has had a tradition of joining the East Side Culture Crawl each November to look out for likely artists to invite for a show. I have enjoyed accompanying my husband and other committee members on similar fishing expeditions when he used to be a member. Last year the group visited the studios of Robert Shiozaki and Kathryn O’Regan in the Mergatroid Building and casually wondered whether the two would like to show together. After some thought they decided not only to make work for a show (in January 2015 I believe) but they’d work together in a real, mutually inspiring collaboration.

This show in Port Moody presents some of the steps they have taken and will form the basis for their upcoming show in the bigger Amelia Douglas venue. Kathryn and Robert explained with a ‘slide’ show in the Art Centre’s new meeting room how they have been working. Kathryn had a show in PMAC in 2008 featuring the ceramic forms she was making then and some of her aquatic and floral life paintings. She has now discontinued her clay work and concentrates on photography and painting, taking beautiful floral forms to large abstract images.

Robert is a Japan-trained potter who has made exquisite thrown and mould-made forms for more years than he wants to admit. He painstakingly carves the surfaces in work I’ve seen before. For this show he has made some mould-formed dishes which echo the floral photographs by Kathryn. Also there are vast platters which he has used as canvases for stencilled layers of glazes, again responding to Kathryn’s images.

I also enjoyed some curved hand-built vase forms with bold but earthy colours made by Robert.

Both commented that the unfired platters have a surprisingly gentle range of colours compared to the fired results. They look vaguely 1940s and might be a direction for more work by the pair.

Sorry I didn’t get this account written before the show came down, but enjoy my selection of photos of the final evening of the show. The main gallery certainly looks much better now that the office furniture has been removed to the new/old house addition. Look out for the invitation to the next O’Regan/Shiozaki Collaboration early next year in New Westminster.