Gay, who is actually best known as a painter and instructor too, spends an awful lot of her time taking classes and attending drop-in times in the clay department of Port Moody Arts Centre. She had painted some tiles for her recent show at Gallery Bistro and asked me to make some more, in red clay, for her painting day. She also painted a large oval platter.

Ysabella, perhaps inspired by the upcoming Lunar New Year of the Rooster, spent her day carefully painting and then sgraffito-ing a fine Rooster on a coupe plate.

Maria has once again chosen to apply bold colours, this time in rectangular shapes. She also made a red clay fish while here and later painted it and returned it to me to fire. Wait till you see it!

And Judith, after a preliminary, loosely painted experimental plate chose to make a drawing of Athena on a large platter. She is very interested in Greek culture and often uses it in her paintings.

So those plates are at the bottom of the kiln that has now finished its bisque firing and I know those four are anxiously waiting to see their results.

Two days later we attended the January TriCity Potters’ meeting and were reminded to get our work all finished and delivered to the February meeting ready for our March show! We are each invited to submit five pieces (some can be sets) as well as some communal work. An outdoor theme has been chosen, to represent an important part of Port Moody life – so we’ll see how members interpret that idea. As well, we have been encouraged to donate as many bowls as we want for the Arts Centre to use as they see fit, for a fund-raising initiative. I understand they plan a Dutch auction to coincide with the show, so that will be exciting for visitors.

Our speaker that evening was the clay department’s new Artist-in-Residence Gloria Han. She’s a busy woman, who raced in after teaching a class elsewhere, but we enjoyed her enthusiastic slide show, and can see that she is going to be a valuable asset to the clay programme for the remainder of her year. Watch for her solo show there in July.

https://www.pomoarts.ca/programs/meet-our-instructors/artist-in-residence/774-ceramic-artist-in-residence-ray-tse-2

Since then I have concentrated on making sure I had at least one special jugbird for our show, have painted a large platter with a fish hatchery theme, have thrown and decorated some bowls and finished painting some yunomis and bird mugs.

Fitting all that into the kiln, with my visitors’ work, was an interesting puzzle. Now Eliza Wang and Gay have asked me to glaze fire, to my usual cone 04, some more contributions of leaves. So I will need to do two glaze firings to accommodate all the bisque. Of course I’ll post photos of everybody’s finished work one day soon.

‘Summer of Ceramics’ is the title of one of the shows that opened at Port Moody Arts Centre on Thursday. Members of the ‘Clay for You’ pottery club and their teacher Clay Jung Hong Kim were showing Korean-style pottery in their 12th Annual Exhibition.

Korean ceramic master Clay Jung Hong Kim arrived in BC in 2001. Since then he has become well-known for his fine traditional work and his teaching. The gallery flyer says: ‘This year, our students are presenting individually crafted ceramic artworks, as well as geometrical plates of round, oval, triangular and rectangular shapes, which will be displayed on a wall as a group.’

I was pleased to see Clay and his wife Sylvia again and am impressed with the work of their students. They were obviously enjoying the celebration and happily posed for a group photo.

All the work is reduction-fired to cone 10, with the fine celadon as the main glaze enhancing carved, pierced and Sanggam (inlay; white slip painted on a carved pattern and then scraped out) decorated ware. They only use clay imported from Korea.

Beautiful, not-for-sale beakers featuring carved black slip and celadon glaze were made by member Janice Ha.

Coquitlam resident Ren Shieh explained that he gave up a stressful computer career ten years ago after taking classes with Clay Kim and now sells his clay work at the Whistler Farmers’ Market. I wondered how he, a Chinese-Canadian, was taught by Mr Kim who only speaks Korean and he tells me that they learn purely from watching his demonstrations. We agreed that  we all have much to appreciate in the process of traditional Korean techniques, whether it’s throwing off the hump, carving applied slip or watching Sylvia recreate the filigree and Sanggam skills.

After Clay Jung Hong Kim was introduced to the largely Korean audience, Janice Cotter announced that this year’s Port Moody Arts Centre Ceramic Artist-in-Residence is one of his students. Gloria Han was unable to attend but I met her mother and saw her two show pieces. Gloria, also a Coquitlam resident, graduated from the Ceramics programme at Emily Carr University this year. Her particular interest is the study of Korean ceramics, especially the making of huge Onggi jars.

Congratulations Gloria. I wish you a very successful year in the clay department and look forward to seeing your year-end show next July.