Alan and I took ourselves off to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a couple of weeks in January and were very lucky to escape a week of heavy snow here in Vancouver. We enjoyed the warmth, the colour of plants, exotic wildlife, Surrealist and Folk Art and friendly Mexicans. My resolution to be drawing more often only resulted in one afternoon of sketching with watercolours and…
I have been using wetted paper as a stencil between layers of coloured slips. The design can be an intricate image, or merely torn strips as Raider Pierre Coupey has done. I decided to cut random angles in the sides of my strips of newsprint and then experiment with two or three possibilities for the overlaid slip. Porcelain slip on an earlier plate was pleasing.…
Well, perhaps not gems but it's nice alliteration! Certainly the contents of the top shelf of my recently opened glaze firing are jolly. I have already posted pics of all the Raiders' plates that were on shelves below so now I'll show some of my work. I have neglected the jugbirds lately, probably because of the excitement of 'The Raiders' show on Bowen Island and…
How can it be August tomorrow? Certainly July has been very Summery, giving us a heat wave for the last little while and I hope August will be fair. But I won't mind if we get a little rain and slightly cooler days. Luckily my basement studio is a reasonable place to work if I plug in a fan. I have bisque-fired all the Raiders'…
After I let the last batch of jugbirds fly off to Victoria I decided not to succumb to the usual pressure of trying to fill the kiln again. My days of scrambling to produce work for Christmas Craft fairs seem to be over. My time-consuming pieces can find homes at any time of the year. But I had arranged for a young friend to bring…