Birthday men Pierre Coupey (last Saturday) and Eric Metcalfe (this actual day) and Michelle Normoyle, Kate Metten and Marlene Madison were our guests this week. The conversation flowed, we were happy to re-live our expedition to Bowen Island and lots of work was completed.

Our Summer lunch included Michelle’s salad, Eric’s home-made potato salad, cold cuts, cheeses, bread and paté. Perfect.

Pierre had asked me to leave his requested large round plate un-fired. He had a marvellous time scratching the leather-hard surface and applying a selection of my coloured slips instead of the usual underglazes. Then I showed him how to dampen pieces of newsprint so that they would adhere to the plate’s surface.

After that he painted a loose layer of black slip over the slips and newsprint. Soon after that he carefully lifted off the strips of paper to reveal a nice contrast with the underlying colours. Philippe Raphanel has done a similar process of resisting, using underglazes and wax resist on several of his beautiful platters. You’ll see Pierre’s plate, resting in a batt to dry in the last photo of finished work. It will have to wait for more work to be completed and join another bisque firing. Everybody else’s work merely needs the clear glaze firing .. soon.

At tea-time, outside again, we enjoyed some delicious lemon tarts made by Kate, and then Eric and Pierre shared the candle-blowing-out and cake slicing of a wee birthday cake, for a second time.

I chased the Raiders out shortly after five o’clock so that I had time to turn around and prepare to attend this month’s opening at Port Moody Arts Centre. I didn’t want to miss seeing this year’s work by the traditional Korean pottery master Clay Jung Hong Kim, his wife and his students. Photos of that splendid work and some of ‘Upcycling Port Moody’s Heritage’ will appear in my next blog or two.

There has been a slight glitch in the forwarding of my blogs by FeedBurner this month and none of them reached you, my subscribers, until there was a burst of blogs earlier this week. Turns out, thanks to my web designer Avrom Digance’s investigation, that I have been optimistically including far too many megabytes for the blogs to be delivered. So now I shall try to be more selective of photos, or make them smaller, or link to a separate photo album.

https://web242.com

Another computer helper, potter Ronald Boersen, has shown me how to save my Google album archive and to compile future albums, and how to link them to my blog. So much learning is required in this field!

Last week’s efforts by the July Raiders have turned out well after two bisque firings and the clear glaze firing. There are lots of plates, by seven artists, so I’ll add a first name as a caption to each photo in case they get muddled by WordPress.

Al and I plan to drive in to Vancouver tomorrow, partly to check out Raider Pierre Coupey’s paintings in Gallery Jones gallery, so we’ll take the plates in with us. I’m looking forward to seeing some of Brendan Tang’s latest work there too. So Raiders, try to catch us at around 2pm to pick up your work. OK?

Mina Totino painted two large plates. They’re 12 3/4″ across.  They warrant two photos for each as she enjoys applying wild colours to the undersides!

Philippe Raphanel has once again produced some carefully planned, wax-resisted designs and the results are most effective.

Tamara Mills has two matching oval lunch plates and a larger oval dish. I think it’s fair to say that they are very pretty.

Her mother Michelle Normoyle used leaf motifs on two of hers, produced a softly wiped colourful square dish and applied more deliberate stripes and dots on a little blue triangular dish. Some cross-influencing going on here!

Kate Metten painted a medium oval dish with her now signature circles, and chose two more of her favourite little triangles to paint too.

New guest Mitch Kenworthy applied loose brush strokes in a variety of colours to his medium oval dish and lighter colours to an oval lunch plate.

Elizabeth McIntosh sent a large painted oval out to us with Kate. She had used Kate’s underglazes.

This will have been the last firing before our show at Terminal Creek Contemporary Art Gallery, at Artisan Square on Bowen Island. Kate Bellringer of Burrard Arts Foundation will make the final selection for the show. There will be one or two plates or platters, a tile and in my case .. a jugbird, from almost thirty past and current Raiders to my studio. It should be a most interesting memory game for us, and fun for everybody else to see what is conjured up by such a diverse group of artists.

The opening is on Saturday afternoon August 17th and runs until September 2nd.