It was one of those rare sunny February days when you can imagine Spring isn’t far off, even though the temperature dropped below freezing overnight. At my first stop, Eric Metcalfe’s home in the Western Front, I carefully wrapped his newly underglaze-painted platter. It will be needed as a presentation piece for the Gala event there in early March. Eric introduced me to the Front’s new Executive Director, Australian Susan Gibbs. Philippe Raphanel had already left his plate there for me to pick up so then I drove the short distance down to ‘the Flats’.

Renée Van Halm’s show, Holding Pattern, is an astonishing blast of sunshine! An Equinox staff member told me that she smiles whenever she walks into the gallery, especially on a rainy Vancouver day.

This is taken from Renee’s information sheet: The works on canvas in this exhibition are based on the works of female artists from the 1920s, including painters such as Sonia Delaunay and Varvara Stepanova, textile artists Anni Albers and Marion Dorn, and Bauhaus artists and educators Otti Berer and Gunta Stölzl. Using experimantal motifs and colour relationships developed by these artists, Van Halm reintegrates these unconventional patterns with a two-dimensional painting language that envelops the viewer, bringing out obvious and subtle associations between colour ad forms. 

As well as using some of my platters and plates as canvases Renée has been working on three-dimensional forms made with clay slabs. Just one of these is included in this show. It uses earthenware, underglazes, acrylic, wood and latex paint.

Sadly, the show closes tomorrow. In the other large gallery space at Equinox I found ‘Winter: Works on Paper’ and was delighted to find three drawings by Philippe Raphanel. They are so different from the paintings he has made on platters!

Paul Mathieu had explained to me that it is Reading Week at ECU so he wouldn’t be there yesterday but that I should definitely go and see the ceramic show in the 2nd floor Leshgold gallery. I wasn’t able to visit the ceramics department as the doors are locked, even though I saw students working within.

Masaomi Yasunaga is a Japanese ceramic artist who has exhibited extensively in Japan and recently had his first US solo exhibition at Nonaka-Hill in Los Angeles. This show, ‘Empty Landscape’, is the first time his work has been shown in Canada. Extraordinarily, his work is all about functional forms and sculpture but is made of all manner of ceramic materials, all except clay! He uses glaze elements and rocks, digging into a bed of rock or sand and filling the cavities with glaze-like materials. They are fired and then, like an archaeological dig, the finished forms are excavated.

The gallery has a berm of gravel almost dividing the floor space and atop this are displayed his organic, vessel-like, crunchy forms. Here are a few photos to give you an idea of them. On one wall some more pieces are displayed. These are clearly all glaze. It’s fascinating to imagine the process of controlling the material so that animal or vessel forms result.

This show will remain in ECU’s Libby Leshgold Gallery until March 29th 2020. Visitors to the Canadian Clay Symposium on March 21st may want to see it before or after the full Saturday at Shadbolt Centre in Burnaby.

I enjoyed a quiet lunch in the student café before a speedy half-hour drive home before rush hour. I still had time to unwrap Eric and Philippe’s plates and add them to the already packed kiln and turn on a bisque firing. (All the Raiders’ plates are getting a second bisque along with Philippe’s waxed ones.. it’ll make sure there’s no smudging of their underglaze work. Also my plates and jugbirds need a first bisque firing and Jay MacLennan has insisted that any pots for re-fire in the soda kiln be bisqued too.)

I was pleased to see Eric’s latest bold platter and delighted to see that Philippe has done a drawing on a small plate. That’s a first for him. He has used an underglaze pencil.. and boy, look at that detail! It was a nice coincidence that I’d seen three of his drawings on paper just a couple of hours earlier.

The bisque firing ended today and I shall have a big glazing job in a day or two before the glaze firing. The Raiders have had to wait for me to get the kiln filled but it’ll be worth it! I can’t wait to see my own paper-resist experiments too.

Last night Al and I braved horrid rain to drive over to West Vancouver. We grabbed an early supper at Park Royal South’s Trattoria Restaurant before heading on to the West Vancouver Museum. Renée Van Halm’s solo show ‘The Shape of Things’ was opening. The walls of the two galleries were filled with her large impressive paintings and some smaller works and aha! there were three of her painted plates displayed domestic-fashion on a plain dark-grey-painted kitchen table.

The Museum is a public gallery and none of the work is for sale directly so I imagine the plates are there to show another part of Renée’s practice. The brochure which accompanies the show includes a statement from curator Darrin Morrison, which gives Renée’s biography, an explanation of her intentions in the paintings and the following quotation from her:

“Cultural history and how we represent and inhabit architecture are fundamental to my work. My ongoing interests are in how we define and negotiate our private experiences in the spaces where we live.”

Drawn to mid-Century Modern architecture and furnishings and its return to popularity now, Renée has taken magazine clippings and photocopied images from books and made collages. These may be furniture, buildings or selected objects. The combination of ‘things’ and forms are assembled on paper which she then she carefully recreates in oils on canvas. We, the Raiders, have watched, fascinated, as she meticulously transfers a chosen assemblage to one of my slab plates or platters, using the whole spectrum of coloured underglazes. So it was great to see how a somewhat curved surface, placed horizontally rather than on a wall, really made a significant contribution to this elegant show.

Many of her fellow artists including Emily Carr and Simon Fraser University professors, several now retired, were out to support her. I was happy to have the chance to chat with a number of ‘Raiders’, including Paul Mathieu and Eric Metcalfe and with West Vancouverites Tam and Rosalind Irving and Sally Michener. Tam and Sally had a two-person show at the same gallery last year. I was introduced to another West Van artist and longtime Capilano U painting instructor Pierre Coupey. He was jumping-up-and-down excited at the idea that there is a potter mad enough to make pots for others to paint on. Apparently he’s had it in mind for a while but doesn’t want to make pots himself. Sooo  we probably have another Raider.

As I like to do, I took photos of some of the show and the attendees to give you an idea of the opening event. Sadly I didn’t take the time to record each painting’s title but aimed to record the overall size and colours of Renée’s work. I think they’re absolutely striking and also meticulously painted. It is good to have seen her work at her Vancouver gallery, Equinox, and now here and to know how the process is carried out on plates. 

The show will be up until July 8th. I found Darrin Morrison’s little essay to be useful and there is a list of the 36 pieces in the show. The plates are described as ‘underglaze on earthenware’ and she has credited me with their fabrication.

Thanks Renée, it’s a great show.

This time she painted two plates and then a smaller oval but deeper dish. It is the yellow and green one. I don’t yet know which one will be part of the auction.