stoneware – Gillian McMillan — Rara Avis

Birds and Carving

Gillian McMillan — Fri, 19 May 2023 22:42:12 +0000

A dozen jugbirds were ready for their glaze firing recently and work made by family members justified getting that done. Guests from Washington State were able to pick up their chosen Puffin jugbird on their way through here, en route to Calgary. I mailed a crested Kingfisher to another Washington State friend, just in time for his wife on Mothers’ Day. I plan to save the others here so that I have a few of my signature birds on hand for the upcoming ‘Solstice Shuffle’ on June 23rd. These are just some of the birds I make.

On January 1st I found a little dish on which I’d planned to do sgraffito. Feeling trapped by Winter and the absence of friends I made a quick drawing of our house and emphasized the fence. ‘Fenced-in’ is how I felt that day. Thank goodness we now have Spring flowers and can be outside!

This little dish was unplanned, which is unusual for me. It needed carving, I felt, and the glazed yellow slip is a nice contrast to the smooth terra sigillata finish below. I had some interesting suggestions as to what it might contain. What do you think you’d put in there?

Here are the pots made by grandsons and d-i-l Jen on a couple of visits. These are their first attempts at using my wheel, and Lucas borrowed a couple of my bisque moulds to make a lunch plate and a vast Pope’s Hat platter. On a subsequent visit they applied underglazes.

The May firing of the Potters’ Guild of BC gas kiln was scheduled for May 6th, rather earlier than I expected, but I decided to take my lonely five bisqued pots into the Mergatroid building in Vancouver for their cone 10/11 reduction firing anyway. As noted in an earlier blog, it gave me a Mount Pleasant and Granville Island day. And the pick-up day had me checking the grad show at Emily Carr U nearby.

I was most anxious to see the results of more carving and sgraffito on stoneware. This pouring bowl was dipped in the guild’s Malcolm Davis shino glaze. With a bright orange inside and lots of variety outside, it’s splendid!

This bowl, with its rich coating of Temmoku glaze is delicious! Mashed potatoes, green vegetables anybody?

I had made a couple of pieces to try out different ways of using sgraffito. Here is another dinner plate on which I had painted bands of earthenware ‘peacock’ slip. Coating it with celadon has softened the drawing somewhat, and the slip is blue. The smaller dish was carved when leather hard, and coated with black underglaze after the bisque firing, then wiped off. It was also glazed in my satiny Leach celadon.

I plan to keep these pieces here for now, available in my studio. Get in touch for prices if you’d like to give one a home. The next photo shows a sweet new green glaze now available for folks using the PGBC kiln. Apparently it comes from Herman Venema’s studio closing. I want to make something that needs to be green! The shino koi and little green lego-based house are by Diane Espiritu.

I’d like to post some photos of the excellent talk by Port Moody ceramic artist-in-residence Max Yang last Wednesday but I have flowers to plant! Watch for that blog soon.

Jack Ploesser

Gillian McMillan — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 22:22:58 +0000

Last Wednesday’s presenter for the monthly TriCity Potters’ meeting at PoMoArts was Roberts Creek potter Jack Ploesser.

We met him during our two days of touring the Sunshine Coast Art Crawl last October.

https://www.gillianmcmillan.com/blog/2022/11/01/scac-jack-ploesser-the-niebergall

His natural-gas fired cone 10 reduction pieces are exuberant, very colourful, and mainly functional. Jack was pleased to be invited to talk to us and had prepared lots of thrown forms to demonstrate how he assembles them.

As Jack explains in his biography, he is mainly self-taught but says that he is much influenced by Minnesota potter Jeff Oestreich. He was the ceramics technician alongside instructors Donna McLaren and Sam Kwan at Capilano College, before he and his wife purchased property in Roberts Creek, on the Sunshine Coast, and he built his gas kiln.

To keep body and soul together Jack has a day job as a school bus driver. In fact he took the ferry to the Lower Mainland after work and arrived at PoMoArts just in time to begin speaking at 7pm!

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100044707797187

We had a good turn-out for this evening’s talk and we really enjoyed Jack’s enthusiasm for pottery and particularly his extensive knowledge of the cone 10R glazes he has perfected.

He started the evening with slides of many of his pots over the years. We were then entertained by explanations of his process and tales of his coastal life.

All too soon our time ran out before Jack had had time to show us all the techniques he had planned. But there was a return ferry to catch so members helped him to pack up and head home.

Thank you Jack for a really enjoyable evening. We’ll recommend your studio to next year’s visitors to Sunshine Coast Art Crawl, and ‘Fresh’ Gallery in Sechelt.

Twenty-two members of TriCity Potters have now delivered their selected pieces to PoMoArts Gallery Manager Janice Cotter. Our show CERAMICS IN FLUX opens this Thursday, 6-8pm. You will see an amazing variety of clay techniques displayed. See you there!

Focus on Firing in February

Gillian McMillan — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 06:40:19 +0000

January was a very quiet month for us, mainly with dreadful weather keeping us home-bound, so I had masses of time to be making new pots. By the first week of February I had done bisque firing and was liner glazing and wadding the ware. I delivered some twenty pots to Shadbolt Centre on Feb 8th.

Two days later, after everybody’s pots had been loaded into the Vault kiln on Thursday and the firing had started early on Friday morning, I joined others to help with inserting soda and to finish the firing. Here is Melanie holding a hot brick so that Sharon can spray soda. Then there I am carefully removing a draw ring.

We sprayed soda about every fifteen minutes from roughly 3.30pm to 5.30pm, removed draw rings from various spots, watched the temperature rise quite evenly and soon saw melting and orange peel. Once our leaders were sure that the cones had fallen satisfactorily all around the kiln, the gas was turned off and we left, to wait until Tuesday to see what we’d done.

Once the door was opened we saw that things looked juicy and colourful! Quickly the assembled potters lined up to share the excitement. One person removed a piece and it was passed along the line for studying and then placed on two long tables outside. It was a gorgeous sunny Winter day.

I’ll allow my photos to tell the story of the cooperative afternoon. We first removed pots from the front, scraped the shelves and applied fresh kiln wash, before we took all the rest of the pots from the floor and back shelves of the kiln. Here are all the pots waiting to be admired after the chores were done.

Before we all take our work home there’s always a time for questions. Linda and Tony offer advice and suggestions and explanations for our next foray into soda firing. We tell each other which flashing slips, glazes and techniques we’ve used.

Thank you, once again, to the Shadbolt Centre’s ceramics technicians for all the work involved in these firings: teaching newbies, organising the loading of our pots, doing the firing (we just do as we’re told when we show up to assist) and making the unloading and our shelf clean-up job all such fun. Joining this group is something I look forward to doing as often as I can.

Here at home I’ve been making notes on how my pots fared and I plan to take photos and show you some of them. I’m pleased to see that most of my twenty look just fine, with just two that I plan to re-fire in my next firing in June.

My next blog will feature a presentation to TriCity Potters last night by Robert’s Creek potter Jack Ploesser. Lovely work!

I’ve registered for space in the PGBC gas kiln for this Saturday so today I’ve been glazing with celadon and temmoku instead of taking photos. Working on pots keeps me happy!