Each artist had a wall display to distinguish their distinctive styles of work and in the rest of the space their pieces were displayed together. Rather than describe each person’s pots I’ll post my photos of the show. If you run your cursor over the image a description will appear.

We were most impressed at how many pieces had sold, probably at the opening the week before, and it was also interesting to see that it was almost entirely other potters who had done the shopping.

We joined the trend, purchasing a largish jug by Vincent Massey. Its surface was very much like the sort of effects I was happy to have produced in Medalta two years ago now.

And as we left I was unable to resist adding a Sheila Morissette vase, also salty, to our collection!

My ‘best-in-show’ choice is the large Vincent Massey bowl with swoopy edges, rich blue orange-peel and sea-shell marks in the centre where other pieces rested over it in the firing.

To celebrate our first four years in existence we shared an excellent T & T cake. Our local Chinese-Canadian grocery store do make fabulous cakes! Then we looked at a variety of candle-holders and pictures to get inspiration for making some. Just as we started Hazel Postma and Joy Silver arrived to give us a short explanation of Amnesty International. I think members are comfortable with the idea of making candle-holders for their December fund-raising dinner. As mentioned in my previous post about last Wednesday’s meeting we are hoping members will make 3 or so over the summer and bring them to the September meeting.

Cone 6 white clay was made available and the rest of the evening was spent with people hand-building and sculpting candle-holders. Hazel and Joy are quite happy with whatever designs are made. Some experimented with incorporating the barbed-wire which can be seen in the AI logo with a candle. Linda Lebrun and I each made one on the wheel. I showed a trick of throwing it hollow right down to the wheel-head, narrowing the cylinder and then inserting a tiny cookie of clay to seal off the lower part. Pics later!

The next day I drove over to West Vancouver to collect my carefully packed pots from Vincent Massey’s in-laws. He’d dropped them off there on his way from Whistler to the Interior. I’m so lucky that he comes into Vancouver quite often. The firing was quite salty and there was reduction visible. I am pleased with the way they look. Vincent warned me that he had used about 50lbs of salt to make sure that some large pieces were truly juicy and that a couple of mine maybe had too much. Yes, one jugbird and a mug were on the bagwall and did get a bit much. But a casserole that was refired is now perfect and a large silly bird basket that I made at Medalta is now fired. He has good green on his head – there isn’t as much of the fine titanium green on this batch. I wonder if it needed an atmosphere-clearing time at the end? Vincent says he does want to fire the salt kiln again early in the Fall to keep up the momentum and he’s happy to include some of mine again. I think the smaller pieces fill his gaps. Thanks Vincent!

This is just a quick snapshot of the group. You can see the orange peel is good on most but a little too much on one or two.

Later in the day I enjoyed a jaunt in to Granville Island. At Circle Craft I borrowed back half a dozen of my best salt-fired pieces to show to ArtWalk guests. And Vincent Massey and I were able to meet up so that we could transfer 3 boxes of my bisque-fired, liner-glazed and wadded pieces to his car. He is on the island on Monday evenings to take a painting class at ECUAD. He plans to fire his salt kiln at his Whistler studio in early May so I will be waiting excitedly to hear how that goes. Thanks So Much Vincent!