Production!

Please, before watching this old film footage of a ceramic factory making their wares from start to finish, please turn off the volume (I think I might have for you, but just be warned). Who ever put this together with the gaggy music almost makes the film cheezy. It's not- it's quite remarkable how this ceramics gets made! Talk about man-power and crazy machines that made the process somewhat simple and fast-looking.

New Cafe in Town

We found a new cafe close by called the Cafe for Contemporary Art (down on Esplanade, on the East side of Lonsdale in North Vancouver) and have been spending the past couple of Thursday nights there, while our boys attend a kids club for 1.5 hours. It's got really good locally roasted coffee and a large exhibition space with new exhibits rotating monthly. The owner is a contemporary/conceptual artist/curator himself, and it was great to find some common experiences with him, one being that we both were at the 2001 Venice Biennale the same year. The Biennale is the most prestigious by-annual Contemporary Exhibition world-wide and it was a long-held dream of mine to go to Venice to see it! Reminiscing with someone else (other than Dean:) brought me back to how art can transform your experience, create memories and change perceptions, beyond what you would ever expect!
Speaking of transforming your experiences, Dean was engaging in one of the installation pieces which made him a little bug-eyed for a good 10 minutes afterward. Ahh Art.

Local Etsy Outfit...

It's nice to make connections online, and the other day I thought I recognized Heidi Denessen's name through her husband Ron, who I went to Art school with. Heidi has a sweet Etsy shop where she sells some of her artwork along with some great practical items such as fingerless gloves, hats, notebooks and decals.
On November 29 12-5 PM at 1495 Richards Street in Yaletown Heidi and her friend Jody of the Etsy shop Nanna are hosting a Holiday Sale. I think their work goes so great together, don't you?

Reasons to curl up on the couch

Broken kiln, sniffly nose, dark overcast day, kids home from school, nachos in the afternoon, Remembrance Day, Dean being home... did I mention the kiln is broken?

Yellow Ginko Season

It's the time of year when the Ginko trees all turn shades of yellow. We have a few in the neighbourhood and down the street at the Park & Tilford Gardens close by where I get my coffee. I've been collecting a few and having them dry out, and then this morning while dropping off the kids at school, one of the moms gave me one from her yard. That's her tea set in the photo! And I've just taken a few more of these large bowls out of the kiln this weekend! They will be available at my studio during the Crawl!

Round 1

I just posted 2 of the Porcelain Vases with the Folk-Art inspired monoprints on my Etsy shop. I made 6 forms in all and decided not to put all my eggs in one basket by glazing them all at the same time. I really like the subtle pale transparent blue highlighting the drawn design, but was surprised that my turquoise stain turned more on the dark navy/grey. I wonder what would happen with other stain colours- must do a test tile next...

Vespa Transformation!

If you ask both Dean and I about the Vespa, it will soon become apparent that it is a hot topic, a point of contention. You see, the scooter is supposed to be our 2nd vehicle for 6 months of the year. But sadly, it sits by the side of the house, looking pretty, not working. Because scooters, you see, need a whole lot of tinkering with. They need a keen mechanical person to constantly be fixing it up. And that, my friends, is why this chair is a brilliant idea!

November Calender

Clearly we are in the midst of Fall on the Pacific Northwest! We've had such great weather in Vancouver this year, many clear and sunny days and a lot less rain than usual, but I think that's about to change for the season. Today was a really dreary, wet and windy kind of day and with the darker mornings and early darkness by 4:45-5pm, it really feels like November! Ahh- November already!
The Eastside Culture Crawl is really only 2 weeks away (Nov 20, 21 & 23)! It is a 3 day show involving more than 30 studio sites in the Eastside of Vancouver, with over 300 artists in their studios to visit! The show is free and fun and interesting! As an artist it is really great to have the public visit me in the 'comfort' of my own studio. It's great for them to see where I get inspired, along with the space that allows for my work to happen! It is great for me to have hundreds of people walk in my studio door and instantly have the chance to engage with my work. I'm in a new studio this year and hope that it will have a similar vibe and be as interesting for people to visit!
The weekend after the Crawl will be Portobello West's first Holiday Markets (Nov. 28-29)! I always look forward to this show as it feels so festive and is great to get in the holiday mood! I'm always excited about doing my Christmas shopping at this show and I always find just the right gifts for some of those hard to gift people in my life!
So, November, here I come... ready, steady...go!

New directions in clay

This past year hasn't given me a lot of time for veering off in new directions, trying new things and gaining new inspirations. It's been a lot about making my 'trademark' designs of Poppies and Ginko stems and shipping them off to galleries and shops or for shows as soon as they've been made. Which is good, don't get me wrong, but as an artist at heart, I have been craving new experiments, trying things for my own inner satisfaction, not necessarily for the satisfaction of the next sale. Since there is always a reason behind everything I try, I thought I'd give you the background before these pots have even gotten in the kiln for their first firing!

Some background: Technical
A couple of years ago I had the privilege to attend a 2 day workshop with Paul Scott, the author of Ceramics and Print. It was an inspiring workshop with some hands-on approaches to printmaking and clay. I was excited about trying some of his techniques out in the studio, but with my current work evolving nicely, I set his book aside for another time. I was feeling like that time had come again, and I have been wanting to explore the monoprint technique with clay. For the most part this technique seems to work best on flat, rolled out clay where you can press down your print and it nicely adheres itself to the clay in a clean way. My way involved some newly trimmed vessel/vase forms out of this very white, translucent porcelain I decided to try a box of (a new clay body is always a good reason to try something out of the ordinary with). Using only stain and a little water brushed onto a smooth surface, I left it to dry while I drew my inspirational Dutch Motifs onto the smooth side of tissue paper. Gently placing the tissue onto the now dried layer of stain I redrew the pattern with a pencil. When you lift off the tissue, the drawn line appears underneath with the stain and you can transfer it onto a damp piece of clay! I found it helpful to use a scraper over the tissue, and although my lines didn't transfer on perfectly, there is something really fresh about the drawing on the clay.

Some background: Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Art Book
I have a great Aunt who was a potter living and working in Ontario. Years ago when she found out that I was taking a ceramics class at college, she started shipping me supplies, books and even a wheel that she didn't need any more in order to inspire me to keep at it. I still use several tools that she sent me on a daily basis. One book I have from her is called Pennsylvania Dutch American Folk Art and it's filled with images of furniture, quilts, tin crafts, pottery, and etched glass, along with these beautiful and simple motifs of animals, flowers, people and designs. Also in the book are drawings my aunt made of some of these motifs or patterns that she was planning on putting on her own pottery. My great aunt phoned me recently, just to talk pottery with me. She lives in a care home and is no longer mobile, but her passion for pots is still just as strong.

I'm hoping to put these pots in the kiln and will glaze them (pretty minimally- probably just my celadon glaze on the inside and over the edge and either clear on the bottom or unglazed) over the next week. Will post the results later, but as always, appreciate your thoughts and feed-back!

dahlhaus art on facebook

Finally, after much deliberation with my 'executive team' I have official launched the dahlhaus art fan page and I am it's only fan at the moment! Please join me in becoming a fan of my work!

Hold: for the Home

I'm excited to introduce you to a new local Vancouver Etsy shop called Hold! I think what first caught my eye when I stumbled on this shop were the great colours that Maria uses in her felted bowls! Modern and minimal but at the same time soft and cozy looking, I love the idea of giving these as gifts for those hard-to-gift people on my list, filled with nuts and a nutcracker at Christmas time.

I asked Maria to fill me in on some of the how and the why she started her shop. Here's what she wrote:
"I love the feeling of wool in my hands, and magical transformation of stitches into a felted fabric, sturdy and durable. It's a practice that allows me the equal satisfaction of working on a contained project from beginning to end. For the bowls, it takes several days to complete each one.
The process begins with colour selection, then wools are then crocheted into a floppy bowl. The bowl is then agitated in warm, soapy water, which causes the wool fibers to interlock more and more tightly. The result is a thick, felted fabric, a sturdy container. To complete, the bowls are blocked, dried, trimmed, then steamed one last time."

What a cool process and transformation the wool goes through to get to it's finished product! Thanks for the insight, Maria!

Shop: Hold

A day with my sister...

I'm spending the day with my sister, shopping for some maternity cloths for her, having lunch out and celebrating her birthday. She's about 4 months pregnant in this photo and I haven't seen her in over 3 weeks, so I'm sure the bump has gotten bigger!
Will be back tomorrow with my recent inspiration and experiment on clay, along with a brand new Vancouver Etsy shop that I'm excited to post about!

Happy Halloween

Just in time for halloween, we found this creepy Spider book at the thrift store yesterday (with such great font), along with a book called 'Creep Crawly Things' by National Geographic- all about snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles. Perfect for curious little boys!
We are working on a Yoda and a Robin Hood costume for tomorrow, have some glow-sticks to pass out to the kids so they are safe on the roads, and are looking forward to a few fireworks outside to celebrate the season!

For a good, good laugh, check out the Engrish site!

For a little eye candy of my ginko stem mugs check out this lovely plug here!

To check out my up-dated dahlhaus art shop take a peek here! (P.S. I have a 15% off until November 15th deal happening there- enter code word FALL09 to redeem:)

Have a Happy Halloween and see you next week!

The factory...that is the studio

I'm like a busy bee over at the studio these days and have been determined over the past 3 weeks to glaze a good enough base of work for my up-coming shows as a start to the season. I actually managed to endure 3 weeks of glazing (about 4 glaze firings) and still love what I do- a real miracle in itself. I think the beauty of working as a ceramic artist is the variety of stages you have to go through to get the work finished. That variety usually keeps me entertained enough in all the manual tasks that it can sometimes require- wedging, throwing, trimming, altering, drying, loading kiln, bisquing, unloading kiln, wiping clean, waxing bottoms, glaze inside, glazing outsides, loading kiln and finally firing and then unloading to see whether it all turned out. There are all these tiny little processes that make the outcome successful or not and time is definitely one of those main factors. Rushing ceramics is like rushing your 2 year old on a walk. Goood luck on that one. The 2 year old just wants to doddle along, discovering little sticks and bugs and leaves, saying hi to everyone you meet- and a huge tantrum will break out if you try to rush that little one home.

give-a-way on Poppytalk

There's a lot of really sweet stuff over at the Poppytalk Handmade Market and the folks at Poppytalk are doing a SWEET give-a-way to mark their 3rd Year of blogging! They are giving away a $100 gift certificate towards anything at their Market to be used within the next month! What a score! Head on over to the Poppytalk Handmade Market, choose something that you would want to buy with the cash and post it on the Poppytalk comments. I think 'tweeting' about it also get's you an extra spot! A draw will take place this friday, so hurry! shoo! come on now! get going already!... bye:)