Happy New Year...oh wait. It's April already.

Oh the neglect!  Four whole months and not a word on the blog.  2014 has had it's highs and lows: if you have been following along on Instagram, you'll be pretty caught up with the good, the bad and everything in between. 

Around the 3rd week of January I was in a bike accident and I fractured my right elbow.  At the time, the doctor told me it would be months until I was back to normal and I just shook my head and said no way.  It can't be.  I have too much work to make. But here we are in early April and I just touched my shoulder for the first time in months.  I'm in Physio twice a week and my arm still doesn't fully extend.  So needless to say, I haven't spent long amounts of time typing on the computer.  All my energy has been in making the work that was on order and finishing up my website.  And writing applications, responding to emails and generally trying to keep up with everything that was absolutely necessary.


So thank you for understanding if you have come here wondering where I was.  We managed to take a couple of long-overdue holidays (Palm Springs in February and Portland in March).  I finished a painting commission (above), made 2 more paintings and then started my 2nd painting commission for the year, which I'm pretty excited about.  New work was photographed by Byron Dauncey in the beginning of February leading to the launch of my new website.  The bottle vase grouping image above even made it into the latest Uppercase Magazine.  Orders have been made and shipped.  More orders are in the works, and thankfully I can throw on the wheel again, albeit I'm a little slower and tire easily.  I take a lot of stretching breaks these days. 

That's about all I have for today but thank you for coming by here.  I decided not to include this blog on my new website for now.  Partly because I'm not sure how to add it without losing old posts, partly because I don't think I can keep this space as active as I used to.  The age of blogs seems to have passed, and while I still feel like it's a good place to have, it doesn't feel like I have the time for it like I used to.  I'm trying to limit my screen time while I'm at home- not only do I need to be more present when I'm home for my family, but I need to be a better role model for my boys with regards to how much time I spend online/plugged in and looking at a a screen.

make, glaze,fire, repeat

 I feel like things are going a bit round and round in circles at the studio these days, as I am working so hard to stay on schedule for my up-coming holiday shows, along with shipping off the shop and gallery orders so they arrive in time for holiday shopping in stores.  It's a bit of a scramble to do it all on my own, but once I get in the rhythm, it can be fairly satisfying.  For the most part all my shipping to other shops is done as of yesterday.  Phew! It was a lot of work (and I have 2 more NEW Galleries to showcase here on the blog still), but all that remains is a couple of local galleries and then my 2 shows- one in November and one in December.  I hope to be able to take a good long break over the holidays and rest my weary hands, which have been worked pretty hard over the past couple of years.

Sometimes I feel like fall just whizzes by and I hardly have a moment to really enjoy it.  Other times I'm really glad to see the year coming to a close, marveling about the opportunities that came my way and all the work I was able to make over the course of a year with only my 2 hands, a whole lot of determination, skill, and the support of my family and friends.  I totally feel thankful to be able to document it here on my blog- thanks so much for stopping by.

Container Stories

There are some things that just feel important to have, to hold, and to admire.  When I heard about the new collaboration between Karin Eriksson and Camilla Engman called Container Stories, I decided I needed one.  It's hard to choose.  But that sweet face with the raindrop tears, along with the leafy drawing decals down the side and inside the base just called to me.  So I bought it, and here it is, all the way from Sweden.  Beautiful! Karin's stone matt glaze is really lovely on these wheel thrown forms. 

Studio work

...is coming along, slowly but surely. Orders are starting to get finished and shipped off.  My glaze tests didn't quite turn out the way I was hoping, but it wasn't all a wash.  I've been hoping for a great semi-matt charcoal grey (the one I've been using has a green tinge to it- beautiful, but sometimes, one just wants grey).
I recently realized that I've been throwing on the wheel for 18 years now.  When I first got started (took my first ceramics class at 18 in college), I was told by an older potter that I'd need to be working in clay for 20 years before I could consider myself a 'master potter'.  The term seems a bit archaic to me now- not really something I would think about ever striving for, but at the same time, I did take the advice to heart.  I decided to slow down, take my time in school and really spend years honing my skill before launching out on my own with my own signature style.  Maybe it held me back a little, because it would be about 13 years before I started 'dahlhaus', but on the other hand I think I needed that time.  It gave me space to sort out my ideas, and to work out all the kinks that were going to come up.   And most of all it gave me the confidence I needed to really make the kind of work I wanted to make.

Inspiration was needed

It's soggy outside.  Cold, wet, gray and dark.  It's no wonder I need a little colour and pattern injection in my life!  I've been a little slow on the blog front, partly because this light is so horrible to take photos in, and partly because life is just humming along with nothing too new to report (lots in the works though!) Nonetheless here's the latest:

+On a recent excursion on Commercial I popped by the vintage shop to admire all the ceramics.

+At home the boys are knee deep in class projects, math tests and snowboarding.  Naturally all of this takes some effort so we've been busy.  Who knew kids could be this much work?!?

+Our 'new' to us arborite table and chairs passed on from Dean's brother and wife this past weekend.  Dean helped them move and we got first dibs- not too shabby!  It looks rediculously cute in our yellow vintage kitchen.  Now if I could only move that light switch so I could hang artwork properly...

+At the studio I started on my first glaze firing for the new year!  I'd love to be filling it with new designs and all sorts of fun, but I'm going to have to settle on a finishing up a bunch of orders to start off with. 

That's pretty much it.  All the really exciting stuff is still in the works and can't quite be let out of the bag yet.  

Creating Texture

 A few weeks ago my niece and her friends came by the studio for a little pottery party to celebrate her 15th birthday.  Before they all arrived I pulled out all my tools for some handbuilding that we were going to do- wooden stamps, rubber stamps, cookie cutters and cutting tools.  I liked how inspiring they all were and started thinking again about how I could bring 'stamped' patterns into my own work. 
It had me thinking back to the work I did in collaboration with my friend Disa MacKay last year.  I don't know that I've posted the final pieces  here, but here's a few of the hand-built with relief patterned vases we made, photographed professionally so that they look really lovely.  The patterns we used were all hand-cut, without using any commercially made stamps.  If I remember correctly, our 'paisley' inspired pieces took the longest and were the most complicated to make. 

New sketches out of the kiln

 Well I did get a few new 'sketches' of ideas out of the kiln this last weekend (please excuse the i-phone pics)!  I'm still sorting out which ideas might work out as more of a series, but I think there are some good little 'moments' here and I'm liking the direction that it's leading me to.  As I sit down with my process of glazing, I've been realizing once again the potential for how I come up with patterns and designs.  It's kind of exciting for me- this type of development of ideas and work feels very organically linked to my past work, but also pushing me in a bit of a new direction.  I can't deny the 'folk art' and paper-cutting influences this time around.  It's complicated with my process to get connected repeating patterns all around a vessel, but it's also kind of fun challenge.  Again, I don't use any decals, so my method of creating 'stencils' is done with me and a pair of scissors, for each glaze design.  I thought it would be interesting to embrace my 'scissor-hands' by referencing paper-cutting motifs, and I've been moving some of my work into folk-art motifs for quite a while. 

Something fresh

Hello!  It's been a busy few weeks at the studio and I'm at the stage where I've just had to put my head down and 'get 'er' done (sooo close!!)  Things are coming along, but to be honest, I'm tired.  I got hit with a cold this week and it's taken the wind out of my sails.  I haven't had time to take photos or blog lately, mostly because things have just been all about getting back into the routine of fall, packing up orders, finishing up new orders, trying to complete old orders, and wondering how a day can go by so fast with so much left to do. 

For fun I thought I'd switch up the stripes on my vase in the last firing, just to see what I thought.  It might be something I work with a few of my glazes- I also thought I might work on some colour pairing instead of the white.  That's the one thing that's great about my glazing method- I'm never limited to things being one way, even though I admit that once I find a way and a combination that works, it can take me a while before I'll be willing to try something new.  After pulling out hundreds of these vases from the kiln this summer I've been ready for something 'fresh' to lay my eyes on!

We are heading out of town for a wedding this weekend.  It's up in the mountains, about an 8 hour drive from Vancouver.  We won't be taking the boys (thank you Grandparents!!), but Dean is involved in the wedding so it will be busy but possibly a good little break for both of us.  I'm hoping to get some much needed rest so I can start feeling like I have the energy to get back to finishing all the work I've started all summer. What a good feeling it will be when it's all finished!

Ceramic career path for the directionally challenged

I've had a number of chats with my studio assistant about career directions in Ceramics.  She's entering her last year for her undergrad with a major in ceramics and has had the summer seeing me at work to think about what might come after school for her.  Of course this has meant that I've had a few critiques about the route I've taken.  I don't mind, I remember being at Art School and being critical of artists and makers that were making a go of it.  It's hard not to have an opinion about what someone else is doing when you are thinking really about how you want to do something.

So I've been occasionally thinking about which direction I've taken in clay, what kind of work I make and what kind of work I might make if my direction would change.  Lots has changed for me since I first embarked on this venture of 'making a living making pots'.  I no longer have the initial desperation that I first had about applying for shows that I once did.  I no longer feel like I have to prove my work to anyone, be it clients or galleries or peers. Without those initial drivers that seemed to plot a course for me, I've been asking myself which route I might take.

I guess I feel as though navigating one's way through a career as an artist, or specifically a ceramic artists, is confusing and at times difficult.  It's like a 'choose your own adventure' book with a number of different outcomes, none actually guaranteeing that you will be able to make a living at making pots.  Sometimes I feel like I'm directionally challenged.   Which adventure do I want to take?  The production potter adventure or the one of a kind adventure?  Selling directly to my customer base or selling through a gallery or shop? Selling consignment or wholesale? Custom orders?  Get my Masters and teach?  Do I think like a business woman or like an artist?  Should I make more work, up my sales, raise my prices to finally pay myself a decent wage?

I know that it takes a number of decisions within this to make a go of it.  Nearly every day I get to make a decision about it and frankly, at the moment I'm just glad to be on that road.  The road where I get to choose my own adventure...

Black & White

The studio is calling me but I just wanted to pop by and say hello to today!  I've been on the hunt for a smaller sized white kitchen hutch for the multipurpose thought of display for my booth at Christmas shows and photo-shoot staging and maybe even something that I can have on the porch here at home for the people in the neighbourhood who keep wanting to stop by to pick out some pots.  Consequently I have boxes of pottery just laying around the house awaiting a pick up-which can last a couple of weeks.  With the kitten loving boxes and bubble wrap and the boys doing gymnastic routines through the living room, I'm thinking some kind of cabinet would make sense. 
I also got a little excited when I saw this little plate in the thrift store.  How lovely is that?  I recently bought a Majolica black 'under/over glaze' by mistake- usually I use a little stamp on the bottoms of my pots with underglaze for my dh (dahlhaus/heather dahl) and noticed that this other stuff turned out glossy like a glaze but didn't stick to the kiln shelf. Hmmm.  According to the instructions it is possible to use this Majolica stuff on top of a glaze before you glaze fire.  I love how 'mistakes' in pottery give way to inspiration.  What would happen now if I silk-screened this stuff onto a glazed surface instead of silk-screening on bisque ware and putting a clear glaze on top.  I'll let you all know how that one plays out. In the meantime, this plate is my inspiration and I'll be off now:)

Clay Symposium Part 2: Joan Bruneau Workshop

One of my most memorable ceramic instructors during art school was Joan Bruneau.  She taught me in my 3rd and 4th year at Emily Carr and is one of the reasons I'm still a potter.  The one thing about Art School in general is that 'craft', especially functional ceramics, can be seen as the underdog. After a year of critiques in my 3rd year by fellow students that pottery was too functionally based to be viewed on the same level as Art, I'll admit that it got to me and I ditched functional ceramics for a good long time, choosing ceramic sculpture instead.  Many of my potter friends abandoned ceramics altogether. Despite this, Joan did her best to bring awareness of what Craft is all about, what common perceptions are, and how to challenge perception in a conceptual way, even on your functional pottery.  

Best known for her 'cut and paste' wheel-thrown forms, Joan spent her time this past weekend on the wheel reminding us that good pots are 'dynamic' pots.  What she meant was that the forms create a sense of their volume and that one considers each part of the form by not over-looking the feet or the rim.  She asked the questions- why does the rim have to be straight and round or the base of the pot flat while the middle of the pot has all this expression.  She challenged us to re-think those elements even if it was only subtly.

For instance, on the top part of a flower vase/cylinder form she pulls up for 'corners' ever so slightly to create a scalloped edge.  Subtle, but effective in drawing the eye over the lip of the pot.

Here she starts with a 'foot' that was thrown upside down and then pinched in on 4 sides.  This could be the foot of a cake plate or the base of a flower brick or even a bowl.  Once it had firmed up, she flipped it and attached a coil to what was previously the bottom.  Then she proceeded to throw the coil sides up for the top part of this form.  It becomes a more unified piece than if she had thrown 2 parts and just attached them when they were leather-hard.

And lastly, she cut and re-attached the sides of this very large platter.    Here she talked about complicated forms and resolving what to do with parts of a form that you might aesthetically have trouble with.  When you cut and paste, you may make a lot of un-resolved forms, or, in her words, ugly pots.  And that's ok.  It's probably a good idea to make a bunch of small pots on the wheel and start to cut them up than making a huge pot that might turn out ugly.  Taking an afternoon to make 50 different handles or 20 cut and paste plates or vases are like little sketches in clay.  And doing that every few months sounded like a good idea to me!

While Joan didn't have a lot of time to talk about her glazing process or the inspiration for her designs on her pots, I did want to comment about her lovely use of glaze, colour, pattern and even composition.  Especially because I'm pretty sure that her influence glaze-wise has stuck with me all these years later.  I remember her drilling into us that one needs to consider each part of a pot for it to be a 'dynamic' pot.  Considering that we all have our own aesthetics, our own background, our own historical interests and our own hands, everyone's ceramics really should look unique if all these things are considered, don't you think?
Joan Bruneau is a potter working in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia out of her studio and gallery, Nova Terra Cotta Pottery.  She teaches part time at NSCAD while maintaining an active practice of selling and exhibiting her pottery.

Making sense of Anthropologie...

Is there anyone else out there that gets depressed when they look through the serving/kitchen section of the Anthropologie online shop?  Seriously- that mug is $12 Canadian? Are you sure about that? It looks pretty 'handmade' to me with that seam on the side, fired 3 times- 1 bisque, 1 glaze and 1 decal covering the entire exterior of the mug.  That's a whole lotta work... the mark-up on this stuff has to be at least 50% if not more- it is retail after all. So, let's say, to be generous, that whoever is actually making this mug is getting $6 a mug to cover for labour and supplies and the firings, not to mention all the overhead of actually running a business.  It says 'Imported'.  Hmmm... 
The bowl, looks like a steal at $14 but is also imported.  Then there's these vases- hand-made in a studio in New York by Potter Judy Jackson for $28-37.  So she's getting a maximum of $14-18.50 per vase to wheel-throw and glaze each one by hand?  I mean, this stuff is really lovely.  And cheap.  How is it possible?  Who is making the imported wares and how much are they getting paid?  This doesn't even account for the designer fees- someone had to design the mug or the bowl and get paid for that too. 

 

And then there are these bowls, designed by Australian ceramic artist Samantha Robinson (based on her award-winning watermelon bowl series- her work is beautiful- do check it out), that are made and glazed and decaled, by hand, out of porcelain- get this- in China (it says 'Imported' but if you read the 1 not-so-nice review, the person says they were made in China).  The smaller bowl is $598.00 and the large bowl is $168.00.  What?!? 

All this to say that I don't understand.  How some people are making money at this.  And other's obviously are not.  How one artist is getting (from my very speculative knowledge of this contract) $299 for a bowl she designed and another artist is getting $14 for one she designed and made by hand. And finally, how can a ceramic artist possibly compete with these prices?

Spooling Ceramics

I recently found the work of Mara Skujeniece, a dutch ceramic artist who's slip-cast spool vases first caught my eye on Zilu, a European version of Etsy.  I was also pretty smitten with her faceted vases in lovely shades of grey!

I know there is a huge trend in ceramics these days to slip-cast found objects and there are some that I find more interesting than others.  I guess I'm more interested in the original object not being a vessel form to begin with.  I find the translation into porcelain a whole lot more engaging as I re-think the origin and function of that form.  In any case, I do really love the clever translation of spools of string into a vase.  Any thoughts?

On another front, I also just found the blog Craft Hope, a blog dedicated to raising funds via sales of hand-made objects on their Etsy shop.  It's such a great concept and so far $27 000 has been raised for Haiti!  Please do have a look at their shop and consider buying as all money raised will be donated to Doctors Without Borders for Haiti.

I recently re-kindled my friendship with a child-hood friend who's father is Haitian.  My friend's parents were in Haiti visiting his family during the Earthquake, and although they are alright, efforts are now being made to get them home along with finishing paperwork for more of her cousins and relatives to come to Canada.  It is truly a dire situation out there.  My best hope and prayers go out...

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!

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.

Rebecca's Bench

It's been 2 years since the passing of a friend and fellow Vancouver ceramicist, Rebecca Robbins to cancer. Her ceramics is a glimpse of what a warm and life-giving person she was during her lifetime. I knew Rebecca through Art school, but her impact as a working artist and mom left a strong impression on me when I had my own boys. I really admired her work, and was struck with the amazing connections she had with her family and friends when they spoke so genuinely of her at her memorial. Her husband just sent some of us an up-date on the bench they were raising funds for in honour of her life. The bench is at Trout Lake Park, in between the swimming spot and playground. There are still funds to be raised in hopes that the park bench will be maintained for perpetuity.
http://vancouver.ca/parks/info/gifts/lastinggift.html