To the Island we go!

It's been a busy long week of late days at the studio.  Dean's been doing all the school pick-ups and dinners so I can stay late and get my work ready for my up-coming shows:  the Eastside Culture Crawl and the One of a Kind Show Vancouver.  It's because he'll be away a lot in the next 2 weeks, so I'm trying to make up for what will be lost time.  Ahh the juggle. 
We haven't been to Vancouver Island to visit my sister and her family since May or June, so we will be going over, just for the night and Saturday, to spend a bit of time with them.  This photo of the arbutus trees (tree on the right with the red bark) and moss was taken last fall- it's such a beautiful tree that is naturally growing in the pacific northwest coast. 
Have a great weekend!

Things are growing

Hello!  How was your weekend?  Around here things were pretty low key.  You know, a walk to the library, attending a history fair, watching movies, dinner with the neighbours, floor hockey for the boys, and some serious gardening when the rain finally let up.  With all the pruning and weed-pulling, and planting, the garden is finally starting to look ready for growing!  Now all we need is some sunshine and warmth, of which we have had very little.  Nope, not complaining, just wishing...

I'll be working on a few things at the studio this week- namely getting some new work finished for the Crafthouse YVR Airport Shop and the Gardiner Museum Shop.  In the past couple of years I've begun to realize there are seasons within my work: show season and shop season.  I'm currently in 'shop season' or wholesale season, which means that the bulk of my studio time is spent filling orders for galleries along with a few online orders that come by.  And while I was hoping to do a show this spring either at the studio or somewhere in the city, I don't think I'll be planning for it this year, considering that things are so busy already.  I'm glad to have some time on the weekends to spend with the boys, work on the garden and hang out with the neighbours. 

everything, alltogether

Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the world this week!  It's been an epic week for me: running to the post office shipping orders, shipping my work to New York for a potential Magazine feature (fingers crossed:),  being blogged about all over the place, working very hard on a glaze firing, starting on some new wholesale orders that came in this week (that Line Sheet work I did last week might just be paying off already:), and my son's birthday party and planning!  Some weeks are like this- everything, all at once.  And some weeks are a much slower pace.  For all the weeks on this journey, I am very grateful!

Some more lovely mentions:
Hija Del Sol Blog
HandMaid Liset 
Tickety Boo

In the kiln

After a summer of pumping out work for my galleries, I've finally had the chance to sit down and come up with some new designs for the fall!  Here's a sneak peek before the kiln firing that I did yesterday.  It is a pretty remarkable process to have the glazes transform from a thin powdery layer to a smooth hard glossy layer of glaze in 2300 degrees.
I love glazing. For me, it's where the magic happens.  I glaze each piece with a method that took me a few years to develop, where I cut out each 'stencil' that masks out parts of my pot while I glaze other parts.  After waxing around the stencils I can then glaze the in-between spaces with a different glaze.  I've worked really hard on making this process simple enough that I can re-create my designs. At the same time, this process is labour intensive and takes me 4-6 different glazes with the right combination of colours and design, with about 9 different steps (with drying time in between) to get each piece in the kiln. 
I've lost sleep over the last few nights trying to come up with good glaze combos for my new designs.  Glazing a mug is not like painting a picture- you don't see the colours until they've gone through a kiln firing, and you can't really glaze over something that didn't quite turn out. You can try to re-fire, but for the most part, it is what it is when you pull it out of the kiln.  There are any number of things that could go wrong here: bad application, hot spots in the kiln, or just a bad combo of colours. Sometimes I marvel at the patience and persistence that goes along with being a potter.  The amount of bad pots a person has to make before the glimmer of a good pot keeps a person going.  It really is a labour of love. 
 

at the studio

Outside and inside.  There are little things that catch my eye when I get to the studio.  Check to see how the fish are doing and if there are waterlilies blooming.  Papercut flower collage in vintage frames that I bought from this local Etsy seller.  The new roadside garden that The Purple Thistle Centre  has been planting is in full bloom.  A new teapot off to a new home.  Hope your view is as inspiring!

Drawing on foggy windows

...when things don't go as planned.

That was last week.  There have been some strange things going on with our kilns/breaker system and it's been causing some stress at the studio.  The new kiln was supposed to help out with the demand for kiln time, unfortunately, the coils weren't the right ones for the wiring in our building.  On Saturday we had a meeting about the kiln room- moving the breaker so the switch doesn't turn off mid-firing/getting the coils fixed, etc, and hopefully it will be resolved this week.  In the meantime, I won't be able to ship out a large wholesale order that I had planned on this past week.  Bummer...

Today it was a home day with sniffly boys and me feeling tired after a weekend show.  I've been at the studio really late some nights trying to get it all done.  I'll put our boys to bed then head out for a late shift at the studio (1-2am) and still get up at 8 am to get them ready for school, then head back to the studio while Sasha is at Kindergarten, then back home to pick up/play with/make supper/tend to family.  There's been a lot of juggling going on just to get the work done, so it was disappointing to try to fire on 3 separate occasions with 2 different kilns and still not have the work finished.

With all the crazy time I've been putting in lately I decided I might need some studio help sooner than later, especially over the summer as the kids are out of school.  I put the word out there hoping that an  Emily Carr student might want a bit of a mentorship/studio job 1-2 days a week. And it has been great to have a response from a couple of people. I have a really great feeling about one person in particular and am kind of excited about having 2 extra hands around the studio, along with passing along some of my own knowledge, experience and skills to someone I have a good feeling about.  Hopefully it's the start of something really good for me and for her too.

Scenes from the studio

A few ideas in the works.  I've made some time this month for some new work and ideas- it doesn't quite feel right to start the year off without some 'experiments'.  Today I hope to try to make a 1 piece plaster mold to get back into mold-making processes.  This video was the inspiration.  I'm also hoping to make a little mold-stamp out of the bottom of this vintage bottle I found- 'Made in Canada' which I only recently actually turned over and 'discovered'.  And a few vase form ideas inspired in part by Lucy Rie and also a 'bulb vase' concept.