Harper's Bazaar Gift Guide

It came to my attention this past weekend the my Striped Bottle Vases that are being sold through Anthropologie are part of Harper Bazaar's Stylish Gifts under $100 guide!  Although I'm not sure I would call them 'Retro Rose Holders', it's pretty exciting to see my hand-made all by me vases on their site beside all these big-name designers with made in china stuff.  CRAZY!!

Thank you!

Thank you so much to all of you who were able to come by my studio for the Eastside Culture Crawl this year! I was really blown away by how many friends came out especially to say hello to me! It's one of those events that seems to build onto itself year after year, as people become excited about the work that's being made and want to be part of it.  So thank you to all of you who came and visited and supported my studio! It means so much!

You are officially invited...

Here's a little glimpse of the main wall of my studio at last year's Eastside Culture Crawl on opening night!  With about 300 artist studios open in East Vancouver, it's an amazing annual cultural event!   I'll be spending the next few days working on the show, so please excuse my absence but if you are in Vancouver, come on down.  I'm at 965 Vernon Drive, on the ground floor at the end of the hall of the Mergatroid building.  Have a great weekend and don't forget to stop by! I'll post photos of the studio here next week!

Bookhou at Circle Craft

I managed to sneak in a quick visit with Arounna from Bookhou at Circle Craft this last Saturday.   It was great to see a table full of her beautiful hand-screened linens as bags and tea towels!  I'm thrilled to be working on a show involving myself and Krystal Speck later in Spring of 2012 at Bookhou so it was good to briefly talk about the collaboration with Arounna before it all gets started in the new year. 

Arounna and her husband John have a really unique creative partnership that never ceases to amaze me- they work seemingly effortlessly between art and then the more production side of their craft, successfully running a brick & mortar shop with rotating shows and workshops, keeping a busy online store, a blog, an online magazine not to mention their 2 young children!  I try to convince myself that if I owned a store front building in the city with a studio at the back and our home upstairs that I'd be able to get as much done as Arounna and John do, but I'm not sure I could keep up if I tried.

A quick preview

I pulled out my first kiln-load and quickly shot these photos on a dark day in the studio, but here's a sample of the work I had been glazing last week.  The tall striped vases didn't make it into this kiln firing, save one, but I've got some new work coming out of the kiln later this week and then more by Saturday of the Eastside Culture Crawl.  It's a bit of a scramble this year to feel like I'm going to have enough work for my 2 shows.  The emails of special orders and reserving work have started and I've already sold out of the short striped mugs I had made for this weekend.   

I had been really excited about trying different glazes as the 'backdrop' of my pots but I'm not as keen on it as I thought.  There are some things I like about it- I like the way the yellow and turquoise triangles play with each other, and thought it was a no-brainer to include a few little white triangles in the mix, but really regretted it when I pulled it out of the kiln.  On the other hand, the white mug with the greeny/grey triangles with hits of yellow, feels much more successful although I think it could be fun to play around with the colours.  Some of the edges between the glazes got a bit fuzzy and not so straight, partly due to the glazes I used.  I'm also not quite convinced about the reverse bottle vases.  I have now tried the turquoise, saffron and grey (which was a complete flop).  Maybe next time I'll try to pair glaze colours together...

Studio sneak peak & Up-coming Crawl

If you've been following me on Instagram (dahlhaus art), you'll know that I've been pretty busy in the making department at the studio.  My first kiln-load of work for my holiday shows goes in on Friday, with 2 more to follow next week- hopefully all just in time for the Eastside Culture Crawl. I've been doing this open studio event for about 5 years now and every year it warms my heart to see people in my studio space checking out what I've been working on in the past year.  I usually get the studio all dolled out (see last year's display here) and bake a few goodies for the opening night, so if you are in the Vancouver area, it's a show you won't want to miss!

The details:  965 Vernon Drive, Friday hours 5-10, Saturday/Sunday 11-6.  For show details, including all the other studios that are open, check out the Crawl website!

Rice Lake in Fall

 Sunday was a stunner.  It was a glorious fall day so while Dean headed off for a work trip, the boys and I went up to Rice Lake, a small little lake by the Lynn Canyon headwaters, quite close to our place**.  I had forgotten that people like to fish in this lake.  It was remarkable, really, the amount of people lining the edge of the lake, fishing for little fresh water trout.  The boys were keen to watch people pulling up fish, not so keen to watch the fish get bopped on the head.  Sasha thought it was a shame the fish weren't being kept as pets instead, giving me examples of ways to catch a fish without a hook so that you wouldn't hurt the fish. Oh that kid has a heart of gold, I tell ya.  These are the days I'll remember as they get older.   

**One of the benefits of living in North Vancouver is that we can drive Downtown and it will take about 15-20 minutes.  Or we can drive up the mountain with almost less time and we get to see this.  Best of both worlds, but sometimes depressingly un-affordable if we ever hope to own a house.

Fungi

I found an old copy of 'Edible Fungi' that my sister had in her bookshelf and poured over the illustrations.  And then on a walk with the boys I found a myriad of mushrooms in the forest, mostly in dark corners so my photos weren't so great.  Nonetheless, I wasn't about to test my new found knowledge.  With so many being poisonous, I would only trust an expert to compare the illustrations to the real thing, confirming that yes, indeed, this was one that could be eaten!

A little Island time

 

Living on the Island seems so ideal.  My sister and her family live in Nanaimo, but in a little secluded spot, where they can keep chickens and a couple of goats, at the end of a street where an old apple orchard used to grow, with salmon spawning in the creek on their property.  It's hard not to love the Island, although to walk across on the Ferry for our family of 4 (a not quite 2 hour ride) not including overnight parking is close to $100, so we don't go visit as often as we'd like.  Next time we visit, we are going to try to get to 'Shack Island' a little lagoon that you can venture to during very low tides where old fishing shacks from the 30's still stand.  On our trip home we saw a pod of dolphins playing in the wake of the Ferry.  By the time I got out on deck to take some photos the dophins were much farther out, but the sunset and sky nearly took my breath away.

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!

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. 

Now available at Anthropologie

 Well it's kind of remarkable to see my work up on the Anthropologie website!  From start to finish this has taken months of work, with everything handmade by me in my little studio in Vancouver (huge sigh of relief that it's all done!!).
Besides my Striped Bottle Vases, there are 2 of my paintings available for purchase through the Anthropologie website!  It's exciting for me to see a new painting from this year, entitled 'Train Tower', along with one of my favourite paintings from a few years ago called 'Red Stairwells' on their site.  

Please do have a look on their site to check out the work.  The vases should be available at an Anthropologie store near you soon!

Irodori, I'm impressed!

I'm in total awe today by the clay work of Irodori- such beautiful and well-executed patterns!  I love when I get totally impressed by someone who works in clay- where something surprises me, makes my jaw drop and has me wanting to see more.  That's all coloured clay put into a patterned block and rolled out- it's so remarkable that the shapes aren't getting distorted in the process.  That takes a lot of skill, patience and practice!  Wish I could read japanese and could purchase something...

On a Sunday in October

About a week ago the boys and I went on a great walk/bike ride, enjoying the bit of sunshine against the fall trees.  This is the kind of weather that makes me love where I live.  Ask me in about 3 months time when it's been raining for 5 weeks straight and I might not be so keen, but for right now, it's just so beautiful. 
I've been neglecting this space for a while.  I'm not online or on the computer very often these days.  For starters, the busy season has me ramping up my efforts in the studio and I get home, with clay splattering over my cloths, the boys hungry for my attention, and few precious hours to spare.  I've been wanting to read before bed and put my mind on other things, not just work and that's been healthy for me.  Frankly, my life has been rather quiet lately: a lot of introspection after a great amount of work completed, long conversations with friends who need me to be a good listener, and time spent doing things as a family have all been more of a priority.  All that being said, I will be stopping by here a couple of times a week, sharing some new work, up-coming shows, along with the occasional ramble from my heart.  I do hope you'll hang in here with me...

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.