New Shop Shout-outs!

You can now find a great selection of my stripe, herringbone and triangle bottle vases at 2 new shops! 

Please check out the brand new Cambie Design at 1535A Queen St. W, in Toronto!  Their grand opening this Saturday, August 17th, sounds like fun with popsicles, a lemonade stand, and lots to ooh and ahh over in the home decor department!  I love how they have paired my bottle vases with a vintage cabinet, and I spy a little more Vancouver ceramic love with Fleet Objects' Mariner Lamp in the foreground! 

This week I shipped off an order to Finely Crafted Store in Atlanta!  With such a lovely mix of other indie makers and designers, I think my stripe and triangle vases will be in good company! I'll share a little bit more once they arrive in store!

And with that, I'm off for a little last bit of summer vacation before the boys go back to school!  It's been a great summer in our new home and I think we've finally settled in.  My commute to the studio just got more enjoyable with the purchase of a new city bike!  Check out the latest meanderings, (and sneak peeks of work to come soon) on my instagram feed! 

Shop Up-date and a SALE!

My shop has a fresh new look along with some new photos from the mini-photography session I had with Vancouver Photographer Byron Dauncey last week!  I have been working on new vase forms and new designs off and on all spring, and was hoping to do a complete website over-haul along with a formal photography shoot and road-blocks just kept coming up with the timing on it all.  So I'm happy to report that there is always a way out of every timing mess- a mini-shoot, a new webshop design (courtesy of BigCartel) and it's all looking pretty good for the summer, if you ask me!

Please head over and check out the new work!  I keep seeing such lovely bouquets at farmer's markets or just on my walks in people's gardens so I'm offering a 15% discount on all the vases in my shop from now until August 15th!  Please use the code SummerSale for the discount- all the vases listed are ready to ship, with many of them being one-of-a-kind and in limited quantities!

in the new place, on the other side

It's amazing how much energy and mental space moving can take.  But here we are, moved in, getting things set up, on the other side of the bridge, kind of where we started, actually.  The home Dean and I lived in before we had kids, happens to be on the same street, ironically.  It's a funny feeling to be back in the same neighbourhood, but 11+ years later.  For us, it feels like we are coming back home, for our boys, they are feeling a little displaced, like their little world is opening up and they aren't sure where they belong.  I am slowing down a bit in the studio this summer to get them settled and hopefully by the fall, as they enter a new school, we will have found a few friends in the neighbourhood and it will start to feel like home. 

It has been an incredibly busy spring for me in the studio and I'm thankful that I was able to wrap up all my outstanding orders just as we were moving into our new place (ie, last week!).  I have some new work that I'm hoping to launch in the fall, along with a website re-design, so things are busy, but not crazy.  It has felt like a crazy few months, trying to sort out where to live, thinking about what I do and whether it is sustainable for my family in the city, and doing a bit of soul searching to understand what I want to do next.  I see some makers getting really burned out with production pottery and it made me realize I need to make some changes in how I make work so that making continues to be a joy and not a burden. 

So hopefully I'll get back to blogging a bit more often, taking photos again instead of just instagram (do follow me though if you like ;), doing some more painting (I have a new series on the go!!) and making some new pots.  Sometimes starting in a new place feels really good, like you have a blank slate to work with once again.  The furniture is still the same but the setting is different. 

A bit of new!

Well I ended up making a lot of custom work over the past month or so and, as with custom, making extras is the key! Now that the orders are almost all off and on their way, I have some of the extra pieces I'll be posting in my Etsy shop as I seem to have gotten some positive feedback on the new shades and styles of vases I have been working on. 

I recently had a short turn-around request for a large order with a design firm for a show home with some of my new vases in my classic glazed stripes.  They asked if I would be able to create a custom yellow glaze for the design and sent me a swatch of fabric they were trying to match.  As luck would have it, the yellow stain I thought would be perfect for the fabric swatch was no longer available so I mixed 3 different stains and then glazed blind the order (with extras) for this new harvest yellow glaze, crossing my fingers it would turn out ok! I really like the new shade- it's got a wonderful golden glow to the yellow that I think I'll keep as part of my regular work for a while. 

Speaking of new, I am starting to really get the hang of my newest slip-cast glaze designs- the round cylinder 9" and 12.5" vases that you see above!  Over the past few years, I have been wheel-throwing my cylinder vases and was having trouble getting my grey glaze to fit the wheel-throwing clay body I have been using.  Lots of bubbles and blisters in the throwing body, silky smooth in the porcelain slip-casting body.  I also find it hard to sit at the wheel for long periods of time- I like to throw multiple shapes in one sitting, not just the same thing over and over.  So when I start dreading throwing, then I start planning how to make the design into a mould.

I currently have only 1 master-mould of each and they are not easy to cast, but I'm slowly figuring it out.  This big grey striped vase, along with 3 others that went to the show home, was the first of the big vases that actually turned out and didn't warp (longer casting time + very little handling when pulling the piece out of the mould = no warping :).  So I'm very excited about the new size and am looking forward to getting a few more of these finished in different colours.  These are real statement pieces- they really hold some presence and look great in a grouping!  

Lastly I have some new wheel-thrown vase designs I have been working on.  It has been nice to try out new forms and play with the herringbone pattern or colour dip pattern on them! These are ooak vases and perhaps at some point I would make a mould of them, but for now, I am enjoying the variety of them.  Slip-casting some of my work frees me up to explore new forms on the wheel and also new glazing designs, so there have been some big advantages for me to move into that direction, especially with vases.  On the other hand, I have spent the week on the wheel, throwing teapots and bowls, and I would never dream of slip-casting those pieces.  It's nice to still see the throwing lines in a bowl or on the inside of a teapot and I still cherish making these items in this way.  

finding a new home

To say that finding a new place to live has been challenging is a bit of an understatement.  Vancouver is a city where the high cost of real estate creates a seriously competitive rental market at high rental costs.  Needless to say, it's gotten worse then the last time we were looking for a place to rent, which was 7 years ago.  The price for what we currently have been renting is about $1000 more and now we were looking for a bit more space.  Since our current home has been for sale, the deadline that I originally had requested for us to be able to stay until the end of the school year had been closing in on us.  It was high time we finally found a new place to live.

So I'm happy to report that the long search is over!  We found a place this past weekend in East Vancouver close to the PNE that's a little similar to our current situation.  We will be renting the main and top floor of a house with the landlady having stuff in the basement suite but not really living there.  The square footage is bigger then our place, but still has 3 bedrooms.  We won't have the yard or view we have had, but there is a great back patio and a cute front porch, with really friendly neighbours and big beautiful oak trees lining the streets.  I can boast about the high ceilings, nice mouldings with a couple of beautiful windows, 1.5 bathrooms (that's up .5 from now!),  and a huge dining room.  There are also lots of parks nearby for the boys, and it's a closer commute to the studio, so at this point, I'm overlooking the really old terrible carpet (over hardwood???) and nasty peel-n-stick laminate that really never should have happened in a heritage home like this.  We don't move in until June 15 and I'm already scheming a way to cover over some of the backsplash or sub-in light fixtures. 

The decision to rent again was a tough one.  We are easily paying rent that's equivalent to monthly mortgage payments.  I recently read the book Rent vs. Own by Jane Hodges, which takes into consideration a lot of the rise and falls of the real estate market in the US.  I really appreciated her honest approach to what the true cost of owning is.  The average person usually can't afford to buy where they really want to live, so they opt for longer commutes and less desirable neighbourhoods or housing in order to buy a place.  While ideally owning a home is an investment, the recent housing market crashes have shown us that it's only an investment if you are able to buy low and sell high- which really only happens when a person is able to hold onto a property for an extended period of time, riding the waves of the high and low markets.  Of course there are a wack of other considerations to make, but all in all, Dean and I felt like we weren't ready to move away in order to afford to buy place that suited our family's needs quite yet.  We felt like we needed a couple more years here in the city to sort through what that move would look like for us in the future. 

I took my camera for a walk

I must admit that having my camera with me has become much too infrequent of late.  The i-phone is just too easy to use sometimes and I have often neglected taking real photos.  Yesterday night we all went for a walk, the boys brought along a neighbour friend to play soccer with and I walked around taking pictures.  The kitty at the bottom belongs to a neighbour and made me miss our little Amber. Doesn't she look like little A? Hmm, almost time for another kitty.  Anyways, it felt really good to be creative with something other then ceramics!

It's been an extremely busy few months for me, filling a number of larger and diverse orders for shops and galleries.  I'm thankful to have shipped off the last order for spring, just as I head out to Winnipeg tomorrow to visit a dear friend, some family, and stop by the Woodlands Gallery for a meet & greet the artist.  I grew up in Winnipeg until I was 14 and went back to visit often until I spent 1 year going to college/Uni when I was 19.  It was a place I called 'home' throughout my teens because we had moved for reasons that weren't my own.  I wrote countless letters to friends, trying to keep in touch despite moving quite far away.  It's kind of amazing to still be in touch with many of my elementary school friends via Facebook these days.  I'm looking forward to doing some good catching up over the next few days, celebrating my bff's birthday and connecting with some family too.  It will be a much needed break from the studio and probably a good walk down memory lane too;)!

Spring in the Studio!

It's that time of year again where a few of us at the Mergatroid building get together and plan to open our studio doors for a sale!  It's the once a year, these prices can't be beat kind of sale, where I pull all my work out of the cupboard, some of it with slight glazing issues, or maybe a style or colour that I won't be making again, but otherwise looking for a good home to be used in!  I have a bit of new work that I will have available, but for the most part, it's your chance to find something at a deal that you can happily take home and enjoy, instead of having it take up space in my studio!

Here are all the details!

Saturday, May 4, 2013
11:00 am until 6:00 pm

965 & 975 Vernon Drive
Vancouver, BC
(MAP)

This one day event will feature the work of...

m.a. tateishi (suite 280) --- http://www.matart.ca/
bronsino (suite 225) --- http://www.bronsino.com/
kelly austin design (suite 225) --- http://www.kellyaustindesign.com/
su foster jewellery (suite 225) --- http://www.sufoster.com/
mimosa (suite 225) --- http://www.ilovemimosa.com/
dahlhaus (suite 8) --- http://www.dahlhausart.com/
heyday design (suite 210) --- http://www.heydaydesign.ca/

Check out our event on Facebook!

Come and say Hi in Winnipeg in May!

With the weeks feeling like they are flying by, I wanted to be sure to get the invite out for my artist meet & greet in Winnipeg next month! Woodlands Gallery has been carrying my work since last fall and it has been so nice to connect with the amazing gallery manager, Jennifer.  Since I was in town for a few days, I thought it would be nice to invite all my local friends and family to come by the gallery and see what I've been up to!  If you are interested, please do come by and say hi- it's not every day that I'm in the Peg!

I grew up in Winnipeg until I was 14 years old, and then went back as an adult to do a year of post-secondary, so my roots in this place run pretty deep.  I have heaps of family and lots of friends that I still keep in touch with, which is my main reason for visiting.  It's been about 6 years since I last visited my childhood bff and since then, she has had 2 beautiful little kids that I have been dying to meet.   

There's a facebook page with more details here!  Please pass around to anyone you know who might be interested in coming! Thanks!

As of late ...

Where, oh where, have I been, o blog?

At the studio:
I had been subletting part of my studio (hence the crowded busy mess) for the past few months to a former summer intern of mine while she prepared for an exhibition here in Vancouver, so things at the studio got pretty crazy crowded especially in the last month or so.  Lots of work was made in this 340 sq ft space.  So much work, so little space, but it all got made (more or less!) and fired and Kelly's show has been a near sell-out so I'm so pleased she was able to have a place to make. 

As for the work that I make, I sent off about 5 early spring orders to shops and galleries, and am on another 3 that are estimated to be finished later this month and into May.  My online sales have tapered off after I scrambled to keep up with teapot sales when my teapot was featured in Bon Appetit magazine.  It's always a bit hard to predict how busy one will get with features.  It feels really hit and miss these days so I try to keep my expectations pretty low-key and feel really blessed when something does turn into a sale after being featured.  Anyone else feel the same way?

The website is getting an overhaul!  Still in the initial stages, but I met with my friend and graphic designer, Tyler Payne a week ago and we got the ball rolling.  It's hard to imagine that in 2007, we sat down to design my current site with my concept of what 'dahlhaus' would be, and 1 round of photography from work I made with the launch of dahlhaus in mind.  So much has changed online in the last 6 years- how people use websites, what devices they are using to look stuff up online, and also the function of websites has really changed over the last few years.  Initially we designed my website as a portfolio and now people have come to expect to be able to purchase the work from images that they see on a website, so it will have a shop focus, with a link to my portfolio.  I'm really looking forward to a fresh look so stay tuned!!

Work/life balance, anyone?  I think when you work for yourself, and you do something you truly do enjoy doing, a person can get really busy and wrapped up in making pretty much all the time.  Or instagramming, twittering,  facebooking, emailing, texting, pinteresting, and, oh, yeah, blogging.  It's gotten a bit much and I was really starting to crave some real face-time with other artists, makers, friends and family, instead of just slaving away in the studio or being online.  It's been really good to connect for real and there are still a few people I've been meaning to see.  On that front, it has also been somewhat comforting to know that I'm not alone in some of the struggles I face as a full-time maker.  There are a lot of us in the same boat, all trying to sort out a way to create viable and sustainable small businesses based on our creative endeavors and talents.  It's not as easy as it sounds.

So I probably won't be here much in the next month or so, just piping in to let you know about a few up-coming events that will be happening in May.  We are in open house mode at our house where our landlord is currently selling our place.  We've been here for the past 7 years, so it has felt very much like home to us.  It will be hard to leave, but we have had a good run of this house as renters.  Can't complain too much.

Canadian Clay Symposium 2013 re-cap

The Canadian Clay Symposium happens every 3 years at the Shadbolt Center for the Arts in Burnaby, BC, which is conveniently close to where I live.  The Symposium isn't huge- there are usually around 8 or 9 presenters, with the venue only holding about 350 people.  With the event selling out this year it felt like a good crowd of people, although I think in reality, most of the people coming to the conference hail from somewhere in BC (which makes me wonder why it's name includes all of Canada). This was my 3rd Symposium attendance so I was used to the fast pace of trying to see as much as possible in a day kind of feeling. 

This year I got the volunteer job of photographer for the day and spent most of my time trying to capture the best of the presentations and workshops.  I didn't really sit in for a whole entire workshop as I wanted to be sure I was able to take enough photos of all the workshops, so I won't be posting on each participant as I have in the past.  I was really glad to have something to do, as I'm not as interested in how other people make their work, while I am much more interested in how they make their living today and why they make the work that they do.  I think for many of the presenters, their work in clay has spanned 20-50 years, which is pretty incredible!  Each of the ceramic artists that were presenting had work that stood out as being their own, with really specific ways of making work, so it was lovely to see them at work.

For a 1 day conference, this event is pretty good bang for your buck.  The presenter line-up was quite good, although they ended up having to change in 3 of the original presenters.  I would have really enjoyed seeing Linda Arbuckle at work...that being said, the sub-ins did a really amazing job of bringing a wealth of knowledge and entertainment to the mix.  There was a dinner after the event this year that was hosted by the BC Potter's Guild that gave me the opportunity to chat with Robbie Lobell and Lorna Meaden, which was really great.  Sometimes these types of conferences are more about connecting with people in your field and this was one of those years for me.

Image out-takes in order (all the really good photos will go to the organizers so they can promote the event)!
Takeshi Yasuda
Robbie Lobell
Mariko Paterson
Judy Weeden
Bob Kingsmill
Lorna Meaden
and Takeshi Yasuda's tools

Last time I went to the Symposium I wrote about a few of the presenters that really caught my eye including my ceramic professor Joan Bruneau, the remarkable Alwyn O'Brien, and Gailan Ngan who graduated at the same time as me.   

In that moment when everything changes

I often think about the moments when life as you know it changes in an instant.  An accident, a medical exam, you lose a loved one suddenly: the unexpected happens, and suddenly, everything has changed.  On a global scale these types of life-changing moments seem to happen every few months, whether it's a natural disaster, or a gunman on the loose, a terrorist strike, or the Pope stepping down.  I know that these events are life-changing for the people closely affected and that they will always remember the moment when they heard the news. 

Maybe it's just that for me, last week was full of news of tragic and sudden deaths of young people, not close to me, but connected in some way.   Then news of a cousin through marriage losing his fight with cancer.  And seeing a friend struggle with a dark depression.  These stories are closer to home, they hit me in the heart and I can't help but feel as though life is so fragile, so very vulnerable.

None of these things compares with our only vehicle dying just as Dean left for the weekend, while I was supposed to be shipping off orders and then picking up the kids at school.  But it reminded me that things can change so fast.  The car was fine, and then, it all of a sudden, it wasn't.  It could have happened anywhere- on the bridge, with the kids, or worse, caused an accident.  It didn't take much for me to feel kind of helpless- in the moment I seemed to forget how to phone for a tow, or contact the mechanic to book the car in, or figure out how it could all happen in time for me to get back over the bridge to pick up my kids from school.  And then a friend stepped in, and walked me through it, looking up numbers on his phone.  Later when I was back home, another friend stopped by when I was home to make sure I had some groceries for the weekend as it would have been quite the walk up the hill with milk and groceries in the pouring rain with 2 kids in tow.  It all worked out and I'm so grateful.

We had a quiet weekend, the boys and I, sticking close to home, not leaving the house on Saturday due to horrid rain all day.  Sunday was lovely and bright, Dean got home, the car is still in the shop until late tomorrow, and my orders still aren't shipped but that's life.

**These photos were taken on the same day just outside my studio with my phone.  It was so strange to see a storm move through in a few short hours as the weather here doesn't often change that fast. 

DYI and Inspired projects

If you are on the dahlhaus art facebook page, you will notice that I occasionally post links to artwork or dyi projects that have been inspired by my designs! I've been finding these images on pinterest when I look up my work or my designs (you can click on the images to find their sources).

I am a big dyi fan* and really am blown away that people are becoming inspired by my work**.  It shows me that this is a design that will stick for a while and could become a total 'classic'- and to me, that's amazing! Really, I think what most makers and designers can hope for in this over-saturated, image-based, everything's been done kind of world is to be able to come up with a recognizable and identifiable mark. 

This week has been good- although I kept getting steered off course.  This seems to happen a lot these days where I have a plan for the week and a wack of things that are very promising come up and push my plan off course.  The one thing I did manage to do was to meet up with this was have lunch with  Jessica Bell who is a Vancouver artist I've been wanting to meet for some time.  Her work caught my eye when I was part of the Cheaper Show in Vancouver, and ever since, I felt she would be someone I'd want to meet (but it took 3 years to happen).  I seriously can not wait to visit her studio in the coming weeks - we have a little trade in the works that I totally thrilled about. 

Tonight is our Studio building post-holiday party that our saint of a landlord is putting on for all the artists.  Have I told you how great our landlord is?  It really is not often you meet a guy who buys a building in the city, converts the building into artist studios, charges fair rent, helps people out with moving in, building and up-dating their studio, buys kilns for a ceramic co-op, maintains the kilns so they keep working good, and then puts together a building-wide holiday party every year or 2 to get everyone together.  Seriously, this man is a saint and needs to be nominated for an award. 



*although if you say to me at a craft show: 'I can make that!' I might challenge you to try! My work is harder to make then it looks ;)!
**Of course, I'm not keen on people copying my work for profit or sale, and would really appreciate a credit link on Pinterest or blogs. This seems to be happening less and less- with linking to the original source, which is a shame.  Artists and makers work really hard to create their work, and a little nod in their direction is a great way to say 'thanks'.

Have a great day!

Sewing Inspiration

I have been at home with sick boys after a 4 day weekend where we went to Vancouver Island to visit friends and family, so things at the studio have been put on hold for a few days here.  Fingers crossed, between the laundry, hand-washing, tea-making and constant cleaning, I'll be able to avoid this bug they picked up...

In the meantime, work on the website is resuming and tax prep needs to get back to speed, so maybe it's not too bad.  As long as I have patient customers and shops, I'll get through this little set-back and be back to speed before too long. 

Our local fabric store is closing down so I have been picking up thread, notion, and fabric for a quilt I've been wanting to make.  I found this amazing old measuring tape at a thrift store on the weekend and couldn't help picking it up for the sewing box.  Somehow working with old tools and pretty thread makes me want to dive into the quilt project, even though I'm a little hesitant considering all the work I have going on in the studio, not to mention the prospect of having to move in the next few months.

On that front, our place still isn't listed for sale yet, so we are sitting tight while the boys try to finish up the school year.  We aren't sure where we will find our next home and neighbourhood but are pretty open to moving a little closer to my studio in East Vancouver.   Crossing a bridge to get into Vancouver can at times be problematic (traffic!!) and bus fare costs more between North Vancouver and the city, so those are a couple more reasons to think about moving back to Vancouver.  We will, however, dearly miss our neighbours, the walking trails at the end of each road, the quiet street, and of course, the school and community that that has brought us.   We have had some really great years and times in this place- for which I am so grateful!

Hope you have a great week! Stay well!