Back Alley Evening Stroll: East Van

It's a really pretty time of year.  There are tons of leaves changing colours and each street in our new neighbourhood seems to be lined with a different kind of tree.  I'm waiting for the street next to us to change into bright red maple colours, while our Oak lined street is turning to brown leaves with acorns falling all over the place.  It makes me a little nervous on the street lined with chestnut trees, these huge clod-hopper chestnuts falling at random. 

Hope you are having a great fall- I'll be back with more news over the next few weeks!

Support a great cause! Creamers on Kickstarter!

HD videoeditFINALUpload from Hilary Moses on Vimeo.

September has really flown by and I'm finishing up a number of really great shop orders, a wedding registry and starting to think about my holiday shows!

In the meantime, I wanted to post about a really special project I'm helping support!  You might remember my friend Hilary Moses, a Vancouver animator who is creating a short animation about a woman who paints creamers all day.  I made some mugs as a perk for her last campaign- this helped her get almost finished a large chunk of her animation short.  She is almost finished her animation, which has been about 10 years in the making! The last of the leg work needs to be completed (including sound). Her kickstarter campaign is 75% complete and with 9 days to go, she is so close! Please consider helping her out and you could receive a custom 'Creamers' Mug handmade by me as a perk.  And get a sneak peek into my studio when she visited this past July in the video!

So long summer

The best of summer is slipping away and we are gearing up for the start of a new school year.  I am back in the studio this week with so many exciting projects in the works, but which are all hush hush for now.  In the meantime, I thought I'd say 'hello' after a long break from the blog! Anyone still reading this thing?? Hope you are well :)

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.