Visuals - Squamish Valley Artists

The Squamish Valley Artists Society is a non-profit organization that supports the development, education and promotion of local visual artists.

The Squamish Valley Artists Society creates mentoring and networking opportunities for all artisans to share their knowledge and skills and will assist in the development of professional business, marketing and sales, skills.

Squamish Valley Artists Society promotes raising community awareness and appreciation for the economic, social and cultural value of local artisans.

For more information on Visuals, please visit:

http://www.squamishart.com/

Upcoming Events:

Art at the Market: June 30, July 14 & August 18, 2007

Artwalk – Studio & Gallery Tours: September 22 & 23, 2007 (I will be doing tours of my studio both days)

New! Shino Glazes

Hot out of the kiln this morning! Click on each picture to enlarge.

More on VISUALS - The Squamish Valley Artists Group and upcoming shows shortly!

The Process

For many non-potters, you probably are not aware of the process that is involved with making pottery. Every potter differs in some way but I thought I would share with you the steps I go through before I have a finished piece.

Day 1 – Hand build or make a piece of pottery on the wheel.

Day 2-3 – Trim bottoms, add handles and/or spouts

Day 14 – 21 – The piece is dry enough to bisque fire in the kiln. I allow my pieces to dry slower than most to alleviate cracking. I have yet to lose a handle in this process.

Day 14 – Bisque Fire – The pieces are first fired in the kiln to cone 06 (1798 F) over an 8 to 9 hour period. Bisque is a fired piece of unglazed ceramic. Sometimes I will candle the kiln at a very low temperature the night prior to the firing keeping it under the boiling point (212 F) to ensure everything is nice and dry before the firing, then I fire the kiln for 8.5 hours. I have to wait 15 hours until the kiln is cool enough to open the lid after the bisque firing is completed, usually when the kiln is under 350 F. I have a very small kiln which is 18 square inches, so it heats up quite quickly.

Day 15 – Glaze the bisque fired pots and pack the kiln again.

Day 16 – Fire the kiln for the second time to cone 6 (versus 06) which is 2165 F over an 9 hour period with a 15 minute soak to ensure my glazes have time to move around on my piece. I slow down the cooling the first 1000 F especially with matt glazes.

Day 17 – 15 hours after the kiln has cooled off, it is ready to be opened and unpacked within the next couple of hours.

Therefore from the time something is made until it is ready for use is a minimum of 17 days.

*~* Coming soon – Tea Pots and more Shino glazes! *~*

Wild at Art Success

The Wild at Art show was a success and I sold some of my work! The show received lots of media attention from the local newspaper; local programming show on Shaw TV; Mountain FM and CTV in Vancouver!

My pottery is on TV! Okay so it was only a millisecond but if you watch Shaw Cable TV’s local programming in Squamish this week Feb 24 – March 2 at every odd hour, they show my pottery at 15 minutes past the hour right after Cathryn Atkinson’s riveting speech regarding this year’s budget. Don’t blink!!!!

You can buy my pottery online by visiting www.sunnydazedesign.etsy.com

Visit my gallery and blog often as I update both every week with news and new pieces as they come out of the kiln! I have some new super cool Shino glazes which I will post later this week!

Wild at Art Festival 2007

The Wild at Art Festival is taking place at the West Coast Railway Heritage Park in Squamish, BC from February 16 - 25, 2007. (click on the picture for a close up).

"Wild at Art is the festival that will showcase Squamish to the world during the 2010 Olympics. This year the Wild at Art festival is growing from 2.5 days of festival, and ten days of viewing the Art Gallery, to a 10-day festival. We are building to a full 17-day festival in 2010. "

To see more pictures of my work submitted to this show, please visit http://picasaweb.google.com/SunnyDazeDesign/WildAtArtDisplaySquamishBC

Wild at Art: www.WildatArt.ca
Railway Park: www.wcra.org

Be sure to stop by the gallery. The layout, atmosphere, lighting and beautiful artwork nestled between trains dating back to 1890 is definitely worth it!

Another Show!

I received a call on Wednesday (Feb 7) with an invitation to be a part of the Wild at Art show next week. At first I thought, "I am not ready nor do I have enough stuff for the show". Then I thought I have just enough time to run the kiln and no I am not ready for something like this, but what the hell?!?!? I will probably look back in years to come and think how crazy I was to display my amateur pieces BUT right now I am pleased and proud of the results that I have had in just 5 short months.

I was wondering how I could swing it as I had a pottery course this weekend (hand-built tea pots with Kay Austen) and I needed to run a bisque and glaze fire plus clean up all my glazes that froze in our recent cold snap. This is our busiest time of year at work too (yes I have a real job) but I had just enough of a break to manage some time to make this happen. If the invite came any later I would not have been able to pull it off.

Wednesday night I loaded up the kiln and candled (low temp) the kiln all night long as some of my pieces where not dry enough. Thursday I ran the bisque fire and mixed and re-sieved all my glazes. Friday morning I unloaded the kiln, glazed everything and reloaded the kiln for the glaze firing. I was able to see the results Saturday before running off to my tea pot making course!

I still need to catalogue and price everything, plus clean the bottoms, do up my bio (bought some nice hand-made paper), update my online gallery, etc, etc, but I will be ready in time for Tuesday. I will update my blog when my pieces are displayed at the Wild at Art show.

For more information on the Wild at Art show, please visit www.WildatArt.ca. "Wild at Art is the festival that will showcase Squamish to the world during the 2010 Olympics. This year the Wild at Art festival is growing from 2.5 days of festival, and ten days of viewing the Art Gallery, to a 10-day festival. We are building to a full 17-day festival in 2010."

More Glaze Tests

I continue to experiment with different glazes as I am addicted!

To view my latest work and glaze tests, click on to MC6G Test #3 on the left hand column.

One thing I learned (the hard way) is glazes do not like to be frozen and I should have sieved them first but my impatience got the better of me!
Enjoy! Lisa

Gallery Display - Jan 9 - Feb 6, 2007

I currently have some of my work displayed and for sale at the Foyer Gallery at the Squamish Public Library.


January 9, 2007 - February 6, 2007
37907 2nd Avenue
Squamish, BC


This is my first event showing my work publically so I am very excited!

Online Gallery & Sales

Happy New Year!

Visit my gallery for my latest pieces for sale: http://picasaweb.google.com/SunnyDazeDesign

I have revamped the gallery by item type as my product line is increasing!

If you have any requests on particular items with particular glazes, please email me with your requests! Enjoy!

Glaze Tests

I have been extremely busy with testing glazes the last 3 weeks. My first batch was from Michael Bailey's book. I chose the AM1 base as I fell in love with the colors. They came out perfectly but proved to be too matt and opaque for functional ware.

My second round of glazes tests are from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes by John Hesselberth & Ron Roy: http://www.masteringglazes.com/index.html

They came out perfectly! I am so pleased and excited by the results. I will run another kiln load next week and post those pictures. Now I am dying to get on the wheel to make more! To check out my latest work with the MC6G tests, go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/SunnyDazeDesign/MC6GGlazeTests1?authkey=i-BZTFQjkmg and http://picasaweb.google.com/SunnyDazeDesign/MC6GGlazeTests2?authkey=87aG5aHhyC8

Christmas Presents

There is nothing more special and rewarding than making something yourself and giving it to a family member or a friend. The candle holders to the right were gifts for my sister at Christmas and the Beer Stein and coffee mug was for my brother.

I wanted to give something extra special to my mother but I had yet to complete (fire & glaze) a piece which I felt was good enough or special enough. Luckily her birthday is coming up in a couple of months!

I'm Bustin'!

I love the shape of this bowl and the colors!!! Look at the cool effects where the green and black meet! This was going to be a gift but I like it too much to give away. Click on it to get a closer look!!!

A couple of days ago I was sitting at the wheel and I made something that made me say "Wow" for the first time! I am starting to be pleased with my results! So the lessons are paying off. I now have control over the clay and now it is just a matter of practice, practice, practice!

My test glazes are almost done so that is the next step! It is exciting and scary at the same time because I need to experiment with the glazes but I want results now that I really am starting to like what I am making. Yikes! Patience was never one of my assets!

Glaze Fire Success !!

My first kiln load of glazed pieces was also a success! I had a bit if a panic because I couldn't see my cones properly but in the end everything worked perfectly. The picture on the left is my favorite piece.

The kiln worked great and the glazes came out perfectly but I am not really all that impressed with the results. Not that there were any mistakes just the painting with a brush (versus dipping or pouring) has a very, how could I describe it, juvenile result. But I wasn't in love with any of these pieces as they were the first ones I threw on the wheel and the first ones to experiment with the glazes.

I did have some cool results where the glazes over-lapped and I will duplicate that again on future pieces. Now I really have the incentive to make my own glazes versus premixed glazes. I am just waiting for one more piece of the puzzle and I can embark on marking my own glazes very soon.

Bisque Fire Success!

I put Estrin (new kiln) through the paces of her first bisque firing yesterday. I was in the garage at 6am when it was -18C with the wind chill. She worked great and the bisque was a complete success. Not a single crack or loss! It took 10.5 hours to get her to just short of 1800 F. A little slower than it could have been but I was paranoid and I wasn't sure how fast the kiln would heat up so I was playing it safe. At 7:30am today the temp was still 300 F with the peep holes open and -10.5C outside.

The picture above is the bisque ware fresh out of the kiln ready to be glazed. Tomorrow I will load up the kiln again for a glaze firing. Cross your fingers!

Dyna (the old kiln) has found a new home at a shelter in East Vancouver. The man who picked it up repairs kilns and will be able to get her going without much cost. So everyone is happy!

Good-Bye Dyna, Hello Estrin

Dyna was supposed to be my new best friend but after much investigation it was going to cost me $200 - $300 to have her wired up and that was IF we had enough room on our electrical panel to do so and I wasn't even sure if she worked.

So welcome Estrin who is a much newer model (if you call 1978 newer). She is in perfect shape, the same size AND she will plug right into the dryer outlet so no need for creative wiring!

Online Galley & Items for Sale

It's official! Click here to check out my latest pieces plus items for sale.

http://picasaweb.google.com/SunnyDazeDesign

It is a little sparse at the moment but I will add items as they are completed so visit often!

Pottery Class

So here they are, some of the lopsided items I made in the pottery class I just took. They all dried to the bat so upon trying to remove them their bottoms got ruined and they turned out a little lopsided. But I learned a lot from the course and am now taking my second course.

I have been making lots of stuff on the wheel and hand-building by using my extruder and slab building. So as soon as the kiln is up and running I will post some more finished pieces.

Kiln

I'd like you to meet Dyna. She's old (40+ yrs), she's ugly and she's needs some work. Apparently she works and she is going to be my new best friend. Her interior is in great shape! She is an old Dyna-Kiln H-8800 from L&L Manufacturing. L&L has been around for 60 years and this is one of their oldest kilns. She needs some new wiring, shelves and a little love but I hope to have her running this coming weekend. I have a bit to learn as she is completely manual. She does have a pyrometer but I will need to get some cones to ensure she fires to the appropriate temperature for bisque and glaze firing. Needless to say, I am very excited to have my own kiln as I can be completely self-sufficient.

Tomorrow we are pulling out all of our glazed pieces at the studio where I am taking a course so I will post some of my drunk-ware (aka my lopsided pieces) shortly. If we have enough people the wheel-throwing course will commence this Thursday!

Gettin' Muddy & Takin' Classes

There are things you just can't learn from a book or video! I have many books on pottery and a couple of DVD's. These are great for ideas and tips and tricks but to really get started you need to take lessons or be shown by someone first hand. Pottery is such a hand's on skill and a lot of things can be learned by handling clay to see what it will or will not do, by pushing the clay and yourself to the limits. But the basics of centering and throwing clay are rarely self-taught.

I have been fortunate enough to be taking a beginners class in pottery fundamentals - hand-building, throwing on the wheel and glazing right here in Squamish. I already had some basics but I have much to learn and have learned so much in this course. I'm very excited about the up-coming wheel throwing class with Kay Austen!

Needless to say, I have many pieces right now. Luckily I have lots of family members!!!

Oh and I pick up a kiln on Saturday!!! My very own kiln! It needs a little work but it should be running in a week or so!!!!

More to come on that!!

Quote's

Pottery is very individual and very personal. There are two quotes which sum this up:

Jenny Smack is a local potter here in Squamish, BC. "I have an inner urgency and passion for clay, as it allows me to indulge my senses into creation....the raw tactile connection I experience with the clay. " http://members.shaw.ca/jennysmack/

Bill van Gilder from the DIY Network in the US "The more we sit behind our computers, the more we need that handmade mug, serving bowl, or plate that grounds us. They not only connect us to earth materials, they connect us by touch to all the thought, emotion and creativity that went into making them."