Summer Workshop July 2012
May 14, 2012
Portrait of an Ocean: A Body of Words ... the work in progress
It has been a very long time since I’ve done a workshop. I’ll have to get my public speaking chops up to speed. Lose my stage fright and all that…
The workshop is two days (July 7 & 8 from 10 – 4) with demonstrations as well as hands-on work. The topic will be “Finding an Aesthetic” and will involve a little expressive writing, a lot of talk about clay, and much more hands on clay. There will be a slide show… or I guess it may be a Power Point show… just doesn’t have the same ring, does it? And, if there is time, a short tour of my exhibition at the Campbell River Art Gallery, which is a block away. Hope to see you there.
Registration information can be found at:
The Campbell River Community Center t: 250-286-1161
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Studio Practice as Pilgrimage
January 31, 2012
the daily work
the daily ritual
Poet and author David Whyte’s book, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, should be required reading in art school – in all schools.
Here’s a taste:
“At its best, work seems never-ending only because, like life, it is a pilgrimage, a journey in which we progress not only through the world but through stages of understanding. Good work, done well for the right reasons and with and end in mind, has always been a sign, in most human traditions, of an inner and outer maturity. Its achievement is celebrated as an individual triumph and a gift to our societies. A very had-won arrival” (p12).
“The only possibility seems to be the ability of human beings to choose good work. At its simplest, good work is work that makes sense, and that grants sense and meaning to the one who is doing it and to those affected by it” (p13).
“To view work as a pilgrimage is to put our hearts’ desires to hazard, because by merely setting out, we have told ourselves that there is something bigger and better, or even smaller and better– above all, something more life giving – that awaits us in our work, and we are going to seek it” (p13).
Taking the perspective of “work as a pilgrimage” can potentially change everything. It lays the whole studio practice open to levels of acceptance that would otherwise not be accessible. When the daily work means something, my life means something.
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First Vessel
January 16, 2012
I had forgotten how the interior space of a vessel made of grey clay smells like a creek bed. It’s an earth smell
that brings childhood memories of woodland foraging immediately forward.
Clean pond smell with tiny tadpoles squiggling around at the edges. Bits of wooden area where the construction hadn’t quite reached. Wild strawberries like free candy. Making birch bark baskets that last an hour. I never did scrape the clay sides of any creek to make a pot; it was not part of any tradition I knew of.
Working with this clay feels nostalgic. The memories are disassociated but connected. I’m retrospectively bringing this pot into my childhood where it lies in raw form squishing up between my toes on a warm April day in Quebec.
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The Deep
January 12, 2012
This is ocean off Hornby in these clear January days. Deeper than emerald, a warm blue green. It is the colour of calm. An aquatic lullaby. Readying for the herring spawn, playpen for young ruffian sea lions. Its velvet luminosity is mesmerizing.
The water alone is unfathomable. The worlds it envelopes, the worlds at its edges are other universes entirely. It’s endless.
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Sense Focusing
January 7, 2012
texture made over geological time
It’s a rainy day here on the coast. A grey, wet, green, moist day. There is little moving me from the chair, screen and wood stove to go into the studio and make – anything. But I’ve finally learned from experience that this time is not lost time. Thinking, ruminating, focusing and even critiquing my own thinking on plans for sculptural work is also useful. Filling my head with imagery is the most helpful. I’ll go for a walk on the beach and try to keep ‘mind language’ at bay. I’ll try the exercise I have been working on for many years now that involves just participating in the senses. When words come to mind, they are replaced by focus on sensation: sound, wind on my face, my cold hands, the texture of a rock. Being in the senses is the quickest and most effective way for me to access the desire to make. When I start getting ‘word thought ridden’, sense focusing helps bring me back.
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A Body of Words
January 1, 2012
This summer at the Campbell River Art Gallery I’ll be having my first sculptural exhibition in 10 years. I can’t believe it’s been that long. Or maybe I can.
Making sculptural work is a completely different head space using a whole different set of neurons. When I set out to make sculptural work I feel very different from when I sit at the wheel. There is a sensation at the back crown of my head, my chin comes down, and both the outside edges of my face begin to tingle. Specific? I began to notice the physical sensations that distinguish the feel of repeat work with the feel of sculptural work 10 years ago and I’ve been thinking about how I would explore that distinction ever since.
With this body of work, I’ll be making sculptural pieces together with writing about observations of the source of making. Tracing the root source of thought and physical process will be part of the work. I’ll be keeping a journal and reading about the origins of creativity – that have always fascinated me – so why not put it all under a microscope in my own studio? Both the clay work and the writing will be part of the exhibition.
There is so much writing now on the creative process itself. Neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and art have been brought together in lots of studies where interdisciplinary thought is looking at what happens between the mind, hand and medium to generate human expression. I’m going to jump into this discussion with humble commentary from my own singular perspective with my own head and hands.
learning from perfect form
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Last of the Long Winter Nights
December 18, 2011
Winter Solstice is welcome this year. The days are the shortest they will be until this time next year. We’re lucky to live in the north. Long dark winter days brighten into long bright summer nights with the sunlight ebb and flow. Closer to the equator the nights and days are the same year ’round. On the West Coast we don’t have snow seasons but we do have the months of light and dark. There are so many ways to appreciate those changing moods with the changing amount of sunlight.
Right now the angle of the sun makes dawn look like sunset. The orange light cast through the trees is disorienting. The sun is still in the east, but the quality of light feels like much later in the day.
There are already signs of change.
The viburnum have buds waiting for just a little more light before they start blossoming in January. The magnolia buds are fuzzy from the time leaves drop in the fall. April just isn’t that far away.
Sea lions growling and roaring off shore are the most exotic and welcome sign of deep winter here on Hornby. Having grown up in a suburb of Montreal, I will never – and never want to – get used to hearing them.
Every season is different here on the coast despite the constant green. Light changes everything. I will be enjoying the last of the deep dark days of quiet and then ease into the brightening on the other side. Happy Solstice!
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Tiny Pots and Focused Viewing
October 18, 2011
 Bud Vase with Autumn Lily Making tiny things is at once frustrating and satisfying. These little bud vases are both in spades. It’s frustrating that larger pieces are harder to house. Most people don’t want to buy big pieces – too much of a commitment, maybe. On the other hand, it’s satisfying to be able to make so many variations on a theme without going through too much clay in failed experiments. By making lots of tiny pots I can try out forms, see what people respond to, see what I respond to, and just see what’s fun to make. Hitherto unbeknownst to me, there is many a bud vase collector out there. And now I understand why. When you have a tiny garden, picking a bouquet of flowers decimates the scenery. When you carefully choose one precious little bloom, you appreciate the beauty of that one flower. You leave the scenery intact. You create installations in a 3″ space while learning to focus on a piece instead of the whole. Besides, one fragrant rose can scent an entire house. Why pick more?  A Passel of Tiny Pots |
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The Essence of Beauty
October 12, 2011
How Beauty Feels “Form IS Function”
…. a wonderful talk on how we arrive at the sensation of beauty….
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Clearing the Fog – New Body of Work
September 5, 2011
disorientingly blue
After many years of being away from kayaking, I have just come back from two weeks in the blue. It was a strangely distinct experience. When I went on these trips from an urban environment, the sensory overload was at once exhausting and invigorating. Leaving a seaside environment to go into the open ocean, on the other hand, was much more familiar but the details of that environment presented themselves much more intensely. Stones needed deeper examining; water had endless mood and texture variation; the open ocean, I noticed, is a far brinier mix in the open Pacific than it is in the Salish Sea.
There seemed to be a more intense aesthetic experience of the environment than on previous trips. I’ve always been inspired by the organic form and movement of the ocean but this time there was a deeper sense of sound, touch, weather change, quality of silence and darkness. The ocean is an element unto itself.
stones against fog
Details in stones, the quality and depth of colour in each rounded pebble almost presented a spoken history of geology. Every stone a narrative. Each pebble with its own story. Different origins, minerals and even from different layers of world growth. All these stones gathered on one island’s shore. Every stone a distinct story one billion, two billion years old. It made my head spin.
A lot of time was spent in macro examination. Patterns on shells, lines of growth in plants, lichen clinging to rock face, iridescent linings of abalone shells. Floating forests of kelp lifted to breathe at the surface of the water. Tidal sands surrounding stationary rock born before the oceans.
floating stone in tidal pool
Animals had poignant beauty. Tiny porpoises in their quick surfacing arches – little dorsal fins popping into and out of the glassy water surface. Whales announcing their presence blowing through waves. Giant bowed tails standing on end. And the one classic lone wolf with long fur blowing in the breeze. Pairs of herons trumpeting and squawking like present day dinosaurs.
Being on this world is very different from being in it. Sensory experience changes everything.
This fall I begin work on a series of pieces to fill the Campbell River Art Gallery. My new show in August 2012 will be “Portrait of an Ocean” and will focus on the sensory influences of the ocean environment. … it’s like the start up before a roller coaster ride…. that feeling in your stomach that signals fear, excitement, adrenalin and the sheer joy of being alive!