Our member Rosemary Jenkins, was featured on a recent segment of Daytime on Rogers TV in Durham. Check out her interview! Click on the image below.
Year: 2015
Four Artists: Four Visions
Two of our own members, Janet McDougall and Lucia McHardy are involved in an upcoming show at the Kawartha Arts Network from May 7 – 30th, with the opening on Saturday May 9, from 1 – 3pm.
Lucia has new works in stoneware: large decorative bowls, and table & floor vases and Janet has a variety of thrown & hand built work.
Sandi has all sizes of basketry and wall pieces made from hand gathered local materials. Carol has paintings and stone animal sculptures.
For a Poster of the show, with more details, click here.
Dan Hill Soda Firing Workshop in Wilno
Our member, Dan Hill will be hosting two – 2-day Soda Firing Workshops. Workshop dates are July 4th & 5th and August. 29th & 30th.
Workshop participants will bring 8-10 pieces of bisque ware made from a ^6 clay body to Hill Pottery Studio where, with my input, they will decorate and glaze their pieces using my slips and glazes. The decorated works will then be strategically loaded into 2 gas fired kilns. One of the kilns is a 7 cu. ft. converted electric and the other is a 30 cu. ft. downdraft.
During the second day of the workshop we will fire off the 2 kilns and I will discuss and demonstrate the techniques and aesthetics involved in the production of Soda Fired Pottery. The movement of flame and soda within the kiln will impart itself on the clay and glazed surfaces with subtleties of colour and texture that will breath life into your ceramic work.
For more information, please contact Dan Hill. Here is the Firing Itinerary for the workshop, and the Workshop Information.
Membership has Privileges!
A new Potter’s first ‘Member’s Only’ Workshop
I took my first pottery class (as an adult) about a year ago. Like many before me, I fell in love with clay. With a bit of encouragement from friends, I joined the Kawartha Potters Guild in January. Among the benefits of membership; which include discounts on classes and being part of a supportive community of craftspeople, several workshops are offered to members only. Recently guild member Margrit Beesley offered such a workshop, and I had the opportunity to participate in building a hand built mug.
As a new potter, I was a little nervous about signing up for a member’s only workshop which I assumed was guaranteed to be filled with potters much more experienced than myself. I showed up on the morning of class with all my enthusiasm and most of the required tools. Of the six of us in class, experience levels ranged from the veritable newbie (myself) to experienced hand builders, to primarily wheel potters with multi-decades of experience.
Margrit’s experience with hand building developed after a hand injury made wheel throwing too physically trying. She encouraged us to make hand built pottery that didn’t try to replicate wheel thrown pottery, but celebrated its hand built attributes.
Among the resources referenced, Sandi Pierantozzi’s DVD “What If?” was highly recommended, as was her CircleMatic template set. Margarit demonstrated a hand built cylinder mug, showing us many tricks-of-her-trade for making slabs, using texture, creating and altering cylinders and adding handles.
We participants then created our own mugs to practice Margrit’s methods. It was fun to peek at each other’s work and pull inspiration from others. Margrit encouraged us to think about negative space by looking at the shape of the area between the handle and the pot. She brought up design concepts of repetition and proportion, and encouraged us to be mindful of these in our hand building.
In addition to being a great learning experience, this workshop solidified for me that membership in the Kawartha Potters Guild has privileges. I got to spend a creative day with fellow clay-lovers and I learned so many new tricks. I learned about both technical and creative aspects of hand building. I was directed to some vetted and useful resources for further exploration. But most of all, I was left hungry for my next opportunity to participate in a KPG workshop.
Jennifer LaBelle-Brown
Board of Director Positions Available
There are currently two vacancies on the Board. If any guild member is interesting in applying for a Board position, the application is here. Please complete the application and mail it to:
Lillian Forester
139 Sand Lake Circle
Buckhorn, K0L 1J0.
Deadline for applications is April 24, 2015.
Susan McDonald show in Colborne
Talking to Myself, Susan McDonald
Show Opening, Saturday, April 18th, Reception at 2:00 pm. Running April 18-May 24, 2015
Big. Small. Functional. Non-Functional. Then. Now. Beyond. These topics are all explored in the show ‘Talking to Myself’, both in clay and on paper, by Susan McDonald. The conversation is endless, engages the viewer as a participant in the discourse, and provides a possible glimpse of the future.
Colborne Art Gallery, 51 King Street East, Colborne Ontario K0K 1S0
Go to www.potterystudio.ca — for info on the studio. Remember, it’s worth the trip to Canton ….
Artisanity
Show & Sale
Unique gifts for Mother’s Day, Weddings and Home décor.
Come see a large collection of finely crafted work created by talented
artisans from 5 local groups. Includes Pottery, Woodturning, Weaving,
Spinning, Felting, Glass and Gourd Art.
Marshland Centre, Lakefield
Saturday, May 2, Sunday, May 3, 2015,
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
A fundraising event supporting the Artisans Centre Peterborough.
www.artisanscentre.ca
Behind the scenes
When you have an organization like ours, it’s not often that people realize the huge amount of work that goes into it. Take test tiles, for example. We offer classes which includes clay, glazes and two firings. But the work must be loaded into a kiln twice by someone, unloaded again by others. Glazes must be mixed so there are lots of colours for our students and studio members to use.
We recently mixed a few new batches of glazes and they all had to be tested. Not only are they tested on the two types of clay bodies that we offer, but it is fun to test them in combination with each other. The images show the tiles that we use and then all of them fresh out of the kiln. It’s a lot of work, but how rewarding!
It will now allow our students to look at the tiles and decide what colour or combination of colours they want their masterpieces to be glazed in. And glazes can make a pot or piece of sculpture.
Creativity in our classes
Just had a visit this week with the talented people in our Wednesday afternoon class. It’s fun to see what people create during their class. This is often a bit of “me” time to allow them to be creative.
The Firing Stages of Clay
We often talk about firing items in the kiln and such terms such as “ramping up” and “soaking” are bandied about, but what exactly happens when you are firing your kiln? And what stages are the most crucial?
There are some brilliant articles about the stages of firing, and what happens chemically to your clay as it goes through a firing process. The article talks about six stages, and it explains it in a really interesting way.
These are very interesting, and written in a way that while it does have some chemistry terms, explains it in an easy to understand way.
Sorry, these articles are no longer available!