We are so excited to announce a new addition to our guild.  We have bought a brand new programmable kiln!  It is shiny and new, and we hope to be more efficient with electricity now by being able to firing over night and come in when it is about to turn off.  This will mean that we are using the cheapest electricity rates and because it is a BIG kiln, we can fit even more student work into it.

This is also a pretty important milestone for the Guild.  When we discussed going ahead last summer with renting a premises and taking our guild to the “next level” there was a lot of dissension among the group as to whether we could do this.  We passed our 1st year in our new home and now we’ve made a major purchase.  We are all happy to see this working.

Thanks once again to our tireless volunteers (members) who spent a couple of days clearing out the kiln/pugging room to make room for our new arrival.  Check out the pictures below!  The fellow in the one picture is Mike from PSH who delivered and set it up.  Today we have electricians in to wire it in, and soon we will have an extractor vent as well, so all the fumes exit the building (just like Elvis).

A few members got together over the past week or so to give the guild a bit more organization.  When you have to work with so many different members, and teach classes and have so much work to fire, it can all get a bit chaotic.   We are also introducing a few new instructors over the coming months and we need a teaching space that is easy for everyone to use and feel comfortable with.  So with that in mind, we took the space that we had been saving for rental and re-purposed it as a our new glazing area.  Out is the hodge-podge of containers in a cluttered hallway and in came some semblance of order.

June went out and purchased buckets for dry ingredient, Carolyn dragged her husband with her to buy heavy shelves and bring them to the guild, and Karina brought her lovely husband with her to do some of the building work.  Then the rest of us there helped dismantle, move, sweep, fetch , carry and with satisfaction start to see the back area of bedlam suddenly start to make sense.  It is nowhere near finished yet, but we have a direction and as we are all volunteers, it is so wonderful the time everyone has been putting into this job.  Thank you to everyone who has helped and given their time to this transformation.

Now when classes start in the next few weeks, there is a dedicated area to glaze, clear areas for work that is waiting to be fired, and it will help everyone keep things in the right place.

Well, we have just reached a milestone at our new location today.  While we have been around for a few years now as a guild, today marks our first year in our new location.  It’s been a busy and productive year and we are so pleased that we took the plunge and moved into our new location.  We are paying our rent, our instructors and selling pottery.  And what is even more satisfying, we are teaching more and more people about the art of ceramics and what goes into the vessels that you drink out of, eat off of and admire your plants and flowers in.

We look forward to everyone visiting us at some point soon, and thank every one of our members for all their hard work in making our dream a reality and we wish ourselves a Happy something in our new home!

There is a beautiful display on at the Gallery on the Lake at the moment.  Our guild members have added their art to this beautiful venue for the month of August.  If you are up in the Buckhorn area, you won’t want to miss the gallery and the surrounding scenery.

Some photos from the show we have on there until the 31st August. Click on any image to see a larger image.