Ray Tse is this year’s Ceramic Artist in Residence at Port Moody Arts Centre. In return for a small studio and use of all the equipment and materials in the ceramics department Ray will be invited to do some teaching and be available to supervise and help at Clay Drop-in sessions. In addition he will be invited to have a solo show in the 3D Gallery, in June.
So TriCity Potters invited him to be our presenter at Wednesday’s meeting. I met him at the recent Instructors’ Show at the Arts Centre where he has some recent wheel-thrown work and his ECU Graduation piece on display. Below is the link to his website:
http://www.contrastliving.net/#!raytsepottery/c1ryp
And this other link is to Port Moody Arts Centre’s press release when Ray was chosen to be this year’s CAIR.
Ray gave us a very well-organized power point presentation which covered his coming to Canada from Hong Kong to attend High School in Abbotsford and then the four years he spent at Emily Carr University/Art School. He graduated in 2014.
He explained that he has used various media for his sculptures, including wood. He feels a strong pull to make work that addresses important issues in his world and he’s a big fan of Ai Wei Wei. His singular sculpture (which is on display in the main AC gallery) titled ‘The Limitation of Profit ‘ is intended to evoke feelings of horror over the Chinese contamination of milk which caused ghastly baby deformities. The piece is all ceramic and he told us how he spent many months perfecting a slightly purple blistered volcanic glaze for the face on this piece. Nasty.
While he has a studio here in Port Moody he is taking the opportunity to learn about the big selection of cone six electric glazes, as well as doing some teaching. Some of his loosely wheel-thrown forms were on display in our meeting room and there are three up in the gallery. After his talk we went up to the galleries and he spoke to some of us more about his pieces and his future.
Also on display are some astonishing space-ship table wares by fellow Arts Centre instructor Clive Tucker, and hand built and colourful pieces by Clay technician Dan Severance. You can see work by previous CAIR Pauline Doyle and children’s instructor Nicole Smith.
Ray says that in the not too distant future he plans to return to his home and family in Hong Kong, and there he hopes to continue his career as an artist who makes work dealing with issues that need to be brought to the world’s attention.
Thank you for your interesting presentation, Ray, and good luck in your career in the future.
I always admire the paintings of Agata Teodorowicz so I’ll take this opportunity to include a photo of her with two of them, taken at the Instructors’ Opening last week.
