Once again some Vancouver artists drove out to Port Moody to spend a day painting plates. Yesterday’s ‘Raiders’ were Eric Metcalfe, Mina Totino and first-time-visitor Elizabeth Zvonar.

All three jumped right in to work, Eric carefully drawing and then painting two more plates in his new series of ‘Dazzle’ images, Mina painting right away on three of the rimless coupe plates and later, a larger oval platter she’d requested, and Elizabeth, after a brief explanation of the materials, quickly painted exploratory shapes on four coupes. She has worked in clay before, both at Capilano University and at Emily Carr U, although I gather it was never a primary focus of her studies. She is mainly known for her collages, but her clay sculpture work has meant that she has met several of my colleagues in ceramics. The link below will give you an idea of the education and experiences of this mid-career artist.

http://www.ecuad.ca/news/2015/elizabeth-zvonar-offsite-and-beyond

Most notable so far are her winning of the VIVA Award and her VAG Off-Site installation, both last year. She also was in a show at the Western Front last November so I imagine that’s where Eric got to know her better.

It was interesting to find that after she moved to Vancouver from Thunder Bay she lived here in Port Moody and attended Port Moody Senior Secondary School, two blocks from here. She remembered the ceramics teacher there, Keith Rice-Jones, who also taught our son Mike a year or two later.

What a pleasant way to pass the day! With interesting conversation about all things to do with Art, whether it’s shows happening in Vancouver, travels, artists moving to greener pastures back East, in Europe or Brazil, Vancouver house prices for artists! and more, and then our usual potluck lunch and finally tea before the three trundled back to Vancouver at the end of the day, it was busy and productive. Alan drifted through, taking some candid photos as usual, and joining us for lunch. So although we are not on our planned European holiday we are finding other satisfying activities.

Thank you for gourmet made-in-my-kitchen with your-home-grown-herbs salads, Mina. She assembled delicious combinations of goat cheeses, tomatoes and nuts, and another with water melon and pistachios. I gather that the larger platter she painted yesterday is intended for serving these kinds of salads. Eric and Elizabeth brought yummy bread, deli meats, grapes, cheeses and more. Delicious!

I plan to get these plates fired along with ten of my drying jugbirds very soon. We hope to have a couple more ‘Raids’ over the summer.

Just to illustrate my life of pottery-related interests, I then went to Port Moody Arts Centre last night for TriCity Potters’ end-of-season meeting and 9th Birthday party, with cake! We had one of our popular ‘show and tell’ sessions with members showing some of their experiments and successes. Check here soon for photos of what we saw. http://www.tricitypotters.ca/index.php/events I have a feeling some of those members will be in my studio painting tiles and plates again this summer too.

Beforehand I walked through the galleries and found Ray Tse in the 3D Gallery with his show. He seems quite happy with my little blog about it. Talking to him was Kitsum Cheng, a Coquitlam artist who is currently studying Art in Frankfurt. She was looking for me because she had found me via my website and hoped I’d fire some work for her. It is funny how things work out. I was wondering how to get a large Eagle jugbird wedding present over to Germany. This morning Kitsum came to my studio with four clay moulds she’d made and now they are being bisque-fired in my kiln so that she can take them back to Frankfurt with her next week. And guess what? she plans to take my jugbird with her and deliver it to Hamburg on a planned trip there later this summer! A fair trade, I figure. She is hoping to get a further student visa to take Graduate Studies in Art in Germany. So here is another career to watch!