I left Madeira Park around 9am for the wiggly half-hour drive to Earl’s Cove and was in good time for the 10.35am ferry to Saltery Bay, a fifty minute run. With only a brief stop at a viewpoint just south of Powell River it took just over an hour to arrive at the end of the road in Lund. The sign says it all.
Actually Finn Bay, the home of Tidal Art Centre, is a few minutes further north on a minor road. After that the roads are gravel. Parking is a problem in the hamlet of Lund as any further travel is by water taxi, to nearby Savary Island and to Redondo, Cortez and other islands further north.
https://www.tidalartcentre.com/about
Transforming a dilapidated Forestry station into a fabulous, best quality Arts Centre has been a project of its owner Nancy Jeakins for some twenty years. With the help of highly skilled woodworkers, concrete formers, metal workers and a gardener Nancy has now begun to inhabit her dream art space with visiting artists, workshops and a gallery. She invited her friend, well-known salt potter Jackie Frioud, to build her own salt kiln as the first kiln in a renovated and fire-proofed garage/kiln shed. It is Jackie’s personal kiln and is not huge, so we five people who registered for her workshop are very privileged to have had the chance to have some work fired in her well-controlled salt kiln, in its 9th firing. I believe there are plans to install a gas kiln and some electric kilns along with a group of wheels. So there will be further workshops in the spanking-new ceramic room in the future.
When I arrived Jackie had the kiln all ready to be filled, with the shelves kiln-washed and cone packs and draw rings dry. I was shortly joined by Carol Demers, Anthea Cameron and Elizabeth Claridge, all of whom work out of Gleneagles Community Centre ceramics department and have known Jackie for years. Missing was Helen Weiser who was, sadly, unable to join us but Jackie had brought her pots along. We had all had our pots sprayed with Jackie’s flashing slips at her Mergatroid building studio in Vancouver and she’d bisque-fired them. I had brought mine back home to apply liner Shino glaze and brought the sixteen pots up the highway with me.
We quickly unpacked our pieces, arranging them according to height, and in no time we had loaded everything into the kiln and were ready for a cuppa. Made with my loose-leaf English breakfast tea in one of Jackie’s large salty tea-pots it was time to get to know each other and admire the incredible facilities in the main building. There’s a well-equipped kitchen, large eating/meeting area, lounge, big print-making studio, bathrooms and MY bedroom! That’s upstairs. The lower level houses offices, the clay room and a gallery. A tower structure houses an elevator so Nancy has considered everybody’s convenience for future workshop participants. Rose cottage next door has single bedrooms and is where the others stayed. All this is set on a little plateau well above the tide line but with a splendid view of Finn Bay. While we drank tea a sudden, fierce and loud storm passed over but we were cosy.
After bricking up the kiln with two layers of bricks and Jackie testing the burners (four) we withdrew to the main building again for welcoming ‘negronis’ made by Anthea and the first of potluck suppers. Jackie had brought a home-made lasagne, so with meatloaf contributed by Nancy’s husband Gordon and salad, wine or cider and fruit our four days were set to begin.
Next blog will show photos of the firing and some of Jackie’s wheel-throwing demonstrations.
