My recent kiln firing included work by four TriCity Potters and Burnaby artist Bill Thomson.

Felicia Hsieh usually works in cone 10 stoneware at Shadbolt Centre and has had her work fired in their reduction gas kiln and in the salt/soda kiln there. So her day with earthenware was a new experience for her. She worked very carefully, using two red earthenware oval plates, applying my coloured slips, using paper resist as I had just demonstrated and then finishing her designs with sgraffito. Here are her two green plates. When she popped over here to collect them she tells me that she is happy with the opportunity to use bright colours.

Linda Lebrun arrived for the Saturday workshop with clay moulds of ferns and bark from her garden. Her plan was to make relief tiles. The three red clay tiles have a tree, embellished with clay imprints of the texture. Then she filled the background with green slip. After the bisque firing I suggested she come over and stain the bark etc with some underglaze and she painted some Duncan clear glaze on the background. The plan is to hang these tiles in her garden.

Linda enjoyed a different way of working by painting one of our oval ‘coupes’. She used paisley shapes cut from newsprint for stencils and then added underglaze dots and sgraffito. Nice, Linda.

Ysabella Cheong has been interested in mid-Century modern design for a while now. I see that she and I often share selections on Pinterest! On this day she painted four of the still leather-hard red earthenware tiles with my coloured slips. Her designs are understated and elegant. They’ll provide her with further ideas for colour combinations.

The fourth attendee was Gay Mitchell. She is a professional painter who has taught and mentored many local artists. She has also taken several pottery classes. Gay was a student of mine at Port Moody Arts Centre longer ago than I care to remember and recently she has been seeing what their current pottery instructors Robert Shiozaki and Ray Tse have to teach her.

Her five pieces are experiments with the media; dry and leather hard plates and tiles, red and white clay, underglazes and slips and texture. Of her five I think we agree that the red clay tile with a fern shape and bright red and turquoise is the most successful.

Linda and Gay made several more plates and tiles than were used by the four TriCity Potters who came to play, so if any of you would like to join me to work here one day while I continue with my own work, just email or phone me and get yourself over here for a day!

I placed Bill Thomson’s large plate on its own shelf in this firing. The glaze makes the colours much bolder and I think he’s happy with the result. He will make decisions about whether hard edges are best, and if he likes a painterly look or the opacity of commercial printing ink in a print of this image. I have a feeling he will want to have another go at painting with ceramic materials!