I had to do two glaze firings recently to accommodate all my recent work and the plates, tiles and leaves of my friends. The ‘Port Painters’ had painted plates and tiles, Maria brought a super fish later and then Eliza asked if I would glaze fire her new low-fire experiments with my clear glaze.

Judith Atkinson experimented with a small coupe plate and then drew and painted Athena on a large platter. I hope she’ll enjoy the results of her first time painting on clay.

Maria Palotas passed the day carefully painting bold rectangles on a coupe. She made a fish with my red clay while she was here and took it home to finish later.

We intend to have a wall featuring Port Moody’s ecology in our ‘Celebration of Clay’ show. So members have had great fun interpreting the idea of leaves, fish and birds. You’ll see!

Ysabella Choung chose a red clay coupe, painted it with white underglaze and then painstakingly sgraffitoed a Rooster. There is a border of little white dots underneath, just for fun.

Gay Mitchell applied texture and underglaze colours to four leather-hard red tiles. She also painted and sgraffitoed a shallow oval dish. I think she’ll be pleased with that.

She later brought some experimental slab textured dishes to add to the firing. Here are three of those.

I was delighted when Eliza Wang asked if I would mind firing some work she’d made in earthenware clay. Carlene had bisqued them for her but doesn’t do the necessary cone 04 glaze firing.

Eliza was not sure how her experiments with slips and underglazes and bright colours would work out, and whether the material applied after the bisque would be damaged by glazing. No worries!

Here are her dishes and wall-pieces, in the shape of leaves and depicting birds and fish. Most of them have a foot so can be used as dishes, but also have holes for wire so they can be part of our tree installation.

In my next blog I’ll post photos of my work from these two firings.