Rounding up Raiders.. Kate Bellringer must have felt like a shepherd moving sheep or a member of the constabulary arresting said raiders over the past few months. Somehow she was able to encourage a large number of the artists who’ve poddled out to my Port Moody studio for a Raid to deliver one or more of their plates to her office at Burrard Arts Foundation. Once she and Eric had mooted the idea of showing the plates and she experienced a day Raid, her friends Scott Massey and Laura Quilici, owners of Terminal Creek Contemporary Arts Gallery offered to host a show this August. On Sunday it all came together!

Kate had us each write a little biography, researched suitable and safe ways to hang/display the fragile work and transported them all over to Bowen Island. Happily the local paper, the Bowen Island Undercurrent (what a fabulous name for a small island paper!) interviewed her. The link below will allow you to read a rundown on what the show is all about.

https://www.bowenislandundercurrent.com/news/new-exhibit-shows-what-happens-when-artists-raid-a-ceramics-studio-1.23917276

This link to the gallery gives another description of the show and the names of all the participating artists. There are several others who we couldn’t find or who live far away now.

https://www.tccontemporary.com/the-raiders

I think fourteen of the twenty-four past and present Raiders included in the show were able to join us, several sent regrets and it looked as if lots of local islanders decided to visit the gallery on a fine Saturday afternoon in August. Al and I left home fairly early for a ferry which got us to the gallery in Artisan Square just before opening time at noon. It gave us a chance to meet and thank Kate, Scott and Laura and photograph all the work before people arrived, and to have a bit of lunch at the nearby café.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that Kate had decided to display one of the very first pieces I made for Eric to paint. The Adelaar tea-set is one of three I threw, in my red earthenware, back in 1995 or ’96. It was fabricated as a three-dimensional version of Eric’s gouache drawing of a leopard-spotted tea-set which had been included in Canada’s entry in that year’s Venice Biennale ‘World Tea-Party’. I guess Kate felt that it would be a nice way to explain the beginnings of many collaborations between Eric and me.

This show illustrates what has happened since Eric started inviting friends to join him to paint plates and platters in my studio about ten years ago. Thanks to this I have made lots of friends in Vancouver’s Art community and I hope I have given them a taste of the pleasures of working with ceramic materials. The Raid tradition has become an occasion that I prepare for and that Alan and I enjoy, from the gourmet potluck lunch to the lively conversation, or for me, just having congenial company for a studio day.

Just for the record I’ll post lots of photos of the plates here. Yesterday I put albums of the plates and people out on Facebook – it’s so easy that way, and the response has been great. But for those of you who don’t use facebook they’ll be here too, and will perhaps stay here as a document for longer. Instagram is an easy platform for sharing photos too but I didn’t use it for these because having to make each image square really limits me. Sometimes a row of plates is far longer than wide!

Enjoy a walk through the gallery and see how varied the responses to a curved plate shape can be. There are many more out there so perhaps a follow-up show in the future would reveal a completely different collection of Raiders’ plates. Who knows?

I need to post another blog about the afternoon opening, just so that I can also share photos of the Raiders and their friends enjoying the show. Tomorrow..

In a third blog I’ll add photos of the delightful reception we were all invited to after the show closed, at the nearby island home of Kate’s parents Steve and Cathy Bellringer. And, as we waited for the 6.15pm ferry back to Horseshoe Bay, we just had time to pop into the local Arts Council’s gallery in the library building to see more pots and prints. Later!