Nicole Ponsart’s show at PoMoArts ended in late June and I was able to pop in to see it on its last day. Nicole was a winner of the Arts Centre’s Kwi Am Choi scholarship this year and she used the opportunity to show what she’s been working on during the last year, as she completed her BFA at Emily Carr University. I had watched the usual Covid-necessitated artist interview earlier. These have replaced live openings, but I didn’t realize until later that Nicole was speaking from Medalta, in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
I’ll post my photos of some of her pieces here, along with her artist statement. Basically, her splendid sculptures were inspired by the idea of travelling, when she couldn’t, with the idea of experiencing the hot, red earth and rock of Arizona and New Mexico. Oh, how I love those colours!
Here is a fine review of Nicole’s grad show at ECUAD, which gives a better explanation of her intentions.
https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2021/nicole-ponsart-sculptures-inspired-virtual-road-trip
As a result of her graduating year’s work Nicole won a NorthWest Ceramic Foundation award for an outstanding Post-Secondary ceramics student. This entitled her to attend a month-long residency at Medalta. From social media I saw that she has produced an astonishing number of similar and very large sculptures during June. I wonder how she has brought them all home. Me, I was lucky that Alan drove out there to collect me and my pots after my month there in June 2010.
Another clay artist from BC, Fredi Rahn, was the Strojich fellowship award recipient for June, and the other two student award artists in residence were Zoe Leung and Courtney Faulkner. I wonder if they enjoyed living in the clay artists’ residence which has been built in the old IXL brickworks factory building nearby. We visited the huge brick factory and watched the very long kiln in action in 2010 and were probably its last visitors. Some days later the South Saskatchewan River flooded yet again and it was one time too many for the Insurance company. It was a sad end to a Canadian institution which had sent bricks all over North America for decades.
The tremendous heat I mentioned in my last blog has abated somewhat and I have been able to complete my current group of pots. Eric Metcalfe painted three more slab plates and the grandsons were here on Sunday, painting a Raiders-intended slab plate each and making some red clay things. So my kiln was adequately filled. The bisque firing ended yesterday and today, while the weather was cooler I have waxed the bisqued pots, glazed them all and they are now loaded into the kiln again for their glaze firing overnight.
It’ll be at least a day after the firing ends tomorrow before I can see how my latest colour, stencil and squished wooden maple leaf experiments turn out, as well as the NXNW mugs and some jugbirds. Can’t wait..
