New Work Taken to The Dart Gallery, December 19th 2017

Here are photos of new pieces dropped off at The Dart Gallery in downtown Dartmouth last week, starting with a group shot to give an idea of relative size of the pieces:

The gallery is looking fantastic with all sorts of wonderful local pottery and jewelry, a show of fun pieces inspired by Pixar and many great cards and prints.  The gallery also has a handy storage with many great pieces from previous shows. 

For folks who would enjoy some delicious food and drink with their Christmas shopping, or are just looking for an artsy holiday outing, Dart is adjacent to Picnic at Dart, a licensed bistro under the direction of a very creative chef who trained at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School.   

The gallery's neighbourhood has also been hailed in the national news media this year as "Halifax's Brooklyn" as downtown Dartmouth turns into a popular indie shopping/dining destination. 

On to the work!  First, a bunny and mouse holding flowers, which could hold rings for safe keeping:

  
 Next up: an owl and pussycat sculptures.

  
For Chinese astrology fans, next year will be the Year of the Brown (or Earth) Dog, beginning February 16th, 2018.   I didn't realize this when sculpting or glazing this basset hound and corgi:  

Next are bunnies with their hedgehog friend: a bowl, sculpture and figurines.  One accidentally ended up with a coat that looks similar to Huxley, the gallery bunny - a glazing "mistake" that ended up being an improvement:

Elephants! A small bowl and a figurine, with trunks turned upwards for good luck, ready to shower good fortune on passers by:

Four more figurines, a frog, cat, German Shepherd dog, and raccoon:

Three chickens, a goat and a rooster.

Four crows:

Four sheep and four foxes:

Next, a selection of handsculpted brooches and pendants!  These are brand new products for my art practice.   First, the brooches, with a loonie (Canadian dollar coin) for scale.  These are a bit big but suitable for a jacket, coat or bag, I'll be making smaller ones in the new year:

Next, the pendants.

Suggested musical pairings: for the flying crow pendants:  "As the Crow Flies" by Stephen Fearing. For the pig pendant, "The Grim Trucker" by Ron Sexsmith.

In addition to the twenty pendants above, there was a mushroom pendant I didn't manage to get a photo of. 

Finally here is a high relief carved bowl of a fox chasing a pheasant:

 

Now Available At The Dart Gallery, July 16, 2016 - Murder at the Dart and more

The firings went well for "Murder At The Dart" (hooray!).  Super huge thank you to Jane, The Dart Gallery's owner, and artist Lee Cripps, for including my ceramic pieces in Lee's show of amazing new crow/raven works.

Here's an installation shot from The Dart Gallery's Facebook page:

Here are pics of my pieces, starting with the big stoneware wall hanging  titled "These Crows Are Happily Married":

It was decorated with a combination of homemade slips, commercial underglazes, and homemade glazes.  I was pleasantly surprised that this didn't crack anywhere, seeing as it had to be carefully flipped over while green to work on a few times.

Next is this round lidded vessel:

 

 I love coming up with ideas for functional sculptural pieces.  This vessel combines relief carving and sculpture and I imagine it as a good hiding place for something precious.  Like the wall hanging above, this was decorated with a mix of slips, underglazes and glazes although for this one I did use a commercial ultra clear glaze as well.

Next up is the largest crow sculpture I've made. This bird is maybe a bit fat-bellied, so I imagine him/her as having gotten into too much trash.  To the right is another new product: a baby crow in a nest that is intended to be used as an ashtray.  Alternatively this piece could sit on a desk and hold a pen in the crow's mouth, and maybe some thumbtacks or paperclips.

Next are two large crow bowls, the bigger being the biggest one I've ever made.  Here again it was such a relief to open the kiln and see that these pieces survived the bisque firing unscathed, where they are quite thick in parts.   These are most definitely food safe, and theoretically dishwasher safe, however handwashing is recommended.

While I have made a few other crow bowls before, on these the interiors received a swirl of a white glaze, inspired by pics of Jupiter's aurora. 

 

The second crow bowl, smaller than the one above.

The next bunch of pics are new wall hanging crows and figurines, which were made with a black stoneware clay from Pottery Supply House, resulting in a darker finish than the above pieces.

This pic includes sitting wall hanging crows on branches, something I hadn't tried before but which has led to more ideas for 'bird on branches' wall hanging pieces.

Next are figurines.  There are 7 'larger' ones, including one on a branch. 

And here are some smaller crow figurines grouped with a goose figurine.

Next are some flying crows from previous firings.  These ones were all made from the white stoneware clay body that I normally work in.  

Also in this firing for The Dart Gallery, though not part of the show, were some new figurines.  

Here are some mushrooms that I thought would make for 'figurine habitat' while providing a chance to test some new glazes.   Hanging out among these mushrooms is a frog and dragon. 

 Pair of owls:

Raccoon:

Pug:

 

And finally another view of that goose in a blue neckerchief, which was inspired by this much loved motif found on many antique and vintage collectibles.  

 

"Murder At The Dart"  is up until July 28th.  If you're thirsty or peckish, Picnic at Dart - the gallery's newly expanded resto/bar -  has created a delicious crow-themed menu - copy/pasted below -  to go with the show.   Note that some of the show has flown over onto one of the restaurant walls.    "The 4 & 20 Pot Pie" item title made me smile, and if anyone else couldn't remember the whole "sing a song of sixpence... 4 & 20 blackbirds..." rhyme, here it is on wiki. 

Finally, as an aside, the feeling of being really inspired while working on the new pieces for this show reminded me of how I felt while painting this crow painting in late 2011 - which was posted on this blog before.  It was painted with the caption in mind as I worked on this to calm down about our impending move to the country.  Oddly, the scene ended up being much like out our back door on moon lit nights, with the branches looking like winter branches on the giant oak tree closest to our house.  The next full moon is Tues July 19th, 7:59pm Halifax time!

"Reassuring Crows"

Bat Mobile

Here are a couple pics of my entry for The Dart Gallery's Batman-themed show, "Biff! Pow! Art!", on til June 12th.  The show theme was inspired by the 50th anniversary of the classic Batman tv series and features many excellent pieces by local artists.

In order to bend the theme into my own art practice, here is "Bat Mobile", comprised of 4 papier mache bats (made from Chronicle Herald newspapers), a couple lichen-covered branches and 3 pine cones from the woods around our place, and some string...

There's something very satisfying about mixing my sculptures with actual bits of nature, and trying to sell sticks and pine cones in an urban gallery.  Here's another pic taken before the strings were shortened, the bats are posed a bit better in this one.  Both pics were taken in a living room window at our home. 
 

Now that the weather is warm, I've slowly been working on ceramic pieces for my first firing of 2016, sometime in June, which will include some new items for Jenny Jib down in Lunenburg as well as crow sculptures "Murder of Crows" -  a show coming up in July at Dart Gallery that will feature the crow art of Lee Cripps.

Now Available at The Dart Gallery, December 10th, 2015

Here are the pics of the pieces I took to The Dart Gallery in  Dartmouth today:

First, new stoneware ornaments!  These are all $25 each (tax free Sat Dec 12 :), handsculpted, handcarved, and hand painted without the use of molds.  Each of these comes with an ornament hanging wire, and a tag.

First, two new Sullivan's Pond Geese

Golden Retriever, West Highland White Terrier, and a Pointer

Slug, pterodactyl, brontosaurus, triceratops and frog

four chickadees and two blue jays

bluebird, fawn, raccoon

The Canadian and American icons: beaver and eagle

four festive foxes

four wise owls and their mouse friend

penguin, sled dog, seagull

pig, rooster, calico cat, horse

five bouncing bunnies

two reindeer and a Christmas vulture

four woolly sheep

wren, goldfinch, red-breasted nuthatch, thrasher

nuthatch action shot

last but not least for ornaments, an alien

Five new figurines made it into the box, two bears, two rabbits and a turtle.   These are also $25 each.

 There are also two new bowls.  First, this brown rabbit bowl:

 And finally, this relief carved bowl with a fox chasing two rabbits.  The glaze on parts of this didn't turn out as planned, but it was a valuable learning experience for future functional stoneware relief carved pieces!

Time is running out to visit Dart this year.  The gallery has to close early, and unexpectedly, to address a structural issue with the building so Tuesday December 15th is the last day to visit the actual gallery this month, and to see the awesome Dart Wars group show (inspired by Star Wars).

But to help things along, everything in the gallery will be TAX FREE this Saturday December 12th.

After this, there's another chance for the Dart Gallery experience - at the very first annual "Halifax Lights Holiday Market" in the Historic Properties where Dart will have a display for the fourth and final weekend: Thursday December 17th - Sunday December 20th.  

This looks like a very nice festive market. Dart's presence here will be no small table - rather it'll be more of an empty shop turned into a 'pop up' Dart!

Parking will be free at waterfront development lots during the market, details at the bottom of this page.

Market hours will be: Thurs 17th, 4 - 9pm, Fri 18th, 4 - 9pm, Sat 19th - 12 - 9pm and Sunday the 20th, 12 - 4pm.  The theme for this last weekend of the market will be "The Night Before Christmas".  Sounds fun!