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"

New Christmas Ornaments at The Dart Gallery, November 18th, 2015

Here are pics of ornaments I dropped off at The Dart Gallery in Dartmouth on November 3rd, along with some other new pieces.

I love making Christmas ornaments and have made hundreds over the years: clay ones since 2009, and papier mache ones since 2005.  I'm pretty excited with how they are evolving.

This year for the first time I'm using ornament hooks! Thanks, France at Dragonfire Pottery and Supplies for telling me about these!  So now all my ornaments are finished underneath (thanks, husband Brendan, for telling me I should do this).  Unless they're standing on feet, they're mostly all glazed underneath too - which means firing them with on stilts, something I just started doing this year.  

All of my ornaments are handsculpted stoneware, and all of these new ones are signed with my initials.  Clay is a heavy medium, but I've tried to make them as light as possible by hollowing them out as much as I can.

There are 18 of the new ones at Dart, most are $25 each but there are few smaller ones for $20.

Owl, sitting bunny, mushroom (these first three are the smaller $20 ones), spotted frog, fox

Close up of the mushroom and sitting bunny from the above pic

Giraffe, owl with santa hat, another fox, 2 sheep and a squirrel

Two doves

Pig

Polar bear

Puffin with Santa hat

Crouching bunny

And last but not least, a Sullivan's Pond Goose with Santa Hat

 All of the above ornaments come with a simple ornament wire, ready to hang, as well as one of my new homemade tags (photo paper + inkjet printer) if desired.

Here's an action shot of a fox ornament in a live tree, though the tags at Dart say "handsculpted in Nova Scotia Canada":

I also dropped off a selection of older ornaments, most are $15 - $20 each.  Here's a group shot with most of them.  What have we got here... three chickens, a couple of ghosts, a few skulls, white rat, meerkat, blue jay, duckling, santa head, alien, 4 doves in 2 styles, pumpkin, jack o'lantern... and 3 Kevin O'Leary Christmas Tree Heads (more about them at the end of this post).

Here's a flying bat that missed the class photo:

 And a small flying dove: 

This flying goose was actually made this year, but in the old style - open on the bottom with a heavy wire through it.

And here's one of the skulls in action.  

Back to the Kevin O'Leary Christmas Tree Heads.  I made a dozen or so of these tributes to "Mr. Wonderful" in 2012 while binge watching Shark Tank, thinking I'd get into doing celebrity ornaments.  I still plan on it, and have a few other people in mind, but probably not for this season.   I'll do another post with more pics of the photo shoot fun I had finally hanging the ornaments in a hawthorn tree outside.  Meanwhile here is one example of a group shot:

And here's a shot of the 3 heads that I took to  Dart:

The Dart Gallery has a couple of very nice shows starting soon.  "Le Jardin Magique" opens November 19th 7 - 9pm, running until Dec 2nd, and features paintings by Estelle Thomson, this year's Gold winner artist for both Visual Artist and Yoga Instructor in The Coast's Best of Halifax awards.

Opening in early December and running until Christmas is "Dart Wars", a group show inspired by the latest Star Wars movie release.