Now Available At The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Shop, December 12th, 2016

Here are pics of new pieces dropped off at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia shop in downtown Halifax, this past Saturday.  It is nice to see the new shop filling back up with beautiful locally made things!

a white tailed deer fawn, two owls and a moose

A small skulk of fox figurines

two black bears and a polar bear

New ornaments, handsculpted and relatively flat but have a bit of relief to them. The backs are unglazed so that they can be personalized with a marker, or used as gift tags.   In addition to the ornaments pictured here there was a dove, whale and dolphin.

Pig and rat

Puffin bowl

Robin, crow and blue jay

Seagull with two puffins

Wolf with two sheep figurines and a larger sheep sculpture

Glad to finally have some new work for the shop! In addition to these pieces is a black bear bowl and beaver bowl from a previous firing.

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!

Works in Progress - September 15th 2015, Turkey Bowl and Ornaments

Thanksgiving is coming! Both for Canadians and Americans, so I decided to make a giant stoneware turkey...

... that comes apart into 2 bowls for serving.  Perfect for vegans and vegetarians that would still like a big festive turkey on the table.  

Christmas is coming! So I've been working away on stoneware ornaments. 

This year I'm trying out ornament hooks from Dragonfire Pottery & Supplies so that I can finish the bottoms of my ceramic animal ornaments with the help of stilts.  These will be able to hang with a simple ornament hook, no more heavy wire!  Eg, here's a seal pup...

 ... and its bottom.

 Frog, mushroom and bunny.

 Horse with a donkey behind it

 Pig!

Reindeer!

Sheep:

 I've also been working on making them smaller and lighter - they started off this way in 2009 but started getting bigger, and a bit heavy for natural trees - these should be better.  

Here are a great white shark, Sullivan's pond goose and owl with santa hats.

 

New Merry Creatures will be coming to town too - brightly painted papier mache animals wearing santa hats.  Here are the first frames for the season, made from 100% Chronicle Heralds and masking tape.  They've gathered under our avocado plant that Brendan managed to start from a pit: