New Work Taken to Made in The Maritimes, December 19, 2017

Here are pics of new sculptures which were dropped off last week at Made in the Maritimes Artisan Boutique's Hydrostone location.

Huge thanks to Joel for carrying my work for the first time at this most busy time of the year! This iconic business supports a multitude of Maritime makers at two excellent Halifax retail locations (The Hydrostone Market and Sunnyside Mall) as well as via their online shop.

All of these pieces are cone 6 stoneware, and were fired in my electric kiln with a variety of commercial and studio-mixed glazes, underglazes, stains and slips.  They range in price from $35 for the smaller figurines to $225 for the largest sculptures.  

Although I often work in series, these are all 'one offs' as I do not use molds, stamps, stencils or transfers of any kind.   

First up are 6 larger sculptures:

This fox is approximately the size of a large pineapple (I think), and is the tallest piece of the group.

Moose.

 Skunk holding flower with "Om" symbol carved into its haunch, rabbit holding flower with yin yang on haunch, "peace pig" and a sheep.

 Another view of the pig, which has a flower on its other haunch:

A look at the flowers the skunk and bunny are holding.  These were initially intended to be 'ring dishes'.

Next are two seagulls, a lobster, a whale and a shark:

Four fox figurines:

 Four sheep:

 Four crows:

Four Blanding's turtles.  This is a threatened species in Nova Scotia and the subject of habitat conservation campaigns by the Nova Scotia Nature Trust:

Four bears:

Three birds: (a chickadee, robin and bluebird)

Squirrel, deer and buffalo:

Four goats (three billy and one nanny), four chickens and a rooster.  When sculpting the chickens I thought if they were an Ikea item I would name them "Bok Bok" after the sounds real chickens make.

 And finally a couple of Easter chicks and Thanksgiving turkeys.

That's it!  Three cheers for everyone supporting the buy local movement this holiday season!

Now Available at Catfish Moon Folk Art and Craft, July 22, 2016

This past Wednesday I dropped of some work at Catfish Moon in scenic, historic Annapolis Royal and am very excited to now have items available at this venue.  Catfish Moon is a very lovely shop/gallery/studio specializing in folk art while offering a variety of work by a number of artisans.  The owners are a couple who are retired from their successful studio pottery practice of the same name, although Angela continues to create beautiful felted landscapes which are available for sale.  

The gallery is open May - October, every day from 10am - 5pm, at 170 Saint George Street.  It is located downtown, close to the historic Farmers and Traders market; a fabulous huge outdoor market which runs on  Saturdays from 8am - 1pm, late May - early October, with a smaller version on Wednesdays in July and August from 10am - 2pm.

I brought in a selection of pieces from the most recent firing.  First, the farm animals:

Farm animal group shop; most were similar in size except for one larger sheep

Pig and horse

Two chickens and a mouse

Goat and cow

 

Side view of that larger sheep

Next, a four new wildlife pieces.  Annapolis Royal is less than an hour from the main, inland part of  Kejimkujik National Park, which is home to all sorts of animals endemic to Canada. 

group shot: crow, moose, robin, beaver

beaver and moose

robin and crow

 Also from the most recent firing, three fish:

fish group shot

large blue fish side view

two small fish

As well, the shop also now has these pieces from previous firings:

Three fox figurines

A beaver bowl, beaver sculpture, black bear and beaver figurines

interior of above beaver bowl.  note all of my functional ware is food safe, dishwasher safe cone 6 stoneware, however handwashing is recommended

front of beaver bowl

horse sculpture

spotted horse sculpture

ox figurine

wolf bowl, seen with the sheep sculpture

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.