Clay – Kings County Studio Tour

Hello fans of the Kings County Studio Tour

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WHAT’s HAPPENING?

Hello to all the KCST fans who check our pages.

I rather thought the switch to fall for our Kings County Studio Tour would be a pain…but it’s been a gift to me.

My studio has a rotten sill and a problem with the wall and now being repaired in time for Oct. 13 and 14.

By then it will be repaired, not perfect but once again heat-able during the cold months. It’s been a long time coming but without resources, rotting sills stay rotting away allowing assorted critters access.

My neighbour Mr. Blaney called and said “you must be feeding your visitors well, they seem to be enjoying themselves.” When I asked why,he said he saw a mother and three baby racoons waddle up his drive. He watched come out from under my studio. So much for thinking I had live trapped a mother in the spring.

So if you visit you’ll see for yourself …not the racoons… but how the studio has been fixed.

I might take out the window in the painting studio….hate to loose the natural light….but it might make the wall easier to fix…and cheaper.

NEXT STEP?

I should have a studio sale but that will have to wait…I am in the middle of three projects, one is a solo show at UNB Art Center in Fredericton next year. It consists of a series of portraits, 3 x 4 feet of women I consider survivors…not just of illness but of life in general. This is what I’ll be working on if you stop by. The second half of the Fredericton exhibit is a book launch and show of work featured in “Capturing Crime: 30 Years of Court Art”, the writers are Greg Marquis, Roslyn Rosenfeld and Connell Smith….with a few memories from me. It will be launched next October 2019.

WHAT MEDIUMS DO YOU WORK IN?

Clay has been the focus of much of my art life because it was immediate. Push on it’s receptive surface and you have an immediate response. I still love it and will come back to clay again. Beside using clay to make art as in the Future Fossils, a solo exhibit at the New Brunswick Museum, it has been a means of survival. My various series of mugs have sold well including a fun Christmas series of hand built work.

I missed painting so I started before the Fossil Exhibit actually with the Small Trees Series of which three large are part of the McCain Collection in Florenceville. So I continued painting with acrylics and now oils. I realized I missed this process …hence the portraits beginning the portraits in acrylic and finishing them in oils. It will be interesting to get some feedback.

I have dabbled in assorted mediums like printmaking and stone carving…and simply drawing of course. My favourite is life drawing, bodies are such a challenge.

DO YOU HAVE A MAJOR INFLUENCE?

My first influence came from my teachers, Ted Campbell and Fred Ross…. and Saint John’s Miller Brittain. I have admired many people over the years including Toulouse-Lautrec who made loose frantic marks that became a realism without being hyper realism. Early on Klimt and Schiele….those drawings are amazing! And Canadians like the independent thinker and art maker, Gathie Falk and Patterson Ewen. (plus Andy Goldsworthy who did the first of the scultpures with rock). And so many more.

But words have also been important to me, so Kay Smith ( poet and English teacher at Vocational School, now Harbour View High) has been a major influence on my life. I have 60,000 edited words for a creative non-fiction book on Gerry’s mother, a first world war bride, called (maybe) An ordinary Girl: The Life and Times Of…… Two of the stories were in the juried Fog Lit Journal last year, which will be available during FogLit this year in September.

Check out the amazing new work from Martha. We love all the fresh new colours.

My pottery is constantly changing and evolving, most is functional although some pieces are purely whimsical. My functional forms are simple with subtle alterations, a little texturing and glazes that blend together seamlessly, pleasing both to the eye and the hand. It is designed to be used and enjoyed daily. Because each piece is made by hand, no two are identical. This is due to the nature of the clay, the glaze and me leaving signs of the creative process like throwing lines and marks from tools or my fingers.

There is something special about things made of clay. Each piece unique and imperfect, very much like our selves.

As someone arranges flowers in a vase, arranges food on a platter or wraps their hands around a warm coffee mug, I like to think that I have touched them in some way.