metal is clay

"Blue One". Unglazed blue porcelain vessel. Christine Pedersen. 2023. Toronto Outdoor Art Fair runs Friday July 12 - 14, 2024, and my ceramics will be available for sale exclusively online, find my profile here . I’m thrilled to have been juried into the show, and will be offering work from a few different series, with new work, and pieces from my collection that have never been shown.  Only 10 pieces can be listed online at a time, so please do email me if you see other work on my instagram or Facebook feeds that you would like to know more about.  Online sales will continue until March 2025.  Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you'll enjoy looking around at loads of great art at the show. Background Vortex vessel. Pinched black porcelain. Christine Pedersen. 2023. Originally from the UK, I’ve been making ceramics in my home studio in Calgary, Alberta, Canada since 1999. My main form is sculptural vessels, as functional and decorative centre-pieces for the ho

Making a hand-built sculptural porcelain flower vessel: I made four short videos showing my process as I hand-built this form, and I’ve put them all on this post, in reverse chronological order. The piece was built over a 5-week period, to the constant background of news coming from the radio—I’ve shared more about my thought process, and the difficult sources that were my inspiration, at the bottom of this post.  The final video, Part 4, shows me refining the form and details, and cutting away clay supports that have cradled the vessel over the last few weeks. The vessel is now loosely wrapped under 4 layers of soft plastic, and settled in for the long, slow dry before it can be fired. Scroll down for Parts 3, 2, and 1 to see how the form was developed.  2x speed. 🎶 Judson Crane "From The Earth" Time is an essential component in building complex pieces like this; clay will soften as it is worked, and by breaking my work up into sessions of a few hours a day, it allows physi

Over Christmas 2021, I had a little moment and bought myself a gift: christinepedersen.art —a new web-site . I’ve been watching this project evolve for quite a while, and was thrilled to see that .art was offering an easy to use pop-up artist site builder ; I finished writing all the descriptions and up-loading my images yesterday. And so today I can relax, just a little, write a blog post… OK, back to work! All the not-actually-making-new-art-jobs truly take a huge amount of time. There's shooting photography and video  - then editing the photos and video (including new #shorts on Youtube), maintaining the written statements and documentation, and making social media posts...and if I’m lucky to write some show applications and send work out into the world, I might even have a rare chance to scrub up for an afternoon and share a glass of something nice with you in a gallery!   And I’m not complaining about any of it (even when I want to drop-kick my computer off a bridge after I

Currently editing short “making of” videos for “Fire In The Belly”, the metal and clay sculpture I collaborated on with ceramic artist  Robin DuPont . The piece is on show at the Alberta Craft Council gallery in Edmonton as part of the Craft Collaborations fund-raising auction —40 artists have collaborated on one of a kind pieces. See more images on the @albertacraftcouncil instagram feed , or visit  www.albertacraft.ab.ca I’m always curious about how other people engage with all the delicious digital documentation that we have available to us—what impact does it have? How do other people use documentation for their own design process, and is it even necessary to them? I take a lot of video and stills as I work, for 2 key reasons: so that I can share more of the studio process, and because I find I learn a lot by looking through the camera. I think framing images on a small screen helps me to see shapes and character differently, and it has become an important design tool alongside the

  Fire In The Belly. Wood-fired porcelain jar with sculptural metal crown, by Robin DuPont and Christine Pedersen. Height: 40 cm. “Fire In The Belly” —introducing @robindupontceramics and my piece for the Alberta Craft Council “Craft Collaborations” fund-raising auction. The auction is now open, with 38 artists presenting 31 unique new pieces 🎉 . I’ve been really looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been making—you can find the auction catalogue here . Robin’s wood-fired ceramic jar is coiled and pinched porcelain, with natural ash-glaze from pine, fir, oak, and black poplar ash. My sculptural metal crown is recycled brass and bronze, made by hammer-forming, raising, and repoussé, with hand-chased line-work. The metal is finished with oxidizing patina, heat patina, and wax.   Each piece in the auction has an artist statement, it’s really informative to hear other people’s experiences as they challenged themselves to develop a new idea, and use their skills to develop a col

“Open Vessel”, 14” long, Southern Ice porcelain. Survived the bisque firing—phew—now ready for a high temp firing to mature the clay. Everything takes time…make, dry, fire, fire again. And there’s a lot of sampling. Some pieces will unfortunately fail, but they all provide information. All this process tries to make next time go better, to feel more informed. But these are raw materials and their character changes, even with refined minerals, making ceramics a pretty harsh teacher. It's a journey, and to quote Tony Nadal, tennis legend Rafa Nadal’s uncle/coach: “Stay humble, stay hungry”. The sample: “Skiff”, un-glazed sculptural porcelain vessel, cone 10 fired, and ready to go out in the world. Skiff—deep in the kiln, in amongst endless glaze tests, on the bottom shelf of the last glaze-firing. That orange sample in the centre is incredible, going to be seeing a lot more of that colour…