west of the Big Rock...

South of Calgary for half an hour, then drive due west—past the Big Rock (1) and fields of rolling prairie foothills—straight towards the Rockies… It’s a lovely drive down to Black Diamond from Calgary.

My first collection of work is now on show at Bluerock Gallery—so proud to be joining the talented artists and friends already there.

Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow: Orange & Red Slurpee. Pinched porcelain vase. 17.5 cm/ 7” tall. Christine Pedersen. 2015.

If you’re making the trip, I strongly recommend you set-off early and call into Chinook Meadery, just west of Okotoks. Loads of lovely honey-related products, honeycomb to sample, and a live hive doing actual bee-business right there in the shop.

Top tip: the honey ganache is amazing on bread and cookies, or straight off your finger whilst still sitting in their car-park.

We are working our way into the case of mead we brought back, haven’t drunk them all yet so we can’t elect a champion. So far: six thumbs way up!

(1) To be accurate, the Big Rock is called the Okotoks Erratic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_(glacial_erratic)

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narrative jewellery: tales from the toolbox book launch

For every piece of jewellery I make there is a story. It can be simple, just a note on the “why?” that led to the forms and textures, or the feeling that I want to remember. Sometimes the single idea that could become a piece, conceived way before the act of making, can become so over-whelming that I need to write a whole new reality for the jewellery to exist within. That’s how it was for “Pull”, the first piece of jewellery in a body of work that became the ReFind Collection *. It caused me to look at materials in my home, especially the things that were routinely thrown away, very differently. It was like waking up to realize I just hadn’t been paying the right kind of attention to all the “stuff” in other areas of my life; realizing that maybe jewellery could be linked to something as obscure as industrial-scale food-processing and packaging—if I allowed my mind to receive the information, differently. I am very honoured that my necklace has been included in Mark Fenn’s new ...

will you...?

Artists write stories about their work all the time, and the greatest joy is when that story becomes important to another person. This project was about creating a piece of fan-art for a client (DP) based on their love of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter stories. DP approached Jeff de Boer because he needed to commission a very special golden snitch sculpture: the body would become an opening engagement ring-box. DP had a very special proposal in mind, and the snitch was to play a key part. Jeff and I do not usually make snitches. Jeff is a renowned metal artist and teacher, famous for creating armour for cats and mice , and collected world-wide. Jeff also has an ever-increasing body of large-scale public art projects (…with lots of news to come in 2016!). His web-site is a magical place, full of stories made real. I am an emerging metal and clay artist whom Jeff is mentoring - particularly in the skills of chasing and repoussé - and these skills were to be at the core of makin...

Artist talk on March 28, at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre, Calgary.

Excited to share I’ll be presenting an artist talk on March 28, 7pm, at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre, in Calgary. I started clay classes there in 1996, a year after I emigrated from England to Canada—it was that education and community that helped me develop the skills to set up my home studio. I’ll be diving into my process, doing some demos, and generally obsessing about all things clay (with a bit of metal sneaking in). Thank you to the Mount Pleasant Potters' Guild for the invitation--hope to see you there!

metal is clay

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