metal is clay

Return tree sculpture on show at Centre Court in Market Mall, Calgary, Alberta. October 17 - 23, 2016. Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation's (ABCRC) new sculpture celebrating the beauty of recycling has just been unveiled... Sheri and Angela from ABCRC with a tired but happy Cory and Jeff, and Return - a tree sculpture decorated with materials from pop cans and bottles, milk cartons, juice tins, and every kind of recyclable beverage container that can be returned to depots in Alberta. Recycled containers grow into Alberta flora Jeff de Boer , Cory Barkman , and I were invited to create an artwork that could help reinforce the beauty and value that comes from recycling beverage containers. Our challenge was to re-use containers from the bottle depot as key components of the piece, transforming the materials into something new. Project lead and maker extraordinaire Cory Barkman proposed a tree to capture the vision: " So many Albertan's recy...

Really looking forward to teaching this course - you can register through the website here . This is a relatively short course with four 2-hour evening classes to make your sculpture, after which your piece will dry, and then be fired for you. During the final 2-hour class, you will decide whether to use paint or glaze to decorate your finished sculpture. This course is for anyone who would like to sculpt with potter’s clay. We will provide materials and instruction to get everyone successfully working with clay. For those with some clay experience, I will help you develop your composition and build character into your piece. The course is focused on the horse, but your “look” can be as literal or abstract as you wish, and you will make your piece as simple or challenging as you want in the time available. I will cover all the important techniques for hand-sculpting forms in clay in the fun and stimulating environment of the artist’s studio upstairs at the Okotoks Art Galler...

I am just starting out on a major new project. It will consume the next 6 weeks of my life. Immersed in the design stage, I already feel the pull of The Resolution, the conclusion of it all because I - we - can see the finished thing: there is a drawing, materials have been selected. The endless chatter from design and detail and process has started, and sleep is broken. PROJECT PICTURES ? EMBARGOED FOR NOW… T hat doesn’t matter, this is all about the emotions of making stuff, less about the stuff itself. There is a cute meme that floats about on social media, regarding the artist’s relationship with a piece of work over the course of making it. In short, feelings go nuts and change a LOT, and it’s OK to stop reading now. Or… Come on the journey.  I’m talking mainly about creating something new, possibly unknown to me , maybe completely out of my comfort zone—lots of different processes all needed at once, or maybe I just don’t yet have full mastery of a particular skil...

Great to see Monday morning’s Ceramic Arts Daily post , featuring Emily Schroeder-Willis hand-building—pinching—a lovely full-bellied pitcher. I really admire Emily's work, and as a larger-scale pincher myself, I am super-happy to see this fundamental technique receive more profile. A quick on-line search for the earliest clay pots around the world - Chinese, Jomon, Anglo-saxon, iron or bronze age - gives us pots that range from the ceremonial to the sublimely beautiful, a process in which humanity declared a relationship between form and function, and built joy via beauty. Because hand-building can do it all.  Little to large... Everyday hand-built pots on my kitchen counter. Christine Pedersen. 2016. From a making perspectiv e : I like to m ix up the methods. D eveloping our design ideas is fundamental to building variety and refinement in our finished forms, and a ny technique requires dedication and an investment of time for us to become really skilled at it. S...

V iew the registration page for the Equine Clay Sculpting course, fall 2016 , presented b y the Town of Okotoks , Alberta. Instructor - yours truly! Registration opens August 11, 2016. New horse head studies now on show at Bluerock Gallery, Black Diamond, Albert a. Meet Battle - a pony with attitude. Battle . Equine head study. Hand-built, stoneware, glazed. Christine Pedersen. 2016. I have been invited to teach a clay horse-head sculpting class this fall at Okotoks Art Gallery, Alberta . P art of my journey is to design a format that will encourage students to get into creating assertively, successfully, within the time limits of the class. I want the students to enjoy the clay material, to really work it, to learn to build attitude.  This invitation set me off sculpting horse-heads, looking for new ways, new styles—and a rogues gallery appeared over a month… It is incredibly inspiring and stimulating to mess with my own ways of making, to look for oth...

New work on its way to Bluerock Gallery for Meet The Herd, this weekend July 16 and 17, 2016. Follow this link for full event details. Hope to see you there :) Untitled #1. Chased and repousséd biomorphic form. Oxidized aluminium. Christine Pedersen. 2016. I make what I love—way to start a Monday! It’s a really great feeling that I can walk into my office (aka the basement studio) and love what I do. Now that doesn’t mean it’s easy… I spend a fair bit of time hugging a mug of tea and staring at things ;) And it really takes time, that wondering how to do them—I know what I want—but I’ve got to figure out the how, and what materials, and which techniques will get me there. I sketch a lot . All sorts of designs… The process of making becomes what my brain says is interesting, it is what “we"—the head, hands and heart of me—will do. All to say that I have a very wide variety of inspirations, and the biggest joy is going where they take me. This is the first piece I hav...

I will be riding off to Bluerock to join sculptor Kindrie Grove, painter Jennifer Mack, metal artist Simon Wroot, and equine jewellery maker Simone Schlichting to present “Meet The Herd!” at Bluerock Gallery in Black Diamond, Alberta. We will be presenting equine art and artist demos over the weekend of July 16 and 17, 2016. Full details here: http://bluerockgallery.ca/blogs/events/meet-the-herd-july-16-17-2016 I love making equine-inspired art but it is usually a fairly private obsession as I mainly create commissions in clay - I will have new clay horse pieces, and chased metal pictures available. There will also be new ceramic work for Bluerock - large porcelain platters, small vases and covered jars, some porcelain sculpture, and a few bright bowls to gladden hearts and tables. Pieces are all hand-built and finished by me at my home studio—it takes a long time to make and fire the work, and I am now starting to build an inventory of my favourite forms alongside my vases at ...

It already feels like ages ago but Rainbow Trout has only been up since June 1, and the “Making Of…” video is now ready to share - hope you enjoy it. I think it is fair to state that all makers will understand the challenges of the average day in the studio: we design/make/fix/modify tools all the time—and we learn to accept that is really the entry level of committing to a life of making original work—it’s all about problem solving. And the bigger the work, the bigger and more costly the problems! But that’s where a talented team really shines - I was second camera on this project and it was a privilege to watch the many highly skilled professionals who contributed to building Rainbow Trout. As Jeff notes in the video, we won’t always be able to say what we mean clearly to someone else, and there will inevitably be different solutions to the same problem… It’s how we remedy our problems, in this case with humour and grace, that really sets the tone for success. Thank you to e...

I like to think - hope - that the work I make will last. Certainly metal and clay have a habit of being highly durable, but what I really mean is that I hope that when someone commissions a piece of hand-made work they are creating something for themselves, for life.  I recently had the pleasure of making this new 14k wedding band for a 30th anniversary—updating a slim traditional band to become a commemorative token in the client’s preferred personal style. The band is engraved with her wedding date, and my chop. My client commissioned her very own everyday heirloom. Ladies 14k yellow gold textured wedding band, engraved with date and artist's chop. Christine Pedersen. 2016. And what of future generations? Original artwork is likely to live on with them. That feels good.

Jeff de Boer’s latest public art sculpture, “Rainbow Trout”, was officially launched to the media June 1, 2016. However, if you’re 21 feet tall, made of glowing stainless steel, and have brightly coloured body segments that light up at night you’re more than likely to get noticed as soon as you join the neighbourhood! Jeff de Boer introduces "Rainbow Trout" at the media launch, June 1, 2016. Enmax Park, Calgary. Rainbow Trout is pr om inently sited above the banks of the lovely Elbow River at Calgary Foundation Crossing. This is the entrance to the new Enmax public park in Ramsay, Calgary, where, to quote Calgary Foundation Board Member Patti Pon, “the beauty of art, nature, and the spirit of our people intersect”. The sculpture greets park and path users, and they can wander through the bright steel pipes bursting from the sidewalk. Nathan and Lora Armstrong inspect the finished sculpture - Nathan was part of the design team. Jeff stressed that “I can’t build...

I grew up obsessed with painting and colouring in. And I still have the small tin of Caran d’Ache coloured pencils my gran bought me when I was about 11 - just a dozen colours, but so rich, so lovely. So precious. I purposefully kept them for “best” (which is probably why I still have them 40 years later) whilst having worn out countless hordes of cheap ones, and handfuls of drawing pencils. “Best”? Looking back, I think that response was a teensy bit strange… Why didn’t I just burn through and enjoy them? No money…Worried I’d never see their like again? Maybe I didn’t think what I drew was worthy of them? I do remember that I couldn’t bear to wear them out. And that I was very unhappy if I couldn’t keep paint or colour inside the lines. Hmmm… Go on, let go of the lines... Colour wherever you like! You know you want to. Picture and photo: Christine Pedersen. 2016. I was recently directed to this TED article  examining the value of the colouring-in trend, and as...

This post is about the making of Fluvius Visum , a hand-chased brass panel, and the process of dreaming up its narrative content. I like house-names, they have character. After a quick flirt with Google translate, our family house-name - River View - became the more house-age-appropriate Fluvius Visum . I enjoy the heft and assumed dignity of the (probably wrong) latin translation—it immediately felt more in keeping with the contemporary-medieval design style that I was about to invent as I drew the picture for this chasing study… Somehow the latin provided an anchor for a brass panel that would be laden with narrative and heraldic symbolism.   The form of personal coats of arms follows a strict code (1), and there is overlap with the common historical usage of symbols used to create town arms etc. My research to date suggests there is no undisputed go-to directory for the meanings of heraldic symbols (2), and symbols like “holly” or “horse” have likely acquired unofficia...

“Sorry it was so much bother” “Don’t worry about it, everything I do is bother!” I like to bother about stuff, that’s my day-job: dream, design, then make. Hundreds of small steps and details to bother about, on the way to something new. Along the way, I repair a lot of my own stuff. My friend and neighbour is a: “Please look after my dog” “Who wants cake and mojito’s?” - kind of neighbour. And he broke a favourite belt. It wasn’t expensive, but it is quite lovely: supple, dark Italian leather, with a cast buckle that delivered all the strain of bending over after a big dinner onto a tiny plate of who-knows-what cast metal that is - was - less than 1mm thick. Poor design. Why not just buy another belt? Maybe he should have—but it’s the principle… W e can mend things, and I could share a little happiness by drilling two holes and swinging a hammer to set 2 fat new rivets through a serious piece of scrap brass—that belt now has 5.7mm of quality metal to take the strain. A qui...

Jeff de Boer and his apprentice Dylan Puddu have been developing the Gearing collection for a while now, and in 2015, they finally invited me to start playing in the toy-box with them! I must have hinted loudly enough at how cool I think the Gearing components really are… We have lots of plans and new work to come, with one of a kind and stone-set pieces.  Please contact Jeff if you would like to know more. Armét-Haus Gearing components become cufflinks... Set with rhodolite garnets. Custom design by Christine Pedersen. Armét-Haus Gearing pendant: Jeff de Boer and Dylan Puddu. Avenue Magazine published a neat article on Jeff's studio and the (slightly over-whelming!) range of projects that he is working on at any one time :)

Raw porcelain vases , drying. Or, as I like to think of them: well organized dirt.  I love seeing clay work at the raw stage… There’s an intensity in seeing all the forms together, and because I tend to make a variety of shapes and sizes, it feels like a crowd - like a group shot of people: they are individuals, somehow uniform, and different.  Freshly pinched porcelain vases: bases levelled, signed, and slowly drying ahead of their first trip through the kiln. 3.5 - 8.5 inches tall. Christine Pedersen. 2016. Lining the pieces up for a picture has a habit of making one of them stand out - like seeing a group photo where you only know one of the people. I’m not entirely sure how consciously that happens, but it definitely adds to the fascination of taking the pictures, and it’s part of getting to know the characters before I have to say goodbye. Th is group of vases are small and medium sized, and will hopefully be joining their friends at Bluerock Gallery in April ...

For Valentine’s… #15 looking, dare I say, hot! P ulsing with colour and promise. You can find a wide selection of my vases - from the petite and curvaceous , to the tall, brooding, and handsome at Bluerock Gallery , Black Diamond, Alberta, Canada. B l uerock will ship, or there is a lovely florist nearby if you're local. "#15: Be Mine" pinched porcelain vase, with “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow: Orange and Red Slurpee” glazes. 21 cm tall. Christine Pedersen. 2015. #canadianceramics #spreadtheword L oving these tulips. The hashtags I am adding #canadianceramics #spreadtheword come from a new Canadian Ceramics web-site ma k eanddo - the site is building a directory of Canadian clay artists, offers guest artist features, and the work of a core group of fabulous Canadian contemporary clay artists. Pop over and see!

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...

I always keep a piece from a new body of work: I need to spend time getting to know it.  #15 “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow: Orange and Red Slurpee” pinched porcelain vase form. Height: 8 inches. Christine Pedersen. 2015. And so #15 stayed with us, and I schemed up a delightful challenge for myself: in the name of art—and pictures for my blog—I would fill it with flowers for every opportunity I could make up for a whole year. Sweet. First up: a lovely (and very modestly priced) bouquet from the supermarket for Christmas 2015.  #15 “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow: Orange and Red Slurpee” pinched porcelain vase form. Seasonal flowers. Christine Pedersen. 2015. I always approach a vase thinking about the overall shape, as something to contemplate in my home, because most of the time it will probably stand empty. But as I make the piece, I end up imagining flowers and how they will fill it: how the stalks reach down to the bottom and push off at an angle; how wide a...

It’s January. It’s cold. Comfort foods rule. And we’re on the way to February—still cold—and the first of the chocolate holidays… Perfect time for a tray of brownies. Gluten free chocolate brownie: topped with dark chocolate ganache fondant icing and dried sour cherries, dusted with icing sugar. Served on a wood-fired stoneware platter. Christine Pedersen. 2016. A gluten free friend sent me this brownie recipe back in 2002—and I still have the original email I printed off. The paper looks a bit brown now - not from age - just the accumulated smudges of brownie batter and fondant icing from hundreds of bakings… For I am “She Who Brings The GF Brownies” to neighbourhood functions, a deliverer of dessert to those prowling the buffet table in the hope of a dietarily-appropriate chocolate fix. But, if asked, other guests do not seem to care that the recipe also happens to be gluten free, they’re just scarfing down really good brownies before they all get eaten. All this makes me po...