metal is clay

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...