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...

  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 deve...

“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…  

The Cracks Are How The Dark Gets Out: contemporary porcelain vessel, part of my ongoing Fenestrations series. 2020 was definitely a year when the dark could get stuck inside, and as other recent life experiences have taught me, it is necessary to seize the light. I haven’t published the Fenestrations series works - yet: I want to develop a show opportunity for them. Somewhere where we can walk through the whiteness, and let the light do the talking, rays and shadows completing the forms. This is a short video introducing a favourite piece from the kiln in 2020.  No doubt about it, all this isolation is tough on everyone. I’m spending my time making, and learning: making my own studio videos, and doing more self-promotion in a time when there are so few live show opportunities (find me on instagram and twitter @metalisclay ). Artist statement follows. Hope you enjoy, and please get in touch to find out more about available work, thanks. "The Cracks Are How The Dark Gets Out" ...

Celebrating National Clay Week 2017, new cookbook The Crafted Dish goes on sale online at thecrafteddish.com Canadian Thanksgiving - a perfect day to dish up a new cookbook benefiting thestop.org , an organization that works on many aspects of food security and building community. The Crafted Dish is full of recipes submitted by clay artists, with the food served on their gorgeous hand-made dishes. Creating the book was a zero-cost project, with all of the work done by a fantastic team of volunteers, lead by Carole Epp (she of the excellent clay web-site musingaboutmud.com ). Go SEE some of the recipes - if only the Instagram feed was scratch and sniff... My contribution to the crafted dish is a gluten-free nut butter cookie recipe (hint: if you don’t tell anyone it’s gluten free, they won’t care, they’re good cookies). I offer a grateful nod to all the other cookie recipes I have ever read because I modified and substituted, and went through lots of trial and crumbly erro...

“Twenty” was a complex piece to make real ; it started by sharing in a dream… What is the client imagining? What can they see and feel? And there it was in my hands, the finished piece: thick, lush, textured, a golden and hefty gem-set brass carabiner, with my thumb flicking that addictive gate-wire! The imagined carabiner had a haptic, emotional identity before material, or sketching. It came to life through our massively powerful human ability to transmit the idea of The Thing between us. Everyone’s a maker when they choose to spend a moment visualizing the thing made, finished, right there in front of them. It’s a delicious first step. And it sends the real-world maker off to find the right tools… And there’s the rub: the idea of the thing isn’t enough to make it real, because there’s still all the mess and details and skill of the making. That’s where the maker or artist chooses to fall into building the dream. This is the "making of" video for a commi...

Whoa! That's a very young me with my skewbald bestie and life-long inspiration... Read a feature article in the Okotoks Feb 2017 C u ltural newsletter. Want to talk horse all evening AND learn to sculpt a horse-head in clay? Sounds like a great way to spend time to me! I am really looking forward to teaching this course - starts March 16, 2017, and you can register through the Town of Okotok’s website here. Punk, Jazz, and Classical: ponies with attitude! Christine Pedersen. 2016. You will spend four 2-hour evening classes making 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 horse-head. This course is for anyone who would like to sculpt with potter’s clay. No experience is necessary—just bring your enthusiasm, and pictures of horse-heads that you find inspiring. I will cover all of the important techniques for hand-sculpting , and y...

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 ...

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!