metal is clay

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...