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 ...