metal is clay

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...

Return tree sculpture is on show at the Core , TD Square, in downtown Calgary, from Jan 8 - 29, 2017 as part of their waste reduction month. Close-up on the hand holding the root-ball - the Return tree sculpture is approximately 12 feet tall overall. Return was commissioned by Alberta Depot in 2016. Designed and built by Cory Barkman , Christine Pedersen , and Jeff de Boer .

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...