It's My Birthday...

I can only hope that this 42nd year is better than the last. Not that the past year was all that bad, just the last month of it.

I am not doing anything special for it, just going to go make some pots tonight and possibly glaze some with the new spray booth. I need to finish making pots for the salt firing in August, so that is top of the list. But I also need to glaze some pots to put into the gallery. I also have some low temp porcelain that I need to use up and fire. I may do that with the bisque. They fire to 04 so I might just fire the next bisque load a little hotter. It burns out the organics a bit more, esp with the ^5Bmix that occasionally bloats. I think it also leads to a nicer glaze surface. I might even try to bug out of work a bit early today to get to the studio a bit earlier. We'll see how the afternoon goes.

Flood Relief...

This post is for everyone that has offered to help me out with donations of stuff. By “stuff”, I mean everything that a person would need to rebuild their life from scratch. I really do appreciate all of the offers. However, at this point, my life is going to be a bit in limbo for the next 4 to 6 months while my condo undergoes renovations, quite literally, from the ground up. I am currently staying with my parents in their house in Douglasdale, so life is not so bad right now.

I guess what I am trying to say is that at this point, I don't know what I will need until the flood relief money comes from the government and I can put a list together of what I can afford to buy new, plus I just don't have a lot of room to store things until I move back in.

When I know more I will let you all know via this blog.

Thank you again,

Ashley

Craft market

 

This is what I will be up to this coming weekend. This is the first time for me with this group, but it should be cool. The sale runs from 2-5pm at the Bamboo (next door to the Drum and Monkey)  1201 1 Street SW

So if you are in the area (Victoria Park etc), come over and check us out. I am not sure what I will have to sell, but I will have something for sure. I just fired a kiln with some FLOOD MUGS, and other assorted little pots. I will also have whatever wasn't in my condo during the flood. So, it might be a bit eclectic, but there will be lots of pots. 

I need to load a kiln....a sale is looming

I am really hoping to get a bisque loaded tonight and a glaze fired on Sunday. I will be participating in a craft cooperative sale next Sunday from 12-5 pm. It is being held in conjunction with the Victoria Park Community street festival and will be located inside the Bamboo Tiki Lounge (right beside and conjoined via a breezeway of sorts to the Drum and Monkey Pub). This would have to be the strangest venue I have sold out of, but hey, it is close to beer and that has to count for something. I will probably have some flood mugs, and other assorted stuff that has been sitting on my shelves at the studio for a while. A lot of the stuff is ear marked for the firing at Medalta, but some is cone 6 and destined for the craft sale. I also have to get more flood mugs done for the little presents I want to give to all the helpers and my 1st floor neighbors, but those can wait a bit. I am buying a round or 2 of beer for everyone who came out to get muddy this Sunday, the mugs will come later. Hopefully before 2014.

I will survive...

I might be a bit crazy when this is all over though.

I met with the buildings insurance adjustor yesterday. The good news is that they will restore everything to original conditions (how it was when the condo was first converted). The bad news is that this could take up to 6 months before I will be back in my little home. I am torturing myself right now by searching paint colours, furniture and appliances on line. With an entire rainbow to choose from, how do I narrow it down?!
This is the view of my "kitchen" right now. Everything looks so much smaller with no walls to define the space. I keep saying to myself  " how did I ever fit a Queen sized bed here?"

What I did this past weekend

Over the past week or so, I have been slowly attempting to replace all of the pottery that I lost in the flood. Things like plates, bowls, teapot, casserole, etc. I also threw a ton of porcelain pieces for the salt and soda firing at the end of August. Time is ticking and waits for no man and all that. I finished scratching all the flood mugs that I could and threw some more. Finally, I finished this large vessel. The first 4 shots show the 4 sides (if something round can have a side that is).

 

Apparently I still have some water issues and have included 4 fish at the bottom of the pot in between the 4 panels.

Flood mugs

Once the flood was over and as soon as I was able to get back into the studio, I decided to scratch a few mugs. Of course the only thing on my brain was water. There are 4 units in my building in Mission that were totally destroyed by the mighty Elbow river. It is normally quite calm and shallow, but on June 20 - 24th it was mighty indeed. Anyway, as a means to commemorate this life altering event, I created this mug, and am working on 3 more as gifts for my 1st floor neighbors. If you are in the Calgary area and would like a Flood mug  for yourself, I may make more of them if there is the demand. Rough guestimate on price is ~$40 per mug. The final colours will be black and creamy white. If you want to contact me regarding a mug, shoot me an e-mail at ashleymorrow@shaw.ca

 

There are 2 Kinds of People

Thankfully, this city (Calgary) is mostly comprised of the best kind, the helpers & givers.

The other kind of people are thankfully few and far between (in my experience anyway). They are the “tiskers”, complainers and are just generally mean spirited. During the time I was down cleaning up my apartment, the other units in my building as well as other buildings on other streets, occupied by people I did not know, I was surrounded by the best kind of people. The atmosphere was almost like a party, except we were all covered in river mud, and were throwing people's entire lives into the back of garbage trucks. The gawkers were out though, and although I tried to ignore it, it was probably the rudest thing ever. I understand the need to see the devastation with your own eyes, but these people were almost gleeful. Taking pictures of other people's despair is NOT COOL. If you are the press, that is one thing, but the busybodies that are so obviously not there to help were like salt in a gaping wound.

While I was in mid disaster clean up, I was keeping my eyes on the news, the blogs and the comments and there are some really really nasty people out there that do not feel our government should be giving out the disaster relief.. I wont name names, because both you and I know who you are, and naming names is not my style. However, you need to know how hurtful your comments are. Apparently, according to some, the prepaid debit cards being handed out by the Alberta government should not be handed out to people in my neighbourhood, and I am assuming other lowerv income ones, because the recipients will just go down to the bar and drink it all away. WOW, your sympathy knows no bounds. I am one of those recipients, and so far have managed to not drink it all away. In Fact, I have some amazing friends that have offered me their cards. They were displaced, but did not sustain damage except for rotten food and missed time at work. These are the very same people that are supposedly just going to drink it all away. So, in closing, SHAME ON YOU if all you did was prance around my neighborhood with your camera and designer clothes, but did not lift a finger to help, only to wag in a disdainful manner and made disparaging comments about the crap on peoples lawns. You can sure bet that KARMA is a B@#$%. Good luck to you when you need help.

Happy Canada Day

Well, I have been in line for the flood relief money for an hour and apparently the wait is 3 hours from here. This picture is of the line on 12th Ave and I am on 11th street.

Aftermath

These pictures were taken yesterday. I spent the last 2 days doing disaster/flood cleanup in my neighborhood. We finished undoing all of the units on the main floor of my building on Tuesday and then crossed the street to help out other home owners. I left at 4:00 as I was teaching at the studio and it was going to take me a long time to get home. I think in the end it took 2 hous when normally it would only take 20 minutes. I got to the condo at 8 am yesterday and by nine the garbage trucks were in place to begin loading. Once we finished there, it was all hands on deck to help out the building across the ally from me.

Surreal, but not like Dali

Well, I went back to my condo this afternoon. Not much that I can really say about it though. Pictures say a 1000 words. So on that note, I will let the picture tell you this story. 

My neighborhood is like a war zone though. Dirt in the streets, heavy equipment, empty "bombed out" buildings etc. Anyway, here it is:

What I find really funny is that the salt fired cup on the dark ikea furniture to the left in the picture withstood the rapids and is still where it was before the flood. I should mention that that unit used to be to the to the right of the window that this picture was being taken from. It traveled diagonally across the room. Crazy...

under water

It's official. I am HOMELESS. This is an aerial shot from a highrise apartment just north of where I live. St. Mary's Cathedral is about 6 blocks north of my condo, and you can see it in the middle of the pic. So I am 6 block back from that. This is gonna suck.

I'm a refugee

I was told to evacuate my neighborhood this afternoon. This pic is what the Elbow river looked like at 3pm at the end of my street. The reservoir is expected to go over the dam some time between 3am and 5am tomorrow morning and I should prepare to be away for at least 72 hours and could be as long as a week.

Quack

The next phase in the transformation is webbed feet. The rain is ridiculous outside. I know June is the wettest month for Calgary, but come on, this is stupid. The news on the radio this morning was reporting that you can't take the Trans Canada Hwy to the west, as the RCMP have closed it east of Canmore due to flooding and began evacuating residents in the Canmore area in the middle of the night. My neighborhood is, thankfully, still above water. My little street dead ends on the Elbow river downstream from the Glenmore reservoir. The City tries to control the water levels with the dam, but it is a power generating dam and not meant for flood control so if the water levels rise too much, there is not much they can do about it. I think the mosquitoes are going to be fierce this summer.

This is for the Birds

One of my Tuesday night students asked me if I could make her a chicken tea pot for her chicken collection. I made 2 kinds for her to choose from. The one she chose, and therefore I don't have a picture, is covered in feathers, has an actual wattle under the spout and a comb for the knob on the lid and is all done in black and white. This is the other chicken teapot I made. My freehand chicken skills are a little less than stellar, but it's ok.

Everything is the same, but different

This was the view from the front of Ceramics Canada on Saturday after the storm passed. One minute all was sunny and warm, the next it was a downpour. The aftermath was quite beautiful though. After work I went over to the studio to glaze a load of pots. They are all sort of the same, but each one is very different.

Pass the Salt Please!

Well, we had our open house this past Saturday and considering that we only relied on word of mouth, social media and a free listing in Swerve, we were pretty successful. I can't say for certain how many people showed up, but we had left over tea bowls and I only fired 23 of them. We did manage to get several people to consider signing up for classes, and since that was the whole point of this exercise, I would have to say it was a success. There were a few of us throwing, trimming and glazing pots. I threw a large vase in 3 sections as well as a tea pot. I was also firing the raku kiln, so that kept me pretty busy.

I have also scheduled another trip down to Medicine Hat to fire the salt and soda kilns. A fellow potter/instructor from the studio and I are going to head down near the end of August. I have a feeling that firing atmospheric kilns is somewhat akin to child birth (from what I have heard as I do not have first hand experience in that particular area) in that you quickly forget the pain of the event and are more than willing to take on the challenge again. I do remember the “pain” of the marathon glazing session, and the tears of joy/anguish when unloading, but am more than willing to give it as many goes as possible. This time we are going to head down the afternoon before after I get off work and get up bright an early to get all the deco done in a more civilized manner, which would allow us to finish loading well before 11pm (i hope). When I was down there in April, Susan and I almost killed ourselves trying to get it all done, but we did take in a bit of the farmers market that the Medalta Museum puts on every Thursday. We bought a couple of curry meat pies for dinner. I am not sure if it was the hunger and exhaustion, of if they really did taste that good. Either way, they were yummy. So was the mini saskatoon pie that I scarfed down. I am looking forward to partaking of the pies again.

OPEN HOUSE UPDATE!!

As you may be aware, the instructors and students at Fairview Studios are having an OPEN HOUSE on Saturday, June 8^th. I was speaking with our fearless leader (Dave) and he would like to offer a bit of a deal to any new students that sign up for classes on Saturday.

Classes at Fairview Studios run on a 4 week cycle and they normally cost $100 plus the cost of clay. This one day offer will drop the price of the classes to $90. What will your $90 get you? Well, it will get you 3 hours of instruction a week for 4 weeks. PLUS a ton of extra studio time that is FREE. To make great pots, you need to practice and the extra studio time will allow you to get really muddy, get your creative juices flowing and get the right side of your brain working.

So there it is, if you are looking for a new thing to try, or are just interested in learning a bit about how pottery is made, come out and see us on Saturday, June 8^th from 11am to 3pm. We would love to see you!

Spring has sprung....a leak

I am going to develop webbed feet if this rain keeps up. I think we have had ~100mm over the last week or so, and if that keeps up, along with the spring runoff from the mountains, we are all going to be learning how to quack pretty soon.

In non soggy news, the studio has been scrubbed down. Well, not precisely scrubbed, but wiped, swept, stacked and tidied in preparations for the OPEN HOUSE this weekend.

We will have 2 out of 3 instructors there as well as an assortment of students. We will all be ready and willing to talk pots, throwing, classes, etc. Ellen's famous carrot cake will be on the menu, as well as coffee. I will be firing up the raku kiln at 12:30 into which I will attempt to fit as many tea bowls as possible (if you come, you might just get to take one home with you as a THANK YOU for coming. I anticipate the firing to be over around 2:30, and the pots should be ready to take home around 3 ish.

So, if you are in the area and are looking for a fun and informative afternoon out, swing by the studio. You might just find the hobby/passion/obsession you have been looking for. The weather is supposed to be nice  (little to no rain) so the big door will be open wide. Come on in and check it out.

70km/hr bath

On my way home from dinner with the parents last night, I saw this:

It has been raining all day and this person still thought it would be a good day for a ride on the bike. BRRR.
Calgary has had a slow start to spring, so I guess if the roads are not icy, it is considered good weather for riding.