Another Trip to Medalta

It looks like I might possibly make another trip down to Medalta in the spring. My friend Susan and I are thinking of going down the weekend of April 27th to fire in their Salt and Soda kilns. Medalta is located in Medicine Hat, Alberta and is in the historic clay district. Back in the day, there was the Medalta pottery, the Hycroft pottery, and at least 1 brick factory that I know of. It is also where Plainsman Clays is located.

When I went down in Feb 2010, we had a very good tour of the Hycroft factory as well as the Medalta museum and the areas of Medalta that were off limits to the regular visitor. At that time, the new Events facility was still under construction. The facility was being constructed on top of some excavated Bee Hive kilns that you would then be able to view through the floor.

If we are able to book our trip for that weekend, it will coincide with a community clay event that Medalta is having. Their long term resident artists will be holding workshops for the public and it would be fun to be involved with that while we are firing.

I am hoping April will be much warmer than when we were there last. It was so cold that weekend that my power steering froze during the time we were glazing and loading the kilns that first evening (note to self: don't leave your car facing into the wind when it's -30 celcius). The temperature difference while we were firing in the kiln area was such that we created our own weather system. The skies were clear and blue, but it was snowing in the kiln compound..

So I am looking forward to that. Right now however, I am still not ready for the studio sale next weekend. I still need to clean out the car and empty out my boxes of pots and decide what is going and what is going into the trash to make room for the new stuff. Then I need to price which is not a science. I usually go on gut instinct for pricing. I ask myself “would I pay $xx for this?” then, do I really want to sell it (still precious to me)? If it is still precious, I jack the price up so as to alleviate the pain of letting it go. Otherwise, I try to price it fairly so that it doesn't make it impossible for the average person to buy.

random reminiscences

My sister and I were often subjected to really long boring road trips with my parents when we were younger. These road trips were made even more agonizing than most children would have been/are subjected to. Kids today have the option of watching a DVD in the back with wireless headphones, MP3 players, portable video games etc. In the 70’s and 80’s, we did not have these feats of technology.  We usually drove to Vancouver in the summer to visit both sets of Grandparents and we would all pile in the Ford Fairmont Station Wagon and take off. These trips would take upwards of 13-15 hours. My Dad was also not one for stopping for anything unless it was gas. The only entertainment was a pitiful collection of 8 track cassettes (Cher, Commodores, The Muppets, The Carpenters, Carol King, etc...). The pain actually increased when we would drive out in a car with a cassette tape player (I think that was the Cadillac). Anyway, my parents would pop in a Phoenix Seminar tape and listen to selling/listing techniques for Real Estate agents (I think there were a total of 12 tapes?) To anyone that is not a real estate agent, this would have been enough to make you want to poke your tympanic membranes just so that you could listen to the ringing in your ears instead. Imagine what it would have been like for small children. My parents should have been reported to child services. Anyway, as you can tell, we were severely lacking in fun road trip stuff. So, as most children will do, they will invent their own fun. Here are a couple of the games we invented during these times of trial.

Disco Lights: When the sun is setting just right and you are driving through areas with a lot of trees on the side of the road, you can close your eyes, face in the direction of the sun and watch it make “disco lights” behind your closed eye lids.

Flying house: My sister says she does not remember this, but I do. We imagined what it would be like to go wherever you wanted to go without having to leave your house because it flew. We imagined all kinds of thing that the flying house would be able to do and have. Like a special separate house that flew with the big house but was just for my sister and me and we could take it out on our own etc...

My sister played her own games too, and they usually involved things like “see how fast you can embarrass an older sister”. This would take the form of sticking your tongue out and staring at the car behind you out the back window.

To add insult to injury, my Mother would stock up the car with road trip food, like sandwiches, juice& snacks. The snacks would be along the lines of Scotch Mints, Eat more candy bars, and All Sorts. That is the most revolting assortment of road trip snack food that you could give a child.

 

Raku Demo - March 26

I will be doing a raku demo next week for a chemistry course at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology). The teacher has arranged for a field trip for her class so that they can witness oxidation and reduction reactions first hand in a fun setting (albeit a bit smokey and stinky).
Dave(the studio owner), hates doing Raku, but thought I would like to do it. I don't really like the flashy raku, I am drawn more to the simple white crackle glazes contrasting with the blackened clay body, but for this class, I think the iridescent copper sand type of glazes would work quite well, as they show the reduction quite nicely. I will take some pictures of the stuff that comes out of the firing and post them if there is anything really nice.

These pics are a pot that I raku fired last summer, and I was quite happy with the result.