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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Spottery



For the month of May, the Gallery of BC Ceramics is hosting a fun members show called Spottery. The only requirement was that each piece entered had to have at least one dot. Since I'm a bit dot crazy as it is, this show was right up my alley.
Ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by the colour blindness test created by Japanese Dr. Shinobu Ishihara . Thankfully I am not colour blind but I had a high school friend who was and I often wondered what it must be like. I'm also just attracted to colourful dots in a dot to be honest. Carole and I have been collaborating on a series of dishes we call Dotty Bowls and watching her put bands of dots around the rims made me want to see the whole inside of the dish covered with them. I started thinking about the test plates again and realized that with our extensive glaze palette I could probably pull one off. Whether it would actually work or not I didn't know but I decided give it a shot regardless. I threw some large 18" platters and then several smaller bowls for testing on. The whole process from start to finish has taken about 3 or 4 months and seems to have been quite successful. It wasn't without its issues however. I had no idea how long it would take to do the dots on the large pieces, or how much it would hurt my arm and shoulder to hold it in that position while applying thousands of glaze blobs. People think pottery is so relaxing! There was also some trouble with glaze blistering on the first big bowl, but firing it again with a 40 min soak at cone 6 solved that issue. It washed the colours out a little but at least the glaze was properly melted. Next time I'll try soaking at cone 5 for 20 min. I also learned through my friend Jody's colour blind Dad that the pieces actually do work as colour blindness tests! "I don't see anything. Your Mom says she sees a five." Thanks Jody's Dad!

The show runs from April 30 till May 29 down on Granville Island at the GBCC






 

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