Porirua City Council Meeting This Thursday 8.30am (11 th October) September Activity Night 17 th October Sealights with Jackie Haddow

Transcription

1 September Committee Jo Pohatu President Anne Glennie Treasurer Vicky Griffin Secretary Committee members Velma Turner Library Kirsten Moeller Website Linda Savell Newsletter & Events Aimée McLeod Newsletter Editor Jackie Haddow House keeping Club Nights Please try not to interrupt people who are concentrating on their own work. Who will be opening up and bringing the milk: October 3 rd Oct Committee 10 th Oct Linda S 17 th Oct Jackie (Activity) 24 th Oct Jackie Club firing Glaze 31 st Oct Kirsten November 7 th Nov Committee 14 th Nov Anne 21 st Nov Aimée (Activity) 28 th Nov Sale Set up Please note you are all welcome to pot on committee nights. Kiln Status No1 No2 Test Currently under repair Currently under repair Firing as expected Porirua City Council Meeting This Thursday 8.30am (11 th October) For some time now our club s tenure at our rooms has been up for discussion within PCC. We had been advised by PCC agent looking at the building that we would be fully consulted before any changes were made. Sadly this has not happened and only last week we discovered that our future will be discussed at the council meeting this week. We feel that it is vital that as many of our members who can attend this meeting do so to show support for the club remaining in our current rooms. Please if you are able to attend this meeting, join the committee outside the entrance of the PCC rooms at 8.20am on Thursday the 11 th. The more people we can have there the better. Activity Night 17 th October Sealights with Jackie Haddow Please bring your own clay and tools, and lots of imagination! I will bring some other goodies which will be available for use on the night so come and join in the fun. This will be a hand building exercise, but no doubt the idea could be extended for those that also like wheel work. Happy Potting. Jackie New Members We are very pleased to welcome 3 new members to our club this month. Alan Devine and Ruth Robertson-Taylor who have both been doing Anne Glennie s wheel throwing classes this year and who are now looking to pot as club members. We also have Dianne Register-Stout joining us. Dianne has been potting for a long time and is also a member of the Manawatu Potters but looking for a group slightly closer to her since she has moved towns. Welcome to you all Resignation At the same time we have also received a resignation from Linda Loffhagen. We would like to thank Linda for her contributions to the club as both a club member and committee member, we wish her well. 1

2 Abbotts Glaze Workshop with Paul Pepworth Rather than writing a long article about this recent workshop we thought that a few comments from some of those who attended might reflect a variety of thoughts rather than just one point of view. So here are a few comments that tell a story: I have begun to wonder again about mid firing glazes and while my 2 favourite glaze books to date have been Greg Daly s Glaze book and High Firing Glazes by John Britt it has made me think maybe I need to be reading a whole lot more about mid-firing glazes. Maybe then I could mix my own glazes with some of Paul s exciting colours to add into the mix. Something for me to think about. Linda S Indeed I found it an eye-opener, almost the second coming! The use of colour/wax has opened a whole lot of possibilities; Paul came across well and made the course interesting. It's a path we could look at going down. The only down was a small voice in my ear saying we don't fire to suit those glazes, you would have to make a lot to fill a kiln up. Danny G As a very new potter, attending this course opened up a whole new vision of the future possibilities in the glazing arena. Well done, I look forward to other classes. Chris H What a treat for all those who managed to attend the Glazing workshop with Paul. His attitude to glazing was so refreshing and made me realise how much more relaxed I could be. I loved his let s try it attitude and that he was not precious about the pieces (this is of course an easy way to be when you have unlimited access to pre-made bowls and plates as well as glazes). However, it made me think I should be a little more open to experimenting. I started potting roughly 2 ½ years ago doing one of Anne s night classes. There is heaps of information that you learn about clay itself and how to fire it, at what temp, let alone the art of forming a pot on a wheel and if you hand build the techniques used etc. So as a beginner the art of glazing was a long way off, mixing the glazes, making them the correct thickness, would they run? what materials to use, the list seems endless. So I started using the clay bright under glazes to at least get me started, which seemed do-able for me. But what fun the glaze workshop was, experimentation and simple practical advice and having a go with the Abbots ready-made glazes were inspirational, all very do-able in my book Jackie H I have made literally thousands of test glazes and I am not hesitant about glazing. But I know I still have barely scratched the surface. Paul s generosity with his glazes and information made the workshop heaps of fun. The most important thing I took away from the workshop was how to turn a glaze into a brushable one, and how to make the wax more fluid using kerosene and baby oil. Aimée M

3 Looking into the kiln Paul s results Out of the kiln the results Can all work stay at the rooms until after 17 th October so everyone can see the results. Thanks 3

4 September Activity Night with Jo Slip Sliding Away Well done Jo for not only being extremely organised and prepared for this well presented activity night, but also for being brave and willing to present something you hadn t actually done before. Some may say this could have been a slippery slope one you managed to slide down with grace and ease to enable us all to have an enjoyable and creative evening! The basic process was applying slip either in block colour or actual designs onto newsprint by painting, splodging, dripping etc and then allowing the newsprint to take up a little of the moisture from the slip. Then invert the newsprint onto flat slabs and remove the slip from the newsprint by rolling pin or other tools such as rounded wooden handles. Next peel off the paper and hey presto (hopefully) your design in slip ended up on your clay. Other equipment used was stencils- some made by Jo-, slip trailers, combs sponges etc. Jo had also prepared a block of dried coloured clay ready to grate with a nutmeg grater over stencils onto the clay. Great art works were created by experimenting with layer over layer of different colours, shapes, designs and stencils. In addition Jo suggested adding small pasta shapes into the clay (dinosaurs in this case) which will burn out in the kiln. The colours should bleed through each other on firing; it will be interesting to see the results once fired. If doing all that wasn t enough challenge Jo then proceeded to turn the flat slab of many colours into an edged plate on the wheel. After centring the flat slab it was cut to shape with a needle and the edge carefully lifted with a damp sponge. (No turning required!!!) The technique that Jo presented was creating designs by layering slip onto leather hard clay. This was done with more additional tips and tools than what we may have been used to. We had a great turn out of regulars and newer members and Jo had spent many hours preparing containers of casting slip with a variety of stain colours. Over all I think this activity is definitely one of those ones that s all about enjoying the process and being free to create random designs. For more detail about what inspired Jo s activity night watch Mitch Lyons also do it on Vicky Griffin 4

5 Club Rooms Here are a few things about our clubroom that you need to know. Working Bee Big thanks for the Working Bee. Hi All, A very big thanks to everyone who came along and spent two hours helping to clean the clubrooms the weekend before the workshop. It was a great turn out, and when I arrived everyone was enthusiastically moving tables & chairs outside to clear the floor area for mopping. A thorough job was done to wipe walls, clean cobwebs, tidy up the kiln area and the floors were wet mopped twice. The club rooms sparkled, and it is great to see people are really conscious of the need to keep up the maintenance and cleaning. Thank you. To facilitate the maintenance of the cleaning our Committee agreed that there should be a roster of groups of club members who undertake a monthly clean-up of the rooms. This will mean we keep on top of the cleaning, we don t put our health at risk because of the dry dusty clay lying around, and we have a more pleasant environment. This is especially important because we have a large number of users in the club now including our regular club nights, night classes and children s pottery classes. A committee member will be in charge of each group they will take responsibility to ring the people in their group to arrange a time that suits. I have also pulled together a list of jobs that should be signed off by the Committee member. While on the subject of cleaning we have a drainage problem in the kiln room. The sink where we wash our tools etc is blocking up most likely because too much clay has been washed down the pipes. We have provided two bins in the left hand tub for people to put their slops into when they have finished to stop clay being flushed down the sink and blocking our pipes. Can you please take care and make every effort to do this please. Please be very mindful of what you are washing off and if there is a lot of clay slops please put them in the tubs. Another tip is your water containers that usually have a lot of clay in them after wheel work should be left to settle for a night so that the water can be drained off and the clay recycled. Recycle your clay given the cost of it is going up, please think about recycling your clay and not just flushing it down the sink. For example, use slops as a base for making slips to decorate pots. Thank you everyone for making a commitment to keep our club rooms as tidy as possible. Yes we work with clay, we will get dirty, but we do need to look after ourselves and our workspace. Cheers Jo Gear Homestead Woolshed Potters - Cleaning Roster for October 2012 to February 2013 The following are the proposed groups for the new cleaning roster. The member of the group in bold (current Committee members) will take the lead to ring their people when they are scheduled to do the cleaning and arrange when that will be done during the last week of each month. Group number Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6 Group 7 Members within Group Linda Savell Di Toscano Geoff Savell Helen Plume Vicky Griffin Ted Maguire Helli Ward Velma Turner Jo Pohatu Brenda Sergeant Erika McKay Mandy Rees Anne Glennie Lyvonne Dinnis Trijnie demoulin Catharine Langman Aimee McLeod Vicky Chan Bruce McAuley Di Charlesworth Dianne R-S Kirsten Moeller Heather Blight Danny Green Chris Henwood Jackie Haddow Rik Engel Ruth Robertson-Taylor Alan Devine 5

6 Monthly cleaning roster Cleaning Activities Month Assigned Group October 2012 Group 1 November 2012 Whole club preparations for Sales in December December 2012 Not required. January 2013 Group 2 February 2013 Group 3 March 2013 Group 4 April 2013 Group 5 May 2013 Group 6 June 2013 Group 7 July 2013 Group1 August 2013 Group 2 September 2013 Group 3 October 2013 Group 4 November 2013 Whole club preparations for Sales in December December 2013 Not required. January 2014 Group 5 February 2014 Group 6 March 2014 Group 7 Clay Trap After many years the clay trap at the club rooms has become over whelmed and we now find that our sink is not draining away properly. So until such time as a group of club members are able to dig and clean out the clay trap we need you all to limit the amount of water you are using at the clay sink. We would also like to get all members into the habit of using a bucket to wash-up their hands and tools rather than doing this at the sink. Then once you are all cleaned up the water in the bucket can be sluiced away over the garden, good for around the plants ( but please not over the plants or they will all start looking very sad and muddy), or just thrown over the bank. Washing up at the sink should be kept to a minimum and all clay slip from making your work should be placed in the correct clay settling buckets in the left hand side of the sink. If anyone would like to help with cleaning out the clay trap please contact the one of the committee Room Stables Main room Kiln Room Kitchen Toilet facilities General aspects Cleaning Activities Clear any rubbish Sweep Clean / wipe walls Clean wheels Wipe down all table surfaces - including wedging tables, work tables Wipe down drink making facilities Wipe down chairs Tidy entrance area, sign in book space Check glazes are tidy on shelves Wipe down spray booth Wet mop the floors Tidy props and shelves Clean up sink area Wipe down work bench above prop drawers. Check sponges & ice cream containers discard any that are no longer useful Clear the recycled clay containers put the stoneware clay into the bat to dry and discard the earthenware clay over the bank outside. If hand towel is dirty can a volunteer please take it home to wash. Wet mop floors. Clean kitchen top and stove top Check fridge any really old work that has not been labelled should be discarded. If kitchen towels are dirty can a volunteer please take it home to clean. Wet mop floors Clean toilet and basin facilities. Wet mop floors Remove any rubbish that has been found. Unfortunately, the rubbish is not collected from the clubrooms so we rely on club members volunteering to take small quantities of rubbish home for their domestic rubbish. Thanks. 6

7 Night classes Well day class actually. There is still time to enrol but you will need to be quick as the class starts on the 13 th!! Coiling large pots $55 Two Saturday mornings, 9am-1pm (total 8hrs) 13 Oct and 20 Oct. A shorter version of the class held last term. Previous clay experience will be helpful but not essential to make a garden pot or sculpture using this coiling technique. Materials and firing extra. To enrol ring Aimée ( ) or mazpots@paradise.net.nz What's on Ceramicus 12 WPA annual Exhibition October, NZAFA galleries In conjunction with the Water Colour Society and Ikebana International. Selector and guest exhibitor: Brendan Adams from Auckland. Brendan is giving a slide evening at WPA on Friday 12 th Oct at 7:30pm and a demo on Saturday 13 th Oct, 10am-2pm ($20 non-members). Visit his website at Elements 2012 NZSP Regional Exhibition Percy Thomson Gallery, Stratford, 26 October-18 November NZSP members from the Wellington and Western Districts are invited to submit work. Entry forms on Receiving on Wed 24 th Oct. Opening Friday 26 th, 7:30pm. Selector and guest exhibitor Fran Maguire. It will be on during the Rhododendron Festival so well worth entering or visiting. Underground Frank Kitts Pottery Themed market 3 Nov. If you are interested in a stall at this themed market, under cover on the Wellington waterfront, contact Esther on bookings@wellingtoncreative.co.nz December Woolshed Cash and Carry: first and second weekends of December. Thorndon Fair: first Sunday of December. Woolshed Christmas party: Saturday 8th December. 54th NZSP National Exhibition Celebrating Ceramics Sat 23 March Sunday 12 May Mt Marua Gallery Expressions Art and Entertainment Centre Upper Hutt Entries to be pre-selected from images. Closing date for entries TBA but likely to be first week of February Entry forms will be available on the NZPotters website and mailed to all members Mountain Dreaming Workshops Information will be on the woolshed notice board Hutt Arts Summer School Information at the woolshed The Quarry Summer Do Information will be on their website from October Work from current schools Childrens Class Slip Class 7

8 Exhibition 2013 All fired up Diversity We have more excellent news on our exhibition for We have asked Bruce Walford to be our guest potter and selector and we are pleased to say that Bruce has accepted. Bruce is a fabulous potter with a wealth of knowledge and experience and while he is not well known in New Zealand he is well known in South Africa and Europe. I will try to give you more information about Bruce in our next newsletter. As part of being our guest potter and selector Bruce will also be running for us a weekend workshop so this will be an additional bonus for us all. More detail will be published as we confirm dates with Bruce. However we do have the important dates for the exhibition itself. KEY DATES Selection: All work must be submitted at the clubroom by 4pm Sunday 10th March. Work to Pataka: 12 noon Monday 18th March Exhibition open: Thursday 21st March Sunday 14th April Collection of unsold work: Monday 15th April A few pictures from our last exhibition to remind you all of how good it is to have your family, friends and general public view and buy your work. Newsletter This is YOUR newsletter. We try and make it as informative and entertaining as possible, to enjoy with your cup of coffee (or glass of wine), and welcome any stories, articles or photos of events that you have been to, enjoyed or would like to criticise, or just want to mention. Send your contributions to me at mazpots@paradise.net.nz or give me a hand written copy. Thanks Aimee 8