In the spring of 1978, almost on a whim, we bought a quarter section of land an hour northwest of Edmonton, with a ramshackle house, an old, falling-down barn and a small open shed. I had no place to work except the shed in good weather or a small room in the house.
And I had to work – I had previously arranged my first sculpture exhibition at Lefebvre Galley in Edmonton in early 1979. I’d also received a commission to make sixteen murals for a large house near Leduc, AB.
In what little spare time I had, I designed a studio for a plot next to the house and hired a small crew to help build it. After the studio was up and operational (I put on the last shingle as the first snowflakes began to fall), I built the kiln on a concrete pad beside it (beginning in minus 36° January weather).
Once operational, I began supplying pottery and sculpture to the Multicultural Centre in Stoney Plain, a town west of Edmonton, and arranged an exhibition of sculpture for October of 1979.
For that exhibition, I threw closed-forms (clay that is necked-in as it is thrown, until it is entirely closed, forming a bubble). The forms were altered and assembled in different ways (caterpillar, tripods) or modelled into heads. I also included a couple of coil-built figures (Lear, Methuselah).
Caterpillar, 1979, 95 cm long. Eight different closed forms stuck together. The antennae were made of coiled wire with clay beads.
Socket, 1979, 38 cm long, coloured with ox blood shoe polish. Various sizes and shapes of closed forms assembled to make an amorphous, somewhat animate work.
Socket II, 1979, 66 cm long. The small ‘tail’ on the left is unattached, snuggling into a rounded indent. The natural red-brown clay colour was all that was needed for a surface.
fence, 54 cm long, tall closed forms attached in a row, iron oxide wash, unglazed, fired to ∆10.
Tripod 1, 1979, 52 cm long. This piece was built using three thrown cones, which were slightly flattened, attached together, scraped smooth and rubbed with iron oxide. Abstracted figurative?
‘tripod II’, 1979, 78 cm long, assembled thrown forms, stoneware, unglazed, ∆10.
Head I, thrown, altered clay, 25 cm h. This was part of an idea for a totem pole of stacked heads, using different coloured clays. However the result, when assembled, was so grotesque that I decided to take it apart and save only three.
Head II, 27 cm h, altered with thrown ear addition, stoneware, fired to ∆10.
Head III, 31 cm h, thrown, altered with additions, stoneware, ∆ 10.
stargazer I, 1979 (Esso Canada collection) stoneware, 36 cm hi, manganese metallic glaze, ∆5.
A plaster mold was used to form the top part, pressing slabs and square sticks of clay into the mold.
methuselah, front, 1979, slab-coiled stoneware, with small square sticks of clay, 94 cm high, iron oxide rub, unglazed, ∆10.
methuselah, 1979. Press-moulded without a mould, I used a paddle on the outside to press against while forming the walls.
lear 1978, coiled stoneware, 91 cm high, unglazed ∆10. (❋)
lear, back, 1978. Difficult to photograph, because he’s leaning so far back. (❋)
