Grounded in Place launches tomorrow!

Grounded in Place

The new collection launches tomorrow!

IN STUDIO — Friday 24 April, 6pm - 8pm
326 West 5th Ave, Vancouver

This will be my first open studios of the year! Not only will I be launching my new collection, I will have lots of ceramics available: wall vases, self watering planters, samples and a few seconds. I’d love to show you around my studio, share my processes and talk about what I’ve been up to this year.

My studio sale will be in conjunction with the Beaumont Studios Open House/Art Incognito event, which starts at 7pm. If you wish to attend this event, YOU MUST GET TICKETS. All money goes towards fundraising for the Beaumont (and you get a free 4x4 artwork to take home).

For those wanting to visit my studio sale only, you may do so FREE OF CHARGE between 6-7pm only.

Otherwise, if you are unable to attend in person, this is when the collection launches online:

Batch 1 - ONLINE Drop
Tuesday 28 April, 4pm Pacific time

(my shop will be fully refreshed and finally come out of it’s dormancy)
;)

Batch 2 - ONLINE Drop
Thursday 15 May, 4pm Pacific time

For those wondering what the special new ingredient was in the collection, it was something from my one of my favourite places in New Zealand where I grew up, black sand from Piha beach.

We took a trip back to the motherland in February as my sister just had a baby. All my siblings came from around the world to be back in NZ — our first family reunion in six years.

Every time I go home I make a point of organizing a family trip to Piha.

We spent so much time here as children: annual new year’s day visits, running across the hot black sand, dipping our toes into the cold wild surf, sand feeling like soft marshmallow underwater, that strong tidal pull, the effervescent bubbles between the waves, boogie boarding with cousins and looking up at the majestic Lion Rock sitting as the proud guardian of the beach.

I took a small bag of sand back home with me to Vancouver, curious and hopeful that this could be what I was looking for to give the clay a boost of energy.

And I wasn’t disappointed!

Do you remember my earlier experiments in the year contained used coffee grinds from my local Beaumont Studios roaster, mixed into the clay? I am still happy with the results they give but they didn’t add any colour to my white clay as the grinds completely burn out during the bisque firing leaving small yet interesting cavities in the ceramic.

The combination of both the sand and the coffee is exactly the textural effect I was after, and a great representation of both my past life in New Zealand and my current life here in Vancouver.

The iron rich sand contains a spectrum of colour: blacks, browns and ochres, and comes to life after the glaze firing!

The difference between bisque (first firing) ABOVE and glazed (second firing) BELOW is wild. I was so shocked at how the intensity of the black sand disappears after bisque and then reappears after being in a much hotter glaze kiln. The magic of ceramics…

I’m so pleased with how the results turned out and am excited to show you what I have created for this first collection. I’ve had a lot of fun using the heavily textured clay in different ways as I’ll explain in the next email. The new pieces are in the glaze kiln as we speak!

For those able to come tomorrow to the studio sale, I am excited to see you! And to everyone, thank you so much for following this journey :)

Monique