meet jodie
now
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I am an artist who works mostly in clay these days. The winter is my time for being in the studio, when the seasons of bed & breakfast, gardening, and tending bees have drawn to a close. I am making more pottery than ever before, though there are some slab-built sculptural pieces in the works. Other explorations include small mixed media wall pieces and larger monoprints on paper - but honing my skills on the wheel and testing glazes have taken center stage over the past five years.
I've had many opportunities to work in clay & other materials in the past. When David and I moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1996, we built our house, both our businesses, and raised two children. I was the volunteer art teacher for grades 1-8 at the local elementary school for nearly a decade, and was also heavily involved in volunteer work with the Jamaican off-shore workers in our area. A rich life, for sure - but little studio time. It is with great joy that I return to the studio and flex my creative muscles in that way. My being an artist means that expression has always found its way to the surface. To add to that - David is an architect, who has taken up oil painting in his spare time — so creativity seldom sleeps in our home.
+ then
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Before our move to Ontario, we lived in Calgary—which has a very active clay community. In the early '90's I worked as a technician in the Art Department at the University of Calgary — assisting & teaching students to work in multiple three-dimensional mediums, including clay. Previously, my years as a BFA student had me working primarily in steel and mixed media, participating in various exhibitions, with several installations mounted as well.
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The bulk of my experience in clay preceded those years. I worked for Dave Settles at Ceramics Canada, a pottery supplier that also housed artist studios and ran classes. This furthered my familiarity with the materials & processes, firing in both gas and electric kilns.
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I graduated from the Alberta College of Art with a four year diploma in Ceramics in 1985. This was a great experience, allowing for an abundance of studio hours. On the heels of graduating from the ACA, I was chosen to be one of ten assistants at the International Ceramics Symposium US '85 in Tennessee. Artists and technicians were drawn from around the world, and we lived and worked together for an entire month, visiting associated exhibitions at galleries across the state. Our studio work for the month culminated with a final exhibition, all of which was a very rich experience.
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My earliest efforts in clay were at Dr. EP Scarlett High School in Calgary, under the tutelage of Ted Downard — himself a potter & silversmith. I was involved in drawing and printmaking in high school, along with various community classes, but my greatest interest always lay in building things with my hands. It was natural - I come from a family who are always working with their hands! My sister is a very prolific painter in Calgary - and you can find her work at www.karenbiko.com. We love to get time in the studio together when I visit.
in the studio
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My studio occupies two thirds of our attached garage; the remaining third being my office. I built all of the worktables & benches over the years and they are as solid as they need to be, which is a good thing when I am slapping down large slabs of clay!
I have a Shimpo VL Whisper wheel, a 7 cu.ft. top-loading Euclid electric kiln, a large slab roller table, and a manual extruder. The studio also houses a a collection of woodworking equipment, but I will focus on my clay practice here.
Time in the studio is often shared with my studio partner: my brother-in-law, Andy Parks. He has his own studio, just down the road - but we share the wheel and the kiln here, testing and mixing glazes together, loading the kiln and firing.
Andy & I have similar backgrounds - both having done Ceramics at art school; he in Ontario. Neither of us were ceramicists in our working lives - Andy was a graphic designer. The return to clay is a great source of encouragement, companionship, & shared learning for us both! Old knowledge is recalled, and we embrace the new as we grow. We both operate tourist-driven accommodation businesses during much of the year, so the winter hours in our studios are precious. We have learned to be quite efficient during that time.
My sculptural work is all hand-built, work with thin slabs of clay, often mixed with nylon fiber. I do want to work larger, so the slabs will need to become thicker as I go forward. Wheel work is reserved for pottery, and though Andy's and my work are quite different, we are able to critique and spur each other on. Working in clay has always had something of a community aspect for me. That extends to our yearly Craft Sale we host each December.
We work with a variety of PSH clays, firing to cone 6. We do have future plans to connect with other ceramicists in the area to do some other types of firing as special events - but the main body of our work continues with the clay and glazes we have worked with and developed.
The other art I am currently working on rounds out ideas and skills not expressed in clay.
I really enjoy following these multiple streams of artmaking!
Sometimes, one informs the other.
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