participatory lectures in art appreciation as well as
running a dynamic clay studio.

He comes to our region every two years for a two week
intensive at Pearson Intemational college in Metchosin.
He teams up there with Robin Hopper who teaches a

glaze technology course.

On Saturday and Sunday in the daytime, he showed us
how to paint on bisqued pots that were wrapped In tin foil,
using the bright colours from smoke bombs. Then we
locally reduced areas of these to tone them down, dry
torching small amounts of cotta and straw undemeath
them. He gave us a terra siglatta recipe for bisque ware
that we put on the pottery we brought. These were dry
polished with a shoe shine brush, wrapped up in the
cheapest toilet paper and reduced in a large tin can, Next
he set up his kiln. It is made of six welded panels of
angle iron and expanded metal mesh, The top piece is
arched, it has a hinged door, a variable size of 16 to 20
cubic feet and can be fired up to cone 6 in three hours. A
layer of 8 pound, one inch thick fiberfax is pinned to the
front with high steel alloy buttons. The whole kiln literally
assembled in less than five minutes. It disassembles in
the same time, You just have to wait for it to cool down
first. We fired it using a rented 100 pound propane tank
but the burner orifice can be adjusted to bum natural gas.
Hot pots were treated with fuming ghosts of ferric chloride
and coarse animal hairs, then reduced in a very
controlled and predictable atmosphere. Our firing part of
the workshop was hosted at the West Point Grey Potters
Club under the generous shade of a huge maple tree.

Randy loves to cook a5 much as to play with clay and on
Saturday night he produced a feast for everyone with
some of his specialties, spicy cajun blackened fillets,
Louisiana dirty rice, four local salmon done up with more
southem flavours and lots of cold beer.

JOHN GIVENS

BOARD RETREAT

In June, the full board met with a facilitator for a full day
retreat. The idea was to take a block of time and try to
take a fresh look at who we are, why we are, where we
have been and where we are going. Having an outside
facilitator really helped us focus on the bigger picture as it
is really easy to get bogged down in details, tt needed a
follow up meeting to coalesce and priorize the ideas from
the retreat. The outcome is a restructuring of board
working committees as follows:

NEW WORKING COMMITTEE STRUCTURE

COMMUNICATIONS:
Newsletter
Publications
Marketing

PROGRAMS:
Exhibitions
Events (eg. Made In Clay)
Workshops
Fundraising

OUTREACH:
Membership
Public
Resource Centre

GALLERY

The board are all volunteers working for their guild and
would really value input and involvement from the
membership on any of these working committees. As
mentioned in a previous newsletter, Rosemary Amon has
expressed an interest and willingness to be involved with
the outreach committee. ‘Your guild needs your
invelverment,

BOARD MEETINGS

Board meetings usually happen every 2nd Thursday of
each month, This month because of scheduling difficultias
the board meeting will be held on Sept. 11, at 6:30 in the
guild offices. All members are reminded that they are
welcome to sit In on board meetings.

We plan to try a new format:

a. The initial part of the meeting would be for staff and
committee reports, input and feedback:

b. The second part would be a forum for board and
members 50 that membership are able to have innut,
make suggestions or raise concems directly to the board.
If you cannot make a meeting but wish to have input you
can always contact either the board member for your area
{see June newsletter) or the chair (currently Keith, 522-
8803).. If you wish to have input at the meeting, it would
be appreciated if you would contact the chair before hand.
c. The third part would be an option for any in camera
business the board may have.

YUKIO YAMAMOTO WORKSHOP

| wanted to go to this workshop because of my interest in
the Japanese ethic and my involvement in the tozan kiln
project. Yukio, one of Japan's living treasures is over
here to design and supervise the bullding of the Nanaimo
Tozan, He has virtually single-handedly revived the art of
the tozan, the Naboragama, the multi chamber, hill
climbing kiln with the special Dogi fire chamber. After his
own, and the one he built in Flagstaff, Arizona, this is only
the third (the biggest and the best) in the world.

The pieces Yukio makes are as idiosyncratic and personal
as the kilns and the fire itself. Part of their design