Sturt Woodfire 2008 ‘Three members of the guild went to Australia for this conference, April 18 to 21. Eliza Wang went via her native Hong Kong and picked up her sister. Myself and my wife, Celia, had a well-earned stop over in Fiji for some intense R&R on the way. Initially, Celia and I went up to Townsville in Queensland and gave a two-day tag-team workshop with Celia throwing and altering and myself handbuilding. It makes for a good workshop as there is always something happening! It was a little warm up there but back in Sydney and at Sturt, which is just over an hour out of Sydney towards Canberra, fleece jackets and occasional Gore-Tex—the usual Vancouver uniform—were more appropriate most of the time. Sturt Contemporary Craft Centre is actually part of Frensham Girls’ School, set up by visionary Winifred West. The centre’s pottery department recently celebrated 50 years of being a starting point and seminal influence for many prominent Australian potters, including people like Les Blakebrough (Southern Ice) and Gwyn Hanssen-Pigott. ‘There is a wood school, weaving and jewelry programs and a whole series of ongoing courses and an extensive summer school program. When we got to Sturt, it was straight into a firing shift on the Noborigama in which Yasuo Terada had tests for his upcoming Oribe workshop and conference firing. Conferences get you fired up and give you new ideas. They are also partly about catching up with friends and making new contacts. There were about 250 delegates at the conference and workshop presenters from as far away as Denmark and Germany, not to mention Canada! It was an interesting confluence of us Canadians being the common contact and bringing together Yasuo, with Pots ready for loading into the Noborigama. exhibitions that were part of the conference. It really took the whole conference to get round and absorb everything in these varied shows. There was also a brilliant variety of presentations and topics from people like Steve Harrison, talking about environmental issues and his journey with local materials, through Geoff Crispin on firing in East Timor and the ebullient Chester Neale, demonstrating, to Janet Mansfield and other big names like Owen Rye and Peter Rushforth. With a lot of help with materials from numerous potters, I gave a presentation on Canadian woodfiring, which turned out to be mostly B.C.! (The presentation is available on CD if it is useful to any groups—there are more newsletter articles to come on this topic.) It was frustrating not being able to take in everything—but there will be another conference! www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/events.htm @ whom we worked in Seto Japan, and Paul Davis, the current Sturt potter. Paul is soon to leave Sturt to focus on his new studio complex in Newcastle, north of Sydney, which he will share with his partner Jaquie Clayton. Australian woodfire potters have an excellent connected network that we don't have in Canada, largely supported by Arthur Rosser’s excellent website www.sidestoke.com Before the conference itself there were three workshops related to each of the kilns. ‘The whole workshop area was buzzing and . large tents outside had tables for assembling the groups of glazed work for each of the firings. Celia and Eliza did the salt-glazing work- shop with Sandy Lockwood and Robert Barron using the two-chamber Noborigama. Yasuo fascinated everyone with the intricacies of Oribe decoration while Ron Meyers from the States made some really loose work for some raw packing of the Anagama. It was quite something to see all three of the kilns In an effort to be move erwixonmentally toby esos www.geeenbarn.com going at once. With two of the kilns cooling (the Anagama Surrey, B.C. VAN was going all through the conference,) things got officially under way with a great ‘Barbie’ D and the opening of one of the many different 9548 192 Street, Phone: 604.888.3411 Fax: 604.888.4247 Tuesday-Friday 9-5 Saturday 9-1 Closed Long Weekends greenbam@telus.net 3RI Ween Darn POTTERS SUPPLY LTD. COLUMBIA Potters Guild of BC News| etter « July/August 2008