page 4 Clay ‘98 / Our Finest Work Rosemary Amon asked for more information about Clay '98, so ] will take this opportunity to review, Last summer we applied for an exhibition at the Vancouver Communicy Ars Council Gallery and were accepted. This juried exhibition will be open cto all members of the Porters' Guild of BC. The shew is titled Clay 98 / Our Finer Work, This is to be a survey of current clay practice among members of our guild, hence “Our Finest Work" as the title, We encourage outstanding examples of your ongoing work, and nat necessarily work made especially for this exhibition. Gathie Falk and Jeannie Mah have kindly agreed to be our jurors. They will separarely view all che slides and each choose approximately half the number of pieces thar will best represent us. Slides will be returned (no critique will be offered). [f you are selected, please be prepared to send the work, bicgraphical data and a value for insurance as soon as possible after you are notified. Submissions are to be in the form of 35 mm slides only. You may submic a maximum of nwo works, with up to two views of each (maximum of four slides per person). Slides should be of good enough qualiry and composition (full frame, bland background) ta be reproduced, as we will not have enough time to rephotogeaph before producing our catalogue/invitation. [fF you are not experienced at raking slides, here are a few basic tips. -take 3 shots of each view, one a couch over-exposed and one a bet under - exposed, ‘Gray is a good background colour. If your piece is small, a sheec of gray construction paper taped to a wall and curved out with your pot sitting on it, will make a good slide. -Some colour slide film is “tungsten” balanced, that means it is designed for indoor lighting, check if your slide film is for outdoor light or indoor light. -ASA 400 is fast enough to avoid camera shake from long exposures, but has a fine enough grain to provide a good blow-up. The deadline for submissions to arrive ar the guild offices is February 1, 1998. This is an absolute deadline. Te caver the costs of producing the exhibition (postage, insurance, invitations, opening costs, jurors, return of work after the show and GST}, there is a jurying fee of $20 per person. Cheques should be payable to the Potters’ Guild of BC and included with your slides. It is a requirement of che Vancouver Community Arts Council Gallery chat all works in the exhibition must be for sale. Please keep chis in mind when deciding which works to submit The show will cake place at che VCACG ar 837 Davie St, in Vancouver beeween March 24 and April 18, 1998, These dates will ca- ordinate with Lottery for Portery 98, The official opening is as yet undecided, bur will probably ue in with che Lottery for Poctery event taking place on March 26th at the Roundhouse Community Centre. Volunteers are needed for set-up and take down of che show, I will include any further developments and a short piece about our jurors in the next newsletter, Ron Wallis The Trouble With Paradise Cont. from Page 1 suggestions for both quick and long term fixes. The Tozan executive was meeting with the government people in a few days, so they needed expert help fast. | pur our an urgent call on clayart, and the results were almost overwhelming. People who had similar crises responded from all over the continent, There were lors of rechnical sugpestions, cnoouragement and several long phone calls, Within chree days we had an impressive pile of experienced assessmencs and workable suggestions When the Tozan executive mec with the government folks, the latter were go impressed char they decided not to close down the kiln, bur let us proceed wich the firings, making the necessary changes as we Wenc. There are threads on clay and glaze chemistry, contributed to by chemists, physicists and suppliers, as well as the wealth of experienced life-time potters. There are {seemingly endless) Musings about art, craft, beauty, etc. There is access to an industrial health and safecy expert. There are helpful comments sbout clay relared physical problems like carpal cunnel syndrome, back problems, skin sensiciviry, etc. There are teaching ideas, There are ideas about different things to make. There is encouragement and commiseration. Mainly, there are new friends, The only down side to all this, and it can be a real problem, is the sheer volume of mail. Fifty to eighty messages a day is typical. The only way to deal with it is to get pretty ruthless. After the honeymoon period, when you read EVERYTHING, you realize that if you are ever going to have a life again you must manage the information flow. People on the list are usually pretry good about using descriptive subject-heacings, so if a thread doesn'c interest you, you trash it without reading it. And if later, you wish you had kept something, all is not lose. All the clayart postings’are available on a website, searchable by both topic and contributor. You have your choice about whether to receive the messages separacely or in digest form. If you aren't going to download or read your email for a few days, hundreds of letters can accumulate at your server. The only way around it is co sign off temporarily or set ic co digest. So there you go - if you wart to take the plunge, here is whac you dos Srart an email to: In subject part and message part write: subscribe clayart. Then skip a line and type your name. [f you normally have a signature file attached to your email, shut it off. Ie could confuse the listserv computer and it might cast you into oucer darkness before your message ever makes it to a human. being. All being well, you will receive a Tetum message with instructions within a minute or ceo, If you have any questions or problems gecting started, email me at: . [ have a large file of usable commands that [ can zap to you if needed. Happy cyber-poering. Veronica Shelford,