​Hello all


Just an update for you all regarding use of club rooms. The clay disposal bins, and the red washing up bowl, have been removed. We now ask that you kindly bring a small lidded bucket for your clay water and cleaning up. If you could use your water to clean up your work area, and take this away with any waste clay/ slops in your bucket for recycling. Final wipe downs can be done with water from/into the sink, just not heavily clay contaminated stuff down the sink please. 

The reason we are doing this is with the numbers using the rooms clay bins were filling up so fast, more than we could dispose of or recycle - jobs that members & committee do voluntarily in their own time. We appreciate this is an extra request, and really appreciate your cooperation in making this change as it will make a big difference overall, and we're sure it will be easy once we all get used to the new routine. 

Whilst we are on cleaning, thank you to you all for your ongoing efforts with this, and a friendly reminder that all areas used including the floor around your wheel/ work area, need to be cleaned/ swept by the end of class, particularly important for Mondays when we have a short window between classes. We don't have the budget for cleaners so are reliant on all using the rooms to do their bit, so thank you again 

Looking forward to seeing you all at the AGM Tuesday 8th November from 7pm with the world famous (in Redcliffs) auction afterwards for a bit of fun. It is your club so please do come along, say hello and have a say in its running. :) 

Best wishes

your committee

Hi everybody,
just a wee reminder, it’s club demonstration night tonight at 7pm on
Everything Paper Clay
Lesley Towart will be giving a demonstration of paper clay making along with some of its applications.
Why use Paper Clay? It has exceptional strength before bisque firing, it's light and can be made out of scrap clays. You can build large structures and add wet to dry clay. It's fast drying, versatile and can be filed, carved or drilled. It's ideal for slab work and tiles as it doesn't warp or crack when fired. It can be stored dry in flat sheets and then cut with scissors or a Stanley knife before joining or reconstituting. 
$5 koha
See you there

Royce McGlashen Talk
CPA  would like to invite your members to a talk by Master Potter Royce McGlashen on Friday 14th October from 7-9 pm in our clubrooms.  Royce will discuss with images the changing styles of ceramic work he has made through his pottery career looking at design and functionality.
The cost is $10.00 pp

RSVP  12th  October
www.canterburypotters.co.nz

​It is my turn as Co-chair to write the report for this newsletter.
It has been, not quite a year since I volunteered to co-chair with Angu last December and it has certainly been a learning curve for me along the way. Thankfully, Renate has been a huge help in providing guidance to both Angu and I.
​I am always happy to listen to any feedback/ suggestions from members so please email me or have a chat at any time. Following the last committee meeting held on Wednesday 21 September and following some feedback to the committee it seems timely to send a few general reminders to all club members:

​If we all make an effort to keep the wheels and workroom areas clean and tidy then is makes for a better workspace for all members to share.

​The working Bee was held on Saturday 24 September from 1 to 3pm. A huge thank you to Linda for coordinating the working bee and thank you to all the club members who turned out to help . We were a small but dedicated team but with 2 hours of hard work the rooms were looking much better, both inside and outside. Thank you to Jos who bought her water blaster along and cleaned the outside veranda and other areas. Thank you to Angu and Fleur who tackled the clay buckets and cleaned up the smelly old clay. I understand there is a new process coming soon to better manage clay waste so watch out for the details. Please come along to the next working bee if you haven’t been to one in the last year as many hands make light work!

​The AGM is coming up soon so please also take the time to think about participating in the committee, or offering to take on one of the many jobs that need doing to keep the club running smoothly. It is also a great way to get to know other members better and to give back to the club. We have a great facility and it can only get better.

If you are interested in the wood firing on the 16th October please sign up here.
Wood firing glazes will be available on club evenings. If you can not make it to the club evenings, 
Please give me an email at anguchen96@gmail.com and we can sort out a time.

For more information about how to glaze, please see upcoming events on the club website.
All cone 7 glazes can be used in the wood firing, but do not expect it to come out as it would in the electric kiln.
​
Clay Bins
We no longer have clay bins. You are expected to bring a bucket for your clay, clay slopes and some water. A 10 litre bucket will normally do.
The club does not have the resources to process clay from 90 odd members. 

After doing your potter, clean the clay off the tools you have been using in some water and pour this into your bucket.
If they are personal tools, these can be simply placed into your bucket for cleaning when you get home. 

Remove most of the clay from your workstation with the water from your bucket. Then wipe the work area once more with clean water which can go down the drain after.

AGM, Tuesday 8 November, 7pm
In preparation for our upcoming AGM please find last year’s minutes as well as agenda attached.
For a smooth and successful running of our club we are looking for people to join our committee, this can be in the capacity of general committee member or as an officer with a particular area of responsibility. If you are ready to contribute but don’t feel like going to committee meetings there are also an array of jobs for you to choose from. Please just check the attachment, all blank spaces in the middle and right hand column are up for grabs. To confirm your offer ahead of the AGM please just get back to Renate on rgaletzka@gmail.com.


Auction

As always the AGM will be followed by our World Famous Auction. To donate your contribution ahead of time please just drop it into Room 3 clearly labelled.


Key Lock Access
Key lock number will be changed at the start of term 4. If you are a key lock holder you will receive the new number in a separate email.

Please take care in managing access to our club rooms. The key lock box has been found unlocked a number of times recently.

​I am busy most of the weekend, so I will start the pit firing bisque on Sunday Evening when I come back to town. Please have your pots on the members shelf ready to fire! 
The pots should be ready to pick up on the following Tuesday!! Exciting times.

The wonderful Sheila is in the middle of updating and cataloguing our pottery collection in the gallery/exhibition room!
Currently there is some tape on the glass and shelves where the pots are, PLEASE LEAVE THESE.
They are there for identification.

We are also looking for someone who is handy with a camera to take some photos for documentation. 
If it sounds like you, please give us an email or let Sheila know.
Anguchen96@gmail.com

Di is doing a demo on the 13th September Tuesday evening 7pm. This is an awesome opportunity to see a great potter at work! 
She will be showing some wheelwork with tips and tricks. I think everyone has seen the stunning work that new potters are putting out from her class..
Makes a person curious about all the knowledge the tutor is teaching!

Time: 7pm
Date: 13th September
Cost: $5

We are also looking for someone who can host the demo.
A host will make sure everyone is signed in and that Di has what she needs. 
They will also help tidy up and set up the room.

As a host, you can attend the demo for free!
Give me an email if you are keen!
Anguchen96@gmail.com

A working workshop on slab platters with a coiled foot ring, a coiled vase, slip decorating 3 different
applications.

1. decorating directly onto the work by brush, slip trailer, stamping etc.
2. decorating on newspaper like a transfer, plan a design then rub it on your slab.
3. decorating on a plaster slab, building up a picture sort of mono printing by putting clay over the
4. top and making a vase, cup, earrings, napkin rings etc.

Materials to bring: clay that you are working with, small plaster bat if you have one, water
sprayer, clay tools, apron, towel, any slip colours, masking tape, sticky shapes circles, squares
etc., wax, rubber latex, Stamps, any glazed tile for mixing slips, scissors, newspaper. A smooth
slight curved dish glass plastic, an old wok that type of shape as we will be working on top of the
hump mould old towels for working with, brushes any, Eco shop have a good supply of curved
lamp shades. If you don’t have all of this we will share.
We may not get it all done, but you will have the knowledge to work at home.
Bring a shared lunch.
Cost $40
Email Shona for enrolments claytech1@gmail.com

 We have a new 8 week class coming up in October!! Stacked Garden Sculpture class.
Please find more detail in the image below.

Hey Potters,


With August nearly over and the club events ramping up like there is no tomorrow, another update is due!

The following updates can be found on the website under club news as well.

Programme reminders
Sat10th Sept  Pit and Saggar Firing
Tuesday 13 Sept, Wheel work Demo with Dianne Macdonald
Sat 24 Sept, Working Bee 1-3 (afternoon only)

Paper Clay Demo - Tuesday 11th October 7pm - 9pm
Why use Paper Clay? It has exceptional strength before bisque firing, it's light and can be made out of scrap clays. You can build large structures and add wet to dry clay. It's fast drying, versatile and can be filed, carved or drilled. It's ideal for slab work and tiles as it doesn't warp or crack when fired. It can be stored dry in flat sheets and then cut with scissors or a Stanley knife before joining or reconstituting. Lesley Towart will be giving a demonstration of paper clay making along with some of its applications.

16th October -  Wood Firing with Halswell Pottery
Find more information on the club website.

Birds of our Estuary - Exhibition
The Estuary Trust’s Bird Expo is on at the Mt Pleasant Community Centre. It is an exhibition of bird photos and paintings from local professional photographers and local artists, including Sheila Brown and Jo Ogiers.  We will have a Mt Pleasant Pottery Group table of items for sale also. Each item will need to have an estuary bird theme. If this is something that you are interested in contributing to, then contact me, stace.rod@gmail.com or 0211829600


Sculpture Festival 2-16 September
The Arts Centre Sculpture Festival is on again! This is an awesome chance to see, attend and witness some beautiful sculptural art! This years lineup of events are awesome.
The ones that stand out to me are 

• Takaaki Sakaguchi's workshop on slab construction
• Patrick Barry's 3D modelling with a focus on stone carving and clay modelling
• Tatyanna Meharry's demonstration with local earth materials in cermaic art practice

All of these events are only $10!!! That is unbelievably cheap for the expertises that these people have! 

Update that pit firing demo night has been postponed till next week Tuesday (16th August). 
Hope everyone can still make it! We have Halswell Pottery joining us as well so it will be a great chance to mingle.

Hey team,
I know it hasn't been long since the last update but more things are happening. It feels like as we get closer to spring, the pottery community is slowly picking up again. 

Needed:
Do you have unwanted cotton pillow cases? Mount Pleasant wants your old pillow cases for clay recycling! Give us an email if you have any.
Anguchen96@gmail.com

Website - Struggling to find the email updates after reading them? Well... the updates will also be uploaded onto the club website now under club news!

Xgaleri exhibition
With the amount of rain that is falling down, why not visit an exhibition this weekend or next? Xgaleri has an exhibition on showcasing some of the local pottery talent around! 
There is work from  Shona Clarkson, Susan Blackburn, Leigh-Ann Smith, Sheila Brown, Jackie Foulkes and Dianne Macdonald! Please come and show some support!

​Artist development workshops
If you are interested in developing your career as an artist, Linwood Arts East side gallery are holding some workshops centered around this.

To read more, please download the PDF attached

Read the rest below

Read the rest of the newsletter here

​Wood firing is a long and labour intensive process but man is it fun! On an October Saturday morning, Halswell pottery began feeding the beast, a beautiful downdraft wood fire kiln. With around 100 pots stashed in its belly, and a year's worth of donated wood, it was only a matter of time before the beast started roaring with glee. 

​Members of Mount Pleasant Pottery Group were sprinkled through the roster to feed the beast and that we did. Bundles of fast firing pine were initially thrown into the fireboxes. One big log on the left and small pieces on the right. The idea was the big logs provided a steady heat while the small pieces sent the temperature up. It did not take long before we could hear the beast chugging down oxygen as it greedily devoured the wood. At this point, it was important to know how fast the temperature was rising, and without a pyrometer.. We had to do it the old fashion way, by eye and cones.

​A quick peek into the belly of the beast and we saw it all. Flames licking pots, pots glowing bright red, cones bending to praise the kiln gods.. At about cone 6 (1240C), the fun stuff was put in. This included cedar wood, cabbage tree leaves, pine cones, pine needles and eucalyptus bark. These materials would crackle and pop in the firebox and send ash throughout the chambers where the pots were sitting. The chimney damper was closed to allow the ash to circulate through the chambers, enticing the ash to stick to pots, melt and form a glaze.

​A total of 8 hours of nonstop feed was demanded to satisfy the hunger of the beast. It then took a further 24 hours before it slept, and we could finally open its belly to inspect what goodies were produced. I encourage more members to participate in the wood firing next year as the results are so much fun and liberating… e.g. no idea what we were going to get… 
 

On Friday 7th February, Brenda took a group from New World for a Team Building exercise. A great night was had by all. Some photo's below.

The club is open to providing social activities for small groups; contact through this web site if you haven't a contact number.
​

The Bay Harbour News recently published this article, written by Renate, after our very successful exhibition.

WHEN THE Mt Pleasant Pottery Group was founded in 1960, it was known as the Betty Crocker Potters. 
This was because members used commercially-supplied materials from Smith and Smith, rather than digging them out of the ground as purist potters did. 
The group once operated out of a hut across the road from the Mt Pleasant Community Centre. 
As the club expanded over the years, it typically had an active membership of about 60 to 80 and exhibitions were big affairs. Over time, the club acquired considerable assets, including a gas kiln, salt-firing kiln and a large wood-firing kiln. 
Believed to be the oldest pottery club in Christchurch, the group celebrated its 50th birthday before the earthquakes. 
The February 22, 2011, quake rendered the former Mt Pleasant Community Centre clubrooms unsafe, so for a number of years it was a very difficult time. Class activities continued to a limited extent in a member’s private studio in association with workshops held as part of the Otago Polytechnic Diploma in Ceramic Arts distance learning. 
The group will forever be thankful to Shona Clarkson for keeping these activities going. 
Finally in 2016, a then very small but dedicated group of members relocated to the Phillipstown Hub as it was unable to secure rooms in the newly-rebuilt community centre. Members occupied a classroom-sized space and a kiln shed. 
Since then, the club has steadily been re-growing and presently runs five regular classes, children’s classes, club days, raku firings, weekend workshops and more. One of the regular highlights used to be the yearly exhibition at the Mt Pleasant Community Hall with an out-of-town exhibitor who would open the evening. The group had not held an exhibition for a number of years, but felt it was time to reintroduce it to the yearly calendar to celebrate the group’s achievements, its creative members and a beautiful craft. 
The exhibition was held last month at the Mt Pleasant Community Centre with guest potter Neil Hey, who put his works on show. 


PROGRESS: Renate Galetzka giving a demonstration of engobe decoration at the Mt Pleasant Pottery Group.