For you, I paint Dahlias | Preview new Pottery

In my grandmother's enormous yard. A yard so large it is cut with a tractor mower on which she spends the afternoon, meditatively tightening the large contours, steering around the giant firs that weep against the sloping yard. There is a small courtyard. It's something sized between a courtyard and patio I suppose. At least that is how my child self remembers the pinkish square of laid bricks, a covered veranda style sliding bench near the end. The kind that has a table between the two benches and a covered canopy. I hope to have one too one day... funny how you reach to be an adult then yearn for the objects that remind you of those hours spent just being. Being a kid. There's always a breeze, there are no trees to break the wind which never ceases.

 Around the patio on two sides there are hedges of large bushy dark green foliage, pom pom doted with dark blood colored velvety flowers. Only as an adult, I found out these were dahlias. A tropical plant you can grow on a farm in Canada, provided you are willing to dig them up every year for the winter. Upon moving into a house with a yard a few years ago, I took up dahlia planting. I started with the dark blood 'Karma Chocolate' dahlias but this year I have ordered a large variety. Twenty plants I think. My grandmother loved red. There were only red ones, but I love all the colors. 

Memories appear like vision returning after the flash of a camera these days, since my grandmaman passed a few weeks ago. I didn't go to the funeral. I cancelled my flight the day before, my anxiety over traveling with my 4 month old baby, and what he may come into contact with. I'm glad that she got to meet both my babies before passing on. She gushed over their hair color (red like my grandfather's), she pronounced their names the English way through her Quebecois accent much to my amusement, I'll never forget.

The weekend of the funeral I started working on these mugs. I wanted a simple form which would offer a larger area for flower painting. I tried a new style of handle making, where the handle is pulled from the body of the mug, rather than the way I have always made handles, pulling separately from the form and attaching later. In painting them, I've explored glazes, taking my time- finding that a blood red glaze paired with an oatmeal glaze produces the most fascinating feathering, and otherwise enjoying the small surprises of two colors working especially well together. 

I'll remember my grandmother, honor her with these mugs. It is a functional, everyday object made with integrity and curiousity. I think of her love of learning, her way of listening when you spoke, but also her cheery joyousness in conversation when making these. I hope these mugs witness banter with vigor and gusto, and life well lived, wherever they may end up in the world. Je t'aime grandmaman.

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