Monday, February 15, 2010

Happy Year of the Tiger


Gerry was in Chinatown yesterday to shoot a march remembering those who have died in violent deaths and to shoot the celebration of the Chinese New Year. He sent me these photos for my blog. He was brought to Vancouver as a roamer to do what needed to be done, so he is getting to shoot a wide variety of events, which is what he does best. He started out as a photojournalist, to tell stories and document people's lives, and in the past few years he has shot mostly basketball, football and hockey. I am so glad to see that he is shooting something besides sports, because I quite honestly don't get the importance society places on sports figures. In fact there have been protests against the Olympics because of the huge carbon footprint and the commercialism of the event. I know it's exciting for the athletes, they work very hard, this is important to them and I admire them, but really, so much money is poured at them when they win medals and we still have starving people in this world. Cant' they be great athletes without getting a TV commercial and huge amounts of money?!
I would much rather be roaming around in Chinatown celebrating the diversity of our world and eating good food, as to standing in the freezing snow watching someone propel themselves off of a steep slope.
Meanwhile in the pottery world, yesterday I did a workshop at the Artscenter to raise money for Hearts With Haiti, what a great group of people, doing important work in the lives of children. Check out their website. The studio was packed and everyone learned to make bowls, vases and cups with slabs. We had a great time, and strangely when I mentioned the Olympics none of them were even aware that it was going on. Carrboro is an odd place, where the events of the world sometimes just pass by completely unnoticed. Last night Wes went out with some friends so I stayed home and made some pieces, inspired by Linda Starr's church photo. I'll post them up when I get some photos done. I'm working on this homeless project with Lynden at Hidden Voices and I am thinking of doing a series of "homes", shrines, alters, that sort of thing. Judy Shreve sent me a wonderful email when I was being so fussy about functional pottery and yesterday confirmed her thoughts. I put a few test bowls in the ^6 kiln at the Artscenter, got them back yesterday, to find glaze that had crawled, glaze had bubbled, you know my usual success story with functional glazes! So I'm about through with all that. Sculptural and non functional work is on my horizon I think. Or at the least functional pieces with very little glaze if I can figure that out. Me and glazes don't seem to get along. Now, me and fire? That's another story!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

boy gerry can take some pictures. i'm not that big on the olympics myself either. i would however entertain moving and relocating in vancouver. i've had friends that have gone there and come back to say... you would love living there. i'd be hanging down in chinatown that's for sure... look at that bok choy, yum.

Judy Shreve said...

Great post Tracey! And great breakthrough on the heart of your work! That must feel good.
Gerry is an amazing photographer - and must be having a great time in Vancouver -- it shows in his photos.
I'm a Tiger so this is supposed to be a good year for me --- hey it could happen lol

Laura Farrow said...

great shot of the market!

ang design said...

hey trace, cool pics...and you know glaze work is just plain test, test, and test some more...and you could def use a crackle glaze for sculptural work so all is not lost, it just depends on how you look at the results..