Published Oct. 5 2017

To the Editor

Visiting from Thunder Bay I spent the weekend chasing the white signs of the studio tour.

I watched Terry Craig blow glass into bloom and helped Wayne Rose make horse hair twist its forever shadow onto hot pottery. I learned the chemistry behind unexpected details in fused glass from Joyce Pruysers-Emmink and in raku glaze from Thom Lambert. Laura Trach shuffled prints and unspooled threads illustrating the hours and dedication behind her art as mere numbers never could. When I asked Todd Jeffery Ellis if silver stretches like pizza dough he demonstrated how it compresses instead then Susan Watson Ellis told me of the year she cornered the North American market in quart- encrusted petrified wood. Between wind-dancing quilts Shelley Van Nood and I traded stories of winged insects and the memories they can provoke. Al Van Mil told me how he’d bundle lunch into a cloth tied onto a stick and follow his dad to art-making adventures throughout his childhood then Annette Blady told how they’d met on the job. Cathy Taylor pulled from a jumble of tile shards just the shade she sought for another mosaic of Pointillism perfection.

What a road trip! Thank you to all who make it happen.

Heather McLeod

Thunder Bay