Potential future Tour member

Marie Messina shares some pictures of her teaching a new generation pottery. Looks like they were having fun ...... maybe a new Tour member in a few years?

Art Times 3

Studio Tour artists Grace MacPherson, Diana Bullock and Allison Bullock were the subject of a recent article in Good Life Magazine York Region Edition. For the complete magazine please visit here  and scroll down to the York Region edition at the bottom of the page.

Here is the article

All credits to Good Life Magazine

Picture of artists by Mary Cook 

Images of art (c) the artists

Siek Wassenaar

Thanks to Studio Tour artist Siek Wassenaar for sharing ..........

The making of a wooden bowl
The neighbour's tree at the cottage had to be cut down. I had my eye on this tree for some time because it had a number of small burls on it. A burl is a wart like growth on a tree. Some times they just grow on the side of the tree and some times they surround a tree, all different species can grow burls. It is not known why they form but they are highly priced by wood turners because of their colour and grain pattern. Often they contain bark twisted through out the wood.

I was given the section of the tree with the burls on it which then had to be cut down into manageable bowl blanks.

Four small burls were cut from the out side of the tree. The wood should be turned as soon as possible after it has been cut to prevent it from drying out too fast which leads to splitting. The pieces that can not be turned right away, must be painted with a water/oil emulsion and stored in a paper bag.





The bowl blank is mounted between centres and shaped.

A foot is turned on one end so that it can be held in a chuck to removed the inside.








The wall thickness is left at approximately 10 % of the bowl diameter. The rough bowl is now painted inside and out with the water/oil emulsion weighed and returned to the paper bag. The drying process takes about one year for each inch of thickness of the wood so for a bowl of 1 inch wall thickness it requires about 6 months before it can be finished. During the drying process the bowl and the foot distorts and they are no longer round. When the bowl no longer loses weight i.e. water, it is remounted between centres and the foot is turned round . With the foot round the bowl can now be put back in the chuck first the outside is turned to its final shape and then the inside.

The turning complete, the bowl is now sanded inside and out starting width 180 grit sand paper and finishing with 400 grit.
A shellac finish is applied and when dry it is rubbed down with very fine steel wool.






The bowl is reversed in the chuck to remove the foot, decorate, sign and finish the bottom.






The finished 7”x4” maple burl bowl.

Awhile

It has been a long time since our last post but we are back. Planning for this year's tour is underway. 

Call for artists is available at our website www.stouffvillestudiotour.com The deadline is approaching so if you are interested please check it out now. 

Mark your 2014 calendar the weekend after Thanksgiving October 18th and 19th. 

14th Annual Stouffville Studio Tour

How will you remember?

This is a repeat of a post from last year. 
Thanks to Studio Tour artist Grace MacPherson for sharing her memories of
her experience serving Canada during World War II. 


In 1943, Grace MacPherson was Grace Gauntlett...

Studio Tour artist Grace MacPherson, RCAF WD, 1943-45

"If you had good marks in your final year at school, you could leave early to join the Armed Forces. I went and saw a film, “We Serve That Men May Fly.” It was all about serving in the Air Force, and I thought that if I enlisted I would be sent to England. My brother John was in the RAF and was ferrying planes between Lagos and Britain. Later he was posted to Burma. At age 18, I enlisted and my mother didn’t really approve of what I was doing.

The Air Force was recruiting women to take over jobs, allowing the men to serve overseas. I was happy to be chosen for training as an operational clerk. This was a very selective course and top secret. We would be getting information from radar stations and plotting it on grid maps so they could be identified as friend or foe.

The enlistment poster that inspired Grace to join

We heard we were going to the West Coast, Victoria and were stationed in a lovely old home. It was at one time earmarked as a government house. It was called Kildonan House in the ritzy Rock Bay area. The officers lived in the house and we had barracks, which were built on the extensive grounds.

We had four shifts; the operational room had to be manned 24 hours a day. I was on D shift and about 12 of us living and working together became a happy family. We had a lot of time off, as the work was considered stressful, and our work area was located in the basement of the Belmont Building, across from the Empress Hotel. I would have to be checked by service police when I entered and left.

We were connected to several isolated radar stations on the West Coast: information was relayed to us by radio telegram. We plotted it in on a grid map. If the identification couldn’t be made, Fighter Control would send up an aircraft to check. Sometimes a plane from the training base would get lost and it was through the radar and the Filter Ops that they were located and saved. Another time a plane went off course and was headed for the mountains, and they were alerted on time. There was an aircraft detection post on top of the Belmont Building, and we manned it during the day shift. We had to identify, if we could, anything that we saw. We also took calls from civilians who were also looking out for aircraft activity.

Our time off gave us the opportunity to travel up and down the island, to Vancouver and to the States. Our commanding officer would give us a letter of introduction, and we could go and get second priority on the planes. First priority was the wounded. We flew from Seattle to California and across to St. Louis. Another time we just hitchhiked. Everyone was kind to those in uniform. We never had any trouble we couldn’t handle.

Here, Grace (2nd from the right) and her fellow WDs pose for a photo that later appeared in the newspaper.

Once coming home on leave I used every form of transportation: ferry, train, plane, bus, and hitchhiking. Stopping at Thunder Bay, and looking out of the window, I saw the faces of young, fair-haired boys waiting in the bus beside us. They were German POWs waiting to be transferred to one of the camps.

 VJ-Day came and we paraded in Victoria. It was an exciting day for everyone. We went to a service at Beacon Hill Park—lots of service personnel there. The speeches were getting a bit too long so someone set fire to the grass and that caused a diversion. There was a big dance in one of the hangars. Aircraft took off and bombed the station with toilet paper!

Shortly after, I was given my discharge and I went to Vancouver for the final paperwork. I received $210 for my two-and-a-half years in the service. I was happy to be going home, though not regretting one moment I spent in the Air Force, to serve “that men may fly.” Maybe I didn’t get to England, but I found good friends, travelled across Canada by train and the United States courtesy of the government. We were told that our presence on the West Coast saved many lives, and prevented many serious accidents and loss of life."
 

In 2008 Grace attended a WD reunion in Ottawa; she stands beside a WD plaque that was unveiled at the War Museum

To Grace and the thousands of other Canadians who have served, we thank you.