Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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Pottery Workshop When Geoff Stevens first set foot inside Appleby ' s art studio he was confronted with mounds of clay, a potter ' s wheel, wave after wave of Appleby students and the somewhat intimidating task of getting all three to work together. Clearly, even such a talent as his could not always make those grubby little Appleby hands turn out work on the same level as his ovra. Yes, it is true, alas that some of the work did fall a bit beneath masterpiece calibre- but it cer- tainly was not through lack of excellent instruction on his part. No, he is irreproachable in that regard without a shadow of a doubt, and yet, I wonder if he didn ' t give just the smallest sigh of relief as he left, considering of course the amount of raw Ap- pleby talent and gusto which oozed out of Appleby pores each day he was here. Why I ' ll wager that the poor man was terrified lest the mighty Appleby art machine use his knowledge to put him out of business, and I fear that he will lose many sleepless nights in the future biting his nails. Joking aside, this year ' s Pottery Workshop was a resounding success. Pottery, like any highly skilled craft, is something which ri V . r

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i ., ; Two faces by Brian MacDonald were just a few of the crafts laid out on Parents ' Day for in- spection. As this year we had our pottery workshop, under the excellent instruction of craftsman Geoff Stevens, this aspect of the display was perhaps stressed the most. Probably the most noticeable thing about the pottery exhibition was the sheer volume of work completed in this field. Tea pots, jugs, ash trays, mugs, bird houses, figures, musical instrimients - the list of creations was endless, and fascinating. Although not under way at the time of writing, the studio recently acquired a sizable amount of silver-smithing equipment. As such, the future looks even more promising in the field of three-dimensional work, and hopefully an even wider horizon will be added to the already limitless boundaries of creativity. Colin Richards BOTTOM RIGHT: by Colin Richards

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requires many years of practice and application before proficiency can be achieved. This is not to say, however, that nice work cannot be finished over a short time given the right in- struction and guidance. We were really fortvmate this year to have someone like Geoff come down from his studio in Terra Gotta to conduct the programme. He was both a first-class craftsman and a first-class teacher. If he had any fault at all it was that he made everything look so easy! I say fault , for it lulled us into a false sense of security so that the expression throwing a pot with the wheel took on a deeper significance as the bevdldered novice scraped pottery from out of his mouth and ears. At the end of the two weeks many excellent pieces of pottery. encompassing every conceivable shape, form and size were fired and on display. It had been both a rewarding experience and a lot of fun. But mostly a lot of fun. Many thanks must go to Geoff for his patience and efforts to bring Appleby closer to earth. CoJin Richards