Convention demo, Agnes Zoni

Because I had a LOT of responsibility as:

Vice Chair, Display Head, Registrations, Commercial Registrations, and generally, the person who ran around everywhere, and drove to pick things up, made/printed signs and any necessary documents, including typing up speeches, etc...

(and yes, this kinda all killed my arm/back... I was very, very careful)

I didn't sign up for any of the workshops at the convention, and I only made it into four of the demos.

The ones I did get to were really good.

The first was the French-Canadian artist Agnes Zoni. She hand-makes these amazing masks, based on the traditional Venetian masks, and all sorts of other things. The demo she gave was on how she makes the masks, which is different than how more porcelain artists work, 'cause in general, you just buy the piece you want to paint on, like buying a canvas... but she throws porcelain on the wheel and makes vase-like shapes (which is hard enough), then she slices them vertically with a wire tool, and makes two masks out of the two sides. This way, every one of her masks is different, because she doesn't use a mould.

Unfortunately, I can't find a web site for her, but here are the photos I took during the seminar, and some of her finished (for sale) work:

 Agnes CAREFULLY transported this piece of green (unfired, and not dry) porcelain on the plane to use as a demo piece by wrapping it in damp paper towels, and I think, praying a heck of a lot that her suitcase wouldn't get thrown around and squished.

 Some her tools/etc that she uses for texture.

 She's pretty clever in her craftsmanship... she finds interesting buttons/etc, presses them into porcelain, and turns them into moulds to add as little accessories/etc.

 With some added accessories...

 In here she was actually cutting away pieces of the porcelain to give it a more interesting shape, and playing with the positioning of the porcelain cord.

 Here's what some of her completed work looks like, PLEASE click on the picture to see them at full size, the texture of the lustres she used were AMAZING!

 I'm not really big on gifts, so my parents told me, if I saw something I wanted, to buy it and they'd give it to me for my birthday... so I chose these three little cat masks! ...aren't they soooooo cute?

 I need to take them in to get properly mounted, which Agnes cleverly considered, as you can see from the way the back is built...

 She also made these really neat pendants. They aren't painted (except for the gold, and obviously she added the fresh water pearls later), she used coloured clay slip (really liquify clay, like what I made the maple leaves out of) and rolled it together with white porcelain.

Again, such a clever lady, the back of the pendants had a pin, if you wanted to stick it on your shirt, but also had a clay backing for you to thread a necklace through them! It's really neat how just those little extra touches make them so much more interesting.

AND, she was such a kind, lovely lady, she gave me this blank one for free (seriously, it was super sweet and absolutely unnecessary... and I was so happy).