John Jones patiently outsmarting every impossible glaze reflection

Juliann Wilding works on wool sweater custom fit and sew for the 8-foot tall White Elephant

Colin Harry works on the motor and electrical components he designed for White Elephant sculpture

series of small, unfired black porcelain sculptures drying in the studio

cast silicone hand holding marionette controller, for animatronic sculpture in progress

hiding it all inside

Bisque porcelain, 2019 sculpture in progress

Work in progress, winter 2019, porcelain greenware

Airbrushed greenware, 2019 unfired porcelain sculpture in progress

Painter and pal Hernan Bas and I in the Florida Everglades looking for gators

My ceramic and bronze public sculpture Cracked Wheat installed on the front grounds of the Gardiner Museum, 111 Queens Park, Toronto, August 26, 2018. Landscape construction due to be completed late October.

700 lbs and 7′ of ceramic clad steel hover towards a pair of bronze legs. Sculpture installation on the front grounds of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. August 26, 2018

Dry fit for my Gardiner Museum public sculpture, pre-installation. Maker Technical Sculpture Services, Toronto, May 2018dry-fit

Participant sculpture from Sexual Assault : The Roadshow hand-building workshop. May 2018

Participant hand sculptures from Sexual Assault : The Roadshow workshop about to be fired. May 2018

Jane Doe’s Sexual Assault – The Roadshow stops at my studio in Toronto. In May 2018 I host a ceramic hand workshop with a group of women, using art to speak back to sexual violence.

Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby and I at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, January 2018. Back in Halifax, 20 years after our first encounter in that same city.

The Illuminations Project with Emily Vey Duke, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. February – April 2018

The Illuminations Project with Emily Vey Duke comes to Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. February – April 2018. We were very impressed by their fearless ad campaign.

Pierre Aupilardjuk with my sculpture God’s Eye, in the conservation and storage vaults at the Gardiner Museum. Toronto, January 2018

Such a beautiful publication, designed by Mark Timmings and printed in Inuktitut, French and English

Pierre Aupilardjuk and I sign books at the launch of our EARTHLINGS catalogue, January 2018, Art Gallery of Ontario

The results of Pierre Aupilardjuk and my ceramic barrel-firing workshop at Doris McCarthy’s “Fools Paradise” residency on the Scarborough Bluffs, January 2018. I led participants in making a ceramic object, Pierre then demonstrated the signature firing method of Rankin Inlet’s Matchbox Gallery.

Trumpet, Change Room, Orchid, with Jim Holyoak’s ink drawing of the Banyan forest

Change Room, porcelain, installed within Jim Holyoak’s Banyan forest wall drawing. Opening reception of The Sunshine Eatersat Onsite Gallery, Toronto, January-April 2018. Photo © Linda Dawn Hammond/ IndyFoto Jan.19, 2017.

Installation view at Toronto’s Onsite Gallery, part of the Sunshine Eaters, January – April 2018

Smile at the Bottom of the Ladder, Galerie3, Quebec City, November 17 – December 17, 2017

Smile at the Bottom of the Ladder zine of my short essays published to accompany exhibition. Writing for this series was as exciting as creating the work.

“Parodox the Robot-Mime” and I pose before the Little Tramp and Baptiste. I commissioned Paradox to come respond to my series of ‘performance artworks’ during the vernissage of Smile at the Bottom of the Ladder, Galerie3, Quebec City, November 17 – December 17, 2017

EARTHLINGS opens at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, November 5, 2017

EARTHLINGS opens at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, November 5, 2017

EARTHLINGS opens at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, November 5, 2017

Shuvinai Ashoona covers the ‘peeper’ on our 2015 collaborative drawing Innagoddadavida. 2017 Canadian Biennale, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Galerie3 at Toronto Art Fair, October 27-30, 2017. L-R: BGL, Graeme Patterson, Daniel Barrow, Shary Boyle

The Scarecrow installed with a selection of my favourite (‘folk’) art from the vault, MacKenzie Gallery, Regina, SK, fall 2017

Badass before the haircut. Part of a hand-puppet installation for Smile at the Bottom of the Ladder at Galerie 3

The mime’s hat. Porcelain carnations and wax leaves (to be cast in bronze)

Baptiste in process, from Children of Paradise

Chaplin’s eyes in the final scene of City Lights

Loving these custom nails by Pinky’s on my terra cotta and black stoneware hands

The U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, BC. Built in 1980 to house repatriated potlatch masks and regalia originally outlawed, then stolen, by the Canadian Government during the 1885-1951 potlatch ban. One of the most important and extraordinary museums in this country.

A masterful Kwakwaka’wakw burial pole in the community of ‘Yalis (Alert Bay, B.C)

Kabuki and puppet series in progress, with an Art Shed view stretching to the beach

Majolica portrait of Tokyo Kabuki-za actor Nakamura Senjaku 3rd

Judy, Witch and Badass. Ceramic puppet heads, awaiting the details

Roy Small steadily fixes the machine, with a strange new drawing looming. Sointula, Malcolm island, B.C

Master puppeteer Roy Small holds forth on Punch and Judy. Roy offered sage advice, incredible anecdotes, rich knowledge and super technical sewing assistance during my residency at the Sointula Art Shed in September 2017.

Made the Sackville Tribute-Post, August 6th, 2017. That’s artist Rita McKough getting her likeness done.

Sappyfest 12, No Secrets. August 2017, live portraits by Casper and the Masked Mechanic (Graeme Patterson). Sackville, New Brunswick

Me, Dr. Michelle Jack and Joseph M. Sanchez, at the end of our mural, workshop and time together in Wells. Michelle Jack painted the Coho salmon with detailed care. The green eagle represents the connection between forest and fauna in a totally integrated ecosystem. The mural was gifted to Kanahus Manuel, the Secwepemc Nation and the Tiny House Warriors in their fight to stop the Kinder Morgan Pipeline from threatening their land- and the essential salmon.

Joseph works on some serene blues for a collective mural I project designed for the Arts Wells BC workshop. Earlier in June I had met Kanahus Manuel, Secwepemc and Ktunaxa activist, birth keeper, and warrior at the Idle No More round table in Toronto. I asked Kanahus if artists might contribute a banner to their fight against the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and if so- what kind of image would be most useful? She replied “paint what it looked like before (colonial settler) contact”.

Really liked this anonymous Mentor’s Room poster for our (usually the kindergarten classroom) studio

Joseph and I celebrate the exhibition of art created during our workshop in Wells, BC. Charlie Walker’s drawings in the background

Joseph M Sanchez, Sante Fe artist and member of the original “Indian Group of Seven” and I co-mentor a workshop at Arts Well, BC in July 2017. Nice poster for our artist talks.

Smadar, Lido Pimienta, Brandon Valdivia, Simone Schmidt, Jeff Bierk and I join Idle No More’s Canada 150 protest at Spadina House in Toronto. Here we share some educational information with the crowd lined up to eat free hot dogs courtesy of Carolyn Bennett.

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Lido Pimienta and I working on murals for Idle No More’s Canada 150 protest

Exploring Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo, May 2017. Exhibition of 16th-century ink paintings by Kaiho Yusho at the Kyoto National Museum brought me to tears.

Attended a May 2017 performance at the Kabukiza theatre in Tokyo. Art-life changing.

Cute mascot and I do ‘tiny heart’ Korean selfie-gesture in Seoul. April 2017

Solar-panel-head mascot, Icheon Ceramic Park. May 2017

Me, Tonka the Icheon Ceramic Park mascot and random child, April 2017

Improvised hand-built ceramic sculpture I made during the Mentoring Camp, GICB 2017.

Elena Gileva, UK (L), myself and Sungmi Ha, SK (R) during our Hand Jive workshop. April – May 2017. We were way happier than we look.

Making Narratives “mentoring camp”. I was invited to lead a workshop for three international emerging ceramic artists for 10 days, at the Icheon Ceramic Park studios in Gyeonggi, South Korea. With me is artist Kyeongho Min from South Korea. April – May 2017

Installation view from Making Narratives. GICB 2017 is organized by the Korea Ceramic Foundation.

Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, Icheon, South Korea. May 2017.

Bitten (L), with Ambera Wellmann. Installation detail from Slipper, April 2017

Museum Nights (R), with Ambera Wellmann’s Ravenous Night Dour Sins. Installation detail from Slipper, April 2017

Inverted Fetish with Ambera Wellmann’s painting Worm. Installation detail from Slipper, April 2017

Inverted Fetish, installation view

Slipper with Ambera Wellmann at Suzanne Biederberg Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands. May 2017

The sun-dried wares are pit-fired traditionally with yucca, in this case we used the ranches dried cow patties. Excellent slow-burning fuel source, worked perfectly.

Artists Jeffry Mitchell, Peter Roznek, Hernan Bas, instructor Daria Mariscal, myself and Steven Lambke with our pit-fired work. Rancho La Bellota, Baja. January 2017

Daria Mariscal instructs a small group of artists how to make her traditional Pai Pai pottery, using only a river stone, small wooden paddle and a cloth-covered fired clay base form. Daria harvests and hand-processes the native clay, as generations of her female ancestors have before her. January 2017, Baja, Mexico

Thin Red Line, 2016. Porcelain, china paint, bronze, 26 x 49 x 30 cm. Earthlings installation image

Thin Red Line, hand-woven red wool web installation

Western Medicine, 2015 – 2016. 76 x 55 x 55 cm. Plaster, human hair, vintage graduation cap, cigarette, acrylic, ink. Figure sculpted, detailed and painted by Boyle, face painted by Ashoona.

Shuvinai and I painting my sculpture, together in the tiny basement studio at Concordia in fall 2015, Montreal

Me, Shuv and Western Medicine. Shuvinai hadn’t seen this work completed since she painted the face in 2015. I had hauled it around two provinces and studios, slowly waiting for the right way to finish it.

Checking out Shuvinai and my collaborative drawing, Self Portrait