Visitors to this year's Squamish Valley Artists Society (VISUALS) annual fundraiser can enter to win a very unique and valuable creation - a ceramic bowl by world-renown artist Jan Phelan.
Phelan's clay pieces are in collections of the Governor General of Canada, former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the late Canadian jazz pianist/composer Oscar Peterson as well as the Bronfmans and Reichmans.
Her work has also just been accepted into the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea, described as the Cannes Film Festival of Craft with more than half a million visitors attending each year.
The VISUALS annual raffle offers the chance to win the bowl valued at $900. Tickets will be available at the Art at the Market, held Saturday (June 27) as well as July 1 and Aug. 1 at the Squamish Arts Council Building, where Phelan is also exhibiting.
The winner will be drawn at the conclusion of ArtWalk, the VISUALS self-guided studio and gallery tour held Sept. 19 and 20.
Phelan always knew she wanted to be an artist, creating three-dimensional pieces from paper at the age of four.
"As a kid I was always making things. It seemed like that was just the path that I was going to take," she said.
Phelan creates her pieces in a complicated process.
"In a way I am lucky because I don't think there will be too many people who will dare copy. I make the original, then I make a mould of it and then it is cast with liquid clay. From there I start to draw on it and cut it out by hand with a little Exacto knife. I apply the stains and oxides to give it the colour, and then I fire it.
"Glazing is the next phase, before it is fired again. Then I put an opalescent Mother of Pearl lustre and fire it again."
She said the most exciting part is the final phase, in which she adds a 22k golden solution from a 100-ml jar costing $800 with painstaking precision - which, she said, brings back childhood memories.
"I'll always remember as a kid getting up really early, going outside and scooting across these fields. There was dew. The sun was coming up reflecting on that dew like a million diamonds. When I look at my work with the gold on top of it, sparkling, it reminds me so much of that - dewy grasses and flowers and the sun just shining. It is just so beautiful. That speaks to me and it is inspiring."
Phelan swapped her Ontario home permanently for Squamish in June 2008 after regular visits to her daughter, a professional skier who moved here five years ago.
She said she's taking advantage of Squamish and its stunning surroundings artistically as well as recreationally with hiking, cycling, skiing and sailing. She said she also loves the group of artists she's found here.
"VISUALS is really nice - it's a great group of creative people just all very mutually supportive and trying to do a lot of good for art."
