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WELCOME
The purpose of this site is to share my pottery creations with family and friends – and with others who similarly find inspiration and amusement in the animal world. And yes, if you like what you see, I do commissions and regularly sell off work when I run out of space!
Zandra McGillivray
About Zandra
I started working with clay at school, and I’ve continued learning throughout my travels. My studio is now based in a 10th-century château in a small village in the Jura Mountains*, where I’m inspired by the birds and animals that surround me…as well as those further afield. Nature is full of humour. Exaggerated shapes and personalities make me smile.
*Come and stay in our guest rooms at www.chateaudesothonod.com and discover the sources of my inspiration.
Blog
To Brittany we will go…
My next show looms: I’ll be installing my critters inside St Bartholomew, the anglican church of Dinard (Brittany), for showing on Saturday 5 October (10h to 18h), during the week-long British Film Festival. Come and join us if you’re in the area. The vernissage is Friday evening, 18h to 20h. I’m hoping to raise funds for the church… The Rev Gareth is most enthusiastic and supportive.
And thanks to my friend Carolyn — whose idea this was and who is busy organising everything from food (and drink) to footfall — a journalist from Ouest France, France’s biggest daily, rang me yesterday for an interview! I babbled on about England, France, animals and pottery and hoped to make some sense. He wasn’t sure it would be published (maybe when I mentioned my ancestors came from Transylvania?), but what a larf if it is.
This little fella is coming on the road with me….hot out of the kiln.
Bear with me…
Some of my best friends are bears. Or at least one is. (You know who you are, babe.) So I’ve just finished making a big burly beast of a bear. I’m not yet sure whether he’s (she’s?) a polar or a brown. Time (and glaze) will tell. S/he’s drying slowly in my studio. It was surprisingly quick to make…everything came together really well, the legs immediately looked like bear-legs, the face like a bear-face. It’s funny how that happens sometimes, everything just, kinda, works…whereas others are the fruit of a protracted struggle. Hmmm.
Rye report
My daughter has FINALLY sent me the photos she took at my last show, just outside Rye, on 13 April.
I exhibited chez close pals Patricia & John, alongside lovely-and-talented painter Hollie Garrett, and considering that it all took place in the worst weather known to man (torrential rain, bitter cold, mud up to your chin…you get the picture), it was immensely humbling and gratifying that so many friends and friends-of-friends and family turned up. I thank you all for your support.
Iris and me
As it was a nice day on Tuesday, I drove up to the Château de Vullierens to see the irises. I last went with Nikki B, some 20 or so years ago. Sadly though, as it’s been the coldest-May-since-records-began, few of the irises were in flower this time…
We had lunch outside…and then it started to rain. Of course.
So I came home and finished a kittycat. You like?
One good thing about the weather; the ONLY good thing about the weather… I’m not torn between being outside, tending to my poor, waterlogged, slug-infested garden — and sitting, dreaming, playing, creating stuff in my studio. It’s a no-brainer.
WANT MORE BLOG POSTS ?
Check out my www.winewidowandsong.org
Want More Pottery?
Check out the site of my friend Michèle Riedo