| | GUILD GALLERY
| | Pat Munro |
| | AN INTERVIEW | | by Danna Johnson, Kamloops This Week, Photograph By Rafe Arnott |  | A garbage can smokes in front of Pat Munro's Barnhartvale home - but there's no need to call the fire department. Indeed, Munro set the fire, and has to wait for more than an hour to open the lid and peek inside. Munro is a potter - has been for more than three decades. She moved to Kamloops with her husband four years ago, leaving their home in Smithers to be closer to family. For most of her life as a potter, Munro created functional pieces with a bit of a flare.
There were tea pots and honey jars, mugs and vases. She still has many of those pieces in her studio.But for now, what Munro is after is a whole lot of fun, and she finds that fun in the bottom of her smoldering garbage can. It's called primitive, or barrel firing, and for the first time, those who attend the annual Thompson Valley Potters Guild Christmas Sale on Saturday will be able to see first-hand what she's managed.Munro will throw a pot at her wheel, or maybe an ornamental vase or a jar, and then fire it once in her indoor, conventional kiln. |
| | | She will then gather up her pieces and take them outside, to her Oscar The Grouch-style can. She'll lay the pieces on a bed of sawdust, sprinkle in some copper and iron powder and a little bit of salt, then pile kindling until it nearly reaches the mouth of the can. And then she'll light a match, close the lid and cross her fingers. After about an hour, the fire will have burnt itself out, but it's still too hot to reach in and dust off her creations. Finally, with a thin layer of smoke still billowing from the can, Munro dons some heavy-duty gloves and fishes about in the ashes. What she finds are her jars, her vases and lamps - except they've changed. After having been fired, they're turned black, and thanks to the iron and copper and salt, they've turned pink and red and orange in spots. This new primitive style creates artwork rather than plates and bowls for dinner parties. The fun, she said, is in the suspense, the random nature of the method. "You can plan on something, but it depends on how much salt and copper . . . you just don't know what you're going to get." While Munro's been working diligently at perfecting the craft for more than a month, it has been in the past week that she's really started to see reds and pinks and oranges show up on the blackened objects. The smoke firing, she said, "is more exciting, it's more fun. That's what we need right now, is more fun."
|  | The grandmother, whose family has been plagued with illness as of late, said this new method helps to get her mind off the ordinary, the day-to-day troubles. She looks forward to lifting the lid of the garbage can each morning just to see what she's created. "I don't need to be worrying so much. This takes my mind off things." Once the pieces have cooled, the process isn't yet complete.
At this time, Munro digs out her fine sandpaper, or even the business end of a spoon, and polishes and smoothes each piece by hand.
Then she'll wax it. "It's just exciting to see what colours you can get," she says as she applies ordinary paste floor wax to one such jar. And when she's done, her pieces look more like carved wood than they do bits of clay. Still, despite how much she likes the outcome, Munro is anxious about how well they'll be accepted by the general public. "I've been kind of nervous about it." |
| | A Bio - Pat Munro | 
| - I was introduced to clay at a night school class in Smithers in the 1960’s. In 1987 I created a studio storefront to market my own pottery and the work of other craftspeople. After 5 successful years I returned to my home studio to spend more time exploring the many directions clay could take me.
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- In 2001, I moved to Kamloops where I have a studio with a fantastic view in sunny Barnhartvale. I am a member of the Thompson Valley Potters Guild and the Potters Guild of British Columbia. I attend as many workshops as I can, always striving to increase my knowledge of this exciting craft we are involved in.
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- I have worked in electric fired cone 6 stoneware, wheel thrown and slab construction. At present I am experimenting with low fired wood and sawdust firings, a very fun side road to travel. My goal is to make pots that feel comfortable and that you will use often.
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- Exhibitions:
- 1995 Prince George Invitational – Celebrating Winter
- 1994 Images and Objects – Campbell River
- 1994 Northwest Regional Juried Art Show Award of Excellence – Kitimat
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