Kevin Stafford

I like my work to challenge my abilities. It is important to keep learning. I will always take risks as long as there are potential rewards. I follow my ideas to see where they go. Some of them take me to places I had not thought of before.

My current work is an outgrowth of the glaze research I did making scene tiles over the last decade. What I am doing now is looking at how glazes flow over three dimensional surfaces when many different interactive materials come together.

I laugh when someone asks for one of the recipes. Even if I were willing to give it to them, ‘it’ would be a long list of preliminary recipes. That list needs to be mixed in a very specific way, dried, ground and sieved into a range of particle sizes. Then you can mix the base recipe with selected mesh sizes from the preliminary list and also the glazes that go underneath. There are three coats of glaze and each can be different. This part of the process has become very complicated.

My research glazes are not suitable for tableware. They are for sculptural and decorative work only.

The few food friendly glazes I am using at present are based on a material mined in Saskatchewan. This material is essentially a naturally occurring glaze that can be easily modified and coloured. It is practically local, abundant and saves a ton of storage space with all the different materials it replaces.

My forms are becoming more sculptural than in the past. I have discovered how much I love modelling them in wax. I am making moulds from the wax models that I use to create a limited number of porcelain copies. I am energized by recent successes to keep pushing this direction.

Cats are part of my daily life. I am forever trying to get inside their heads. I guess it is they who have gotten inside mine. Their forms are ideal for exploring my glaze interests.

If you are interested in learning more about my work, you can link to my blog site at kbcs.ca.

To contact Kevin directly via email: kevin@stonewaregallery.com