Each month the SHS features local artists in our gift shop. This November we have three. Come by to see their work and remember: a portion of all sales supports the work of the Steveston Historical Society.
Marsha Hoggan
Marsha Hoggan has been making pottery since 2005, which she admits is an unlikely choice for someone who lives on a sailboat. After many years at a public studio, she now works out of Sue Sue Studio, a shipping container her husband Jack built into a studio for her in 2021, a ten-minute walk from the boat.
Her functional work is mostly porcelain, which she loves for its translucency and the way it seems to glow after the glaze firing. Lately she has been working in black porcelain, which suits the underglaze drawing she has been doing.
In 2024 Marsha built a raku kiln, and she fires it together with her friend and fellow artist Jennifer James. In raku, glazed pots come out of the kiln still hot and go straight into a lidded container of newsprint and sawdust. The flame and smoke leave flashes and shifts of colour on the surface, so every piece is one of a kind. Marsha’s raku work has travelled beyond the gift shop, too: she made the trophies for the Richmond Tourism EPIC Awards.
Jennifer James
Jennifer S. James started working in clay at thirteen and has since branched out into acrylic and encaustic painting, textiles and mixed media. Raku is at the centre of her practice right now. She is drawn to its unpredictability, and to the way flame, smoke and transformation can bring out hidden patterns in a material.
Her current work is raku-fired pottery and sculpture depicting sprites, fairies and other mythical beings. It draws on folklore and on her ancestral ties to Denmark, Wales and England, where such creatures were seen as guides and guardians. Symbols and mark-making run through all of it, linking her pieces to some of the earliest forms of human expression. She credits Debra Sloan, her mentor of many years, with shaping how she approaches animal forms.
Artist Website: www.jennifersjames.com
IG: @jennifer_s_james
Scott Pleydell-Pearce
We’re delighted to welcome back local watercolour artist Scott Pleydell-Pearce to the Pop-Up art space.
Scott has been an artist all his life, working professionally mainly in animation. His self-taught watercolour style is best described as bold, energetic and dynamic. He can draw and paint very accurately, but he is just as comfortable with a looser approach. Scott paints en plein air (in the open) as much as possible, because to him nature is the greatest teacher.
Artist Website: www.scottyppart.com
IG: @scottpleydellpearce