Side Street Studio Blog | The best art that B.C. can offer
About This Site
Side Street Studio in Oak Bay Village and now Humboldt Street, Victoria, has been selling the work of British Columbia artists for over 25 years. Side Street Studio is family owned and has the support of five highly trained and helpful staff. We are commited to providing a showcase for the best pottery, jewellery, wood, glass art, textiles, cards & books, carvings, West Coast photography & art prints and special Gifts that B.C. can offer. more...
John McInnis writes “I was born in Sarnia and moved to Massey in Northern Ontario. By 18 I owned my own 175 acre vegetable farm. 
A childhood desire to experience the Arctic was realized in 1991 when he moved to the eastern arctic for a year. There I lived with the Inuit and learned about their culture, art and their reverence for the land and its animals.
A carver there gave me a few carving supplies and I quickly showed a natural ability to coax the figure from the wild stone. Returning to Port Alberni, I further trained with Fred Iyak. 
My carvings have a distinctive fluid poured look, very sensual and quite abstract in style. I carve soapstone, alabaster and most recently, marble. My pieces have been collected worldwide.
Each one is original, hand made and sanded to a high polish with 6 grits of sandpaper.
I am a very prolific and hard working artist. “West Coast Spirit Trees” is my latest creations, a tribute to our beautiful forests.
My pieces are abstract and interpretive in nature. They reflect the ebb and flow of life on the west coast, featuring spirit trees, wildlife, and sea life”. You can find more of John’s superb work at www.sidestreetstudio.com
“It seems that I have always been travelling somewhere.”
Margot Page was born in India in 1944 and spent her childhood in England. Her family moved to Montreal when she was eleven years old. 
She started out as a freelance Fashion Illustrator in Montreal. Then in 1969, she was hired by Sheridan College of Applied Arts & Technology in Oakville, Ontario, to teach drawing to fashion design students. Three years later, she was teaching general drawing and searching for another medium for her own drawings, which had always been black and white. Another instructor introduced her to the art of Enamelling. She has been producing enamels ever since. 
In 1986, she and her partner sailed to Vancouver Island. Now, after ten years of sailing the world’s oceans, Margot’s enamelled works reflect her love of seabirds, flowers, and exotica, which she mounts on a variety of media. 
Margot uses a pencil to draw the birds, sea life, flowers, and people directly onto the sheet steel. She then cuts out the shapes with a carbon blade using a table band-saw. When cut, the edges are de-burred on the grinder, and the steel is cleaned of any grease or impurities from the cold-rolling process.
The glazes are finely ground silicates. They are sifted into the cleaned steel using fine mesh shakers of various sizes. The piece is then placed onto a trivet and fired in a preheated kiln and timed. The high heat process fuses the powder into molten glass. The variety of colours can be manipulated to create a multitude of finishes. Margot takes her images and mounts them onto specifically chosen surfaces, glass vases and plates. 
You can see more of Margot’s fine work at Side Street Studio, Victoria, B.C.
Gera Scott Chandler is one of B.C.’s finest Polymer Clay Artists. “The first time I ever used polymer clay was to make a funky pair of danglyearrings to match a painting I had in a show when I was in Art School in 1989″, said Gera. 
“I detoured from art school when I had my children but after getting a computer and logging into my very first internet-based arts community in 1994 I rediscovered my creative self and spent a few years immersed in self-directed explorations in papier mache, paper-making, book arts and gourd art”.
“One day I needed to find a a way to drill a hole through a pebble to add as an accent for a project I was working on”. “It came to mind to try to make a faux stone with polymer clay”. “Making the little Beachstones with polymer clay was an epiphany for me”. “I joined an online polymer clay group and was drawn into a innovative community of artists who are fascinated by this wonderfully adaptive medium that is making inroads in the art world”.
“Polymer Clay became the foundation medium for my approach and I was soon immersed in figurative sculpture and vessel-making”. said Gera. “I’ve been a full time polymer clay artist for over twelve years now and work has been displayed in numerous juried shows, used in motion picture set design and is in collections in Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan”.
“In 2008 I was honoured to have my work selected as a finalist in the sculpture category in the International Polymer Clay Artists Association’s annual Progress and Possibilities Competition”. “I am a founding member of the Vancouver Island Polymer Clay Artists Guild and I offer a variety of polymer clay workshops through the year”.
“My focus for 2009 is to make a series of three large wall mounted Muses with Forest, Sea and Shore themes, to explore combining polymer clay and fiber with my new “Leggy Bowls” and to sculpt with polymer clay on stretched canvas”.
You can see more of Gera’s magnificent work at Side Street Studio and at her web site www.amusedgallery.com
Gera also runs a superb and informative blog which is very well worth a visit.