Perspectives on potting and painting
News
Posted 2 months ago
Dorset-based potter Tara Gilchrist spoke to crowd at Dorset's The Loft Gallery about her art at an event hosted by the Haliburton County Arts Council last week. The talk, which also featured painter Elizabeth Johnson, was the second of four talks being put on throughout the county by the counci this year.
Chad Ingram |
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A painter and a potter shared the secrets of their respective crafts with an intimate audience at Dorset's The Loft Gallery last week.
The June 9 talk, hosted by the Haliburton Highlands Arts Council, was the second one to take place in the county this year, after a winter discussion in Dysart.
"I thought, all this art is happening all over the county and we need to have one in Dorset next," said arts council member and Dorset resident Jan McDonald, as she introduced the evening's guest speakers.
First up was Dorset-based painter Elizabeth Johnson, who described her career in art as one that has been "waxing and waning" over the past 35 or so years.
Always artistic and drawn to painting, Johnson took languages and literature at university, but said art was always around her, especially when she was studying in Paris.
"You cannot escape art in Paris," she said, fondly recalling the city's museums.
Eventually becoming a French teacher at a Guelph high school, Johnson said she would spend her summers painting.
That was until her four children came along and her duties as mother and home-school tutor took over.
"The brushes sort of hardened in the pots," Johnson said, explaining that it would be a number of years before she would paint again seriously.
Her return to the art world came when Johnson said she received a phone call from a woman who had purchased one of her painting years before.
"She said to me, 'you must keep painting,'" Johnson said.
And so she did.
While Johnson uses her boathouse as a studio, as a plein air artist, she said her real studio is out in nature.
The scenes she depicts are brightly coloured reflections of local landscapes and Johnson said she sees the world as a magical place.
"I try and show the magical colour in ordinary things," she said. "In ordinary scenes."
Potter Tara Gilchrist also works out of Dorset where she runs the Chetolah Fresh Air Studio, where she also lives.
The Toronto-born Gilchrist said her love affair with clay started at just nine years old, when she got behind her first wheel.
"My parents were amazing at putting us in extra-cirricular things," Gilchrist said. "For whatever reason, I really migrated towards clay, especially."
This relationship with clay would continue at boarding school and at a once-a-week pottery workshop in Peterborough.
Then, it was off to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
"It was totally overwhelming," Gilchrist said of art school.
Gilchrist would spend five years there and while she said she experimenting with a number of mediums including photography, "again I gravitated towards the clay."
Gilchrist said what gets her most excited about her work is not the finished product – ceramic cups, dishes, vases and other ware – but the process of creation itself.
"It's all about the journey, just as in life," she said. "It's nice when it turns out the way you want it, but if I'm not having fun making it, what's the point of making it?"
Gilchrist made her way to Dorset by way of the area cottage her family has owned for a number of years. Earlier in its life, that cottage played host to what was Chetolah Fresh Air Camp, from where Gilchrist took the name for her studio.
As she explained, "chetolah" is an aboriginal word for "haven of rest."
Gilchrist said she will be hosting day camps throughout July and August for children who wish to learn the art of pottery. She can be reached at 766-2260 for more information.
Arts council coordinator Kim McBrien said the discussion series is aimed at bringing artists of different genres together to meet each other, thereby strengthening the county's overall arts community.
Many of the attendees at last week's talk identified themselves as artists, either new to the area, or new to the art world.
Two more talks are scheduled for the fall; one in Minden Hills featuring playwright Michael Fay and one in Highlands East featuring musician and instrument-maker Bethany Houghton.
