| A review from Joe Blades' blog link | ||
| lives his version of the artist's life with at least one twist | ||
| Another busy arts night in Fredericton. Didn't see the production of Joseph's Amazing Technicolor DreamcoatDidn't go to the (to the best of my knowledge) first Fredericton reading by Governor General Literary Award-winning novelist Peter Behrens. No, I went to the 9th annual Sabat lecture . . . | ||
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| ... and I'm glad I did! By permission of him and the BAG I recorded it for broadcast on my radio show—likely in May or June (my third event recording in four nights). Peter Powning artist—potter, glassworker, sculptor, husband to writer Beth Powning (whom I interviewed several years ago for APB), father of Jake the swordsmith, photographer . . . Peter Powning, recipient of the 30th Saidye Bronfman Award for Craft. Peter gave a great talk. Thought provoking on global issues, the earth and us as its problem, reconsideration of the local including the question of the need for one to assess the environmental impact of one's art making and ancillary practices. Bravo! This was a great talk to hear. A big obligation for all of us to take home and consider: the footprint of out lives, of our art. [I've thought before, in wondering moments, of just how many trees I need to put back on Earth for my writing and publishing activities. What would I need to do to carbon-neutral my within Canada and intercontinental air travel (more than my local bike riding)?] |
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| Peter, travelling to Fredericton on the Acadian Lines bus from Sussex, brought a box of his family's accumulated techno detritus to decorate, encrust, the otherwise ordinary gallery podium. It was great. A sad counterpoint and/or visual of points in his talk. Especially when he plugged in the xmas lights for emphasis. | ||
An artist and an ambassador; For Peter Powning, staying true to his beliefs has brought critical and commercial success and satisfaction.
New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Page: H7
Section: Salon
Byline: Karen Ruet visual arts
When Peter and Beth Powning moved to New Brunswick from the United States nearly four decades ago they were young and full of grand dreams. They wanted to be self sufficient, to live off the land, grow most of their own food, chop their own wood for heat, and work at home making functional ceramics for a local market.
One way to get to their house, studio and foundry – off the beaten track outside of Sussex in a tiny place called Markhamville – is to turn off the main road and take a dirt artery that seems to climb straight up a mountain.
The couple travels in their environmentally friendly Smart- Car, but these days they even use that as little as possible. Now when they travel a great distance they take the bus or train.
They understood early on that to make a difference they couldn’t live passively. They had to be involved, even through their artistic endeavours.
“I’ve spent a great deal of time over my life pondering what societal value my work has, what cultural effect. Is what I do a worthwhile pursuit?” Powning says.“This question has always been pondered in conjunction with a range of environmental concerns and the awareness that as a society we have largely been blind, willfully or otherwise, to the consequences of the way we live.“I have been a modestly active environmentalist since I first heard the word, probably in 1970 or so. I’d read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in high school. I knew enough about environmental issues to understand that what eventually came to be called ‘sustainability’ was far from our society’s collective mind; that we were headed down a dead end road, and further, that I was part of the problem and not immune from the comforts of the consumer society.”
Peter Powning is, by all accounts, a master craftsman, a senior artist and an ambassador for and tribute to the arts community of this province. He is represented by prominent galleries, among them Peter Buckland Gallery in Saint John, and Sandra Ainsley Gallery in Toronto’s distillery district; other prominent arts organizations have also recognized Powning for his artistic achievements.
Last fall, he went to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec to collect the 2006 Saidye Bronfman Award, worth $25,000, for excellence in craft. (The museum and Canada Council for the Arts are partners in the award. ) Several weeks ago, he travelled to Ottawa where eight of his one-of-a-kind works were given to the eight recipients of the 2007 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts at Rideau Hall. The awards are the most distinguished in the country and have been presented annually since Governor General Romeo LeBlanc, the first from the Maritimes, started them in 1977. To be commissioned to make work is a great honour and an artist also receives a $25,000 prize. Craftspeople make objects intended for purchase by others, but Powning says a craft can connect people to the community it was created in; a valuable notion as society rapidly becomes more globalized.
“Working with my hands gives me a sense of connection not only with others doing similar work, but with generations of predecessors who lived by the skill of their hands,” he says.
“Those of us who produce work by processes we try to understand and control, by hand from beginning to end, maintain a vital link to an essential aspect of our humanness.
“It is an aspect of our species which has evolved over millennia and that many [who are living] typical contemporary western lives are quite distanced from. For those people we form a link. I believe there is an innate human ability to recognize and appreciate the handmade, the object imbued with the power of the skilled and thoughtful hand.”
Recently, Powning delivered the annual Christina Sabat Memorial Lecture to an audience of more than 100 at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton. He showed images of his work, talked about his early dreams as a new Canadian, the meaning of art and craft in this, the official year of the craft, and the responsibility we all have both as artists and citizens in this tumultuous age of environmental degradation.“Before the industrial revolution, what we now call craft was central to society and craftspeople were a respected and essential part of life,” Powning says. “This has changed. Handwork has become marginalized or become a more rarified special pursuit.”
Peter Powning’s career took off in the early 1990s when he and Beth, who is also an accomplished photographer, decided it was time to make a significant life change.
She stopped working in the family ceramics business and started concentrating on her writing career. Peter went from making strictly ceramics to incorporating elements of glass, wood and stone, whatever helped him express the endless ideas swirling about in his head. This more diverse work led to markets outside of New Brunswick; he began earning large commissions for outdoor sculptures.
The couple stayed true to their creative desires and managed to achieve financial stability, which in turn allowed them to be more creative. It wasn’t always comfortable, but persistence and hard work eventually paid off. Over the years, Powning has never veered from his political and artistic beliefs."There is an element of obsessiveness required to be an artist," he says. "My own obsessive, overboard nature is easily consumed by what I'm working on creatively but also with the world's woes.
"Climate change entered my inner landscape stage left some years ago and has been hogging my mental limelight with increasingly demanding antics. I recognize that, yet no matter how large it looms it seems to me to not be out of proportion with the actual situation, the reality of our times.
"How do we proceed with this as the filter that must necessarily tint all we do? If we do not seize the opportunity now and engage the problem with vigour and creativity, we will find ourselves in the position of trying to adapt in reaction to tumultuous events beyond any hope of our control.
"We live such comfortable lives, yet for the sake of our future our choice is either to try and make necessary changes now in a planned way or to dither around for a few more decades and just deal with the consequences, which by most calculations promise to be severe."
Peter Powning's work can be viewed online at www.powning.com and www. glassartcanada.ca. Also contact Peter Buckland Gallery in Saint John, (506) 693- 9721, www.peterbucklandgallery.ca; and Ingrid Mueller Art+Concepts in Fredericton, (506) 454-2278, www.ingridmuellerartandconcepts.com.