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The following
are essays written over the last few years for catalogues,
books and magazines.
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2006 Saidye Bronfman Award acceptance speech
I've got a brother who is a phone hoax specialist and has
hoodwinked everybody in my family at one time or another posing
as a cop, salesman, client, beautician, Julia Childs ... you
name it. As a result I'm a bit slow to believe phone calls
bearing unlikely news.
For that and other reasons, when I got the big call, it took
a while for it to seem possible that I'd been selected for
the legendary Bronfman Award. I couldn't entirely believe
that it wasn't a hoax or a mistake.
I owe many, many, thanks. First to my nominators, the New
Brunswick Craft Council. Thanks to Trudy Gallagher, the president
of the council, and especial thanks to Kate Rogers, the executive
director, who quarterbacked putting the application together.
I'd like to emphasize the importance that support from publicly
funded arts grants and awards has made in my life and how essential
they have been for me at critical times in my career. Grant
and award funding has allowed me to pursue goals that would
have been beyond my means otherwise, which have enriched my
creative abilities, allowed me to experiment and not have to
gear my entire artistic production toward sales. I have been
able to achieve these goals with aid from, among others, the
Canada Council for the Arts, The New Brunswick Arts Board, The
New Brunswick Arts Branch, ACOA, the National Research Council,
as well as private foundations and arts patrons.
A successful career in the arts requires a great deal of risk
taking and a lot of support and nurturing. Without grant support
I wouldn't be here today. I am not unusual in having benefited
from and at times having been reliant on grant support. Public
funding and support for cultural endeavours is a sign of a healthy
nation.
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Arts grants are an indicator of a functional society, not
a sign of cultural inadequacy. I'd like to express my deep
thanks to the grant funding institutions of this great country.
I hope that I've been able to make a cultural contribution
commensurate with their support.
A career in the arts doesn't happen in a void. I have had
a great deal of support and help from parents, siblings, my
son, mentors, friends, colleagues and most of all the usually
patient encouragement of my wife Beth. The people of New Brunswick
have been wonderfully supportive of what I do, even if occasionally
baffled, and formed the solid base from which I have pursued
a career in the arts. I can't begin to enumerate all the people
who have been important to my life and career and I'm terrified
that by trying to list some of them I'll miss others, there
are just so many, they know who they are.
I also wish to thank the galleries that have been so crucial
to my survival and growth as an artist. There have been many
but I especially have to thank Sandra Ainsley and Elena Lee
for their friendship and support.
I feel privileged to be part of the tribe assembled for this
occasion. Certainly the biggest influences in my life beyond
my family have been fellow toilers in the arts. To receive
this award juried by my peers is an honour beyond measure.
Finally, I’d like to thank the Award partners. The
Samual and Saidye Bronfman Foundation, The Canadian Museum
of Civilization, and the Canada Council for the Arts. The
Canadian Museum of Civilization plays an essential role in
mounting contemporary and historical exhibitions and building
historically important collections. The Canada Council is
the flag ship of public arts organizations and it does an
enormous amount of very important work across the country
for artists and the organizations and institutions that support
the arts. The Bronfmans through the Saidye Bronfman Award
and in many other ways make it possible for us to honour one
of our kind each year. I am thrilled to see my work amongst
the work of other Saidye Bronfman Award recipients and craftspeople
from coast-to-coast in the exhibition, Unique, and to be included
in the Museum’s collection.
The SaidyeBronfman Award has been a wonderful encouragement
to us all and has enormously enriched the cultural landscape
of Canada.
Thank you.
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Essay from Galarie
Elena Lee Catalogue 2004
What I’m attempting with my work is to produce objects
that excite me as well as engage others. It’s really
as simple as that. I’ve had the experience so many times
of seeing: art that moved me, exhibitions that have left me
stunned, museum artifacts that made my heart sing...that had
the pulse of the real ... that captured something essential
and perhaps universal. I try to do that with my work.
While each piece may deal with a different variety of concerns
and influences, all the work comes from the same well of desire
to connect with myself, my surroundings and other people.
I sell my work so that I can afford to make more and to share
it with an “audience”. Being an artist is a perilous
and peculiar occupation that has many and varied rewards as
well as many and varied insecurities and pitfalls. Exhibitions
are a chance to come out of the woods and see if the work
really works and hasn’t just become a delusory obsession. |
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My life and work are intertwined.
The concerns of my life are reflected in the themes, even the
techniques of my work. I work principally in glass, clay and
bronze. They all involve transformation by fire. A good deal
of the work I have been engaged in over the last few years deals
with metaphor based on ideas concerning balance, fragmentation
and transformation: of the body, heart, mind, spirit, nature,
language & culture. The work is meant to have the feel of
the artifact: an emotional artifact made solid, a cultural artifact
from some future/past, reconstructed or guessed at. Some parts
are original, some new, others are assumed. These concerns inform
much of my work either very deliberately or often in some subtle,
even unintentional way. |
2003 catalogue statement
My work is metaphorical and allusive, but in loose felt ways,
rather than by the use of conscious specific literal references.
I'm usually seeking qualities of antiquity and mystery, something
unmoored from time and place. I strive for work that projects
a feeling of obscure provenance and yet evokes feelings of
deep recognition and connection.
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 IMPROV
Much of my approach to making art is improvisational; akin
to playing jazz. I do sketches; ideas progress or are discarded,
variations and themes develop. I experiment with materials
and techniques as I go. Most of the work starts out as a series
of experiments. I rarely have a title for a piece until after
it’s finished. The work is more likely to suggest a
name than the name suggesting the work; quite often the title
evolves with the piece.
Improvising doesn’t mean I start with an empty head.
I have ideas and a starting place, or at least a way to start
finding a starting place, as well as qualities and forms I
am looking for. I leave room for discovery and accident as
a piece progresses. If the end result is too programmed, preconceived
or self-conscious the life goes out of the process and the
work . It becomes akin to playing notes rather than feeling
the music.
My work is metaphorical and allusive, but in loose felt ways,
rather than by use of conscious specific literal references.
I’m usually seeking qualities of antiquity and mystery,
something unmoored from time and place. I strive for work
that projects a feeling of obscure provenance and yet evokes
feelings of deep recognition and connection.
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The artist at play.
1995 essay
What I like about what I do is that despite
the frustrations and risks of self-employment I am engaged
on a daily basis in activities and concerns that matter to
me. I have, I tell myself, control over my own working life
and if I feel like it's getting out of control I'm in a position
to change that. It's not always easy answering to oneself
but at least there is no question about whom I answer to ...
at least as far as my work is concerned.
I've made my living since 1972 as a …
What? Object maker? Certainly as a ceramist but also making
sculpture, architectural commissions from tables to fireplaces
in a wide range of materials but chiefly in clay, cast and
slumped glass and cast bronze. I thrive on experimentation,
transformation by fire (raku, bronze and glass casting, saunas!)
and the pursuit of creative ideas. I like challenges. I also
seem to need the balance periodically that throwing and trimming
provides to the chaos of my other creative pursuits.
My working life is always in flux. I used to think that once
I'd found the formula for a successful career, found the groove,
it would be easy sailing. Fat chance. I now realize this whole
business is about flux and change and one's ability to adapt
and be flexible with changing times and changing interests,
not to mention ageing body parts. I've learned from some mistakes,
sold others and seem to find some impossible to resist repeating
frequently. I feel that if I'm not screwing up every now and
then I'm not trying hard enough, not exposing myself to enough
risk.
Seeking balance between all the disparate parts of work and
life keeps me thoroughly engaged and forms a central theme
for much of my work in recent years. Life as an object maker,
vessel smith, balance seeker, mud-slinger, silica slumper...
is great; I wouldn't have it any other way . . . most days.
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