CELEBRATING DUNDAS
Dundas’s Scott Barnim throws himself and his hometown into a celebratory exhibition
“Some of the work in the exhibition is very personal,” says Scott Barnim. “The kind of personal where I would ask myself, ‘How naked am I prepared to get?’”
Barnim, a well-known Dundas potter, is celebrating with “Testament: 40 Years of Life, Love, Pottery and Dundas,” an exhibition of 125 blue and white pieces at the Carnegie Gallery.
Forty years ago he founded Scott Barnim Pottery in Dundas. That was when he rented studio space from Bodil Pearson. She became an important mentor.
“Being a potter was always my passion. I knew I wanted this to be a part of my life,” he tells me. “By the time I was in my 30s I figured this was it for me, I was so invested I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
As his love of making pottery continued to grow, so did his love for Dundas.
“In time I became part of Dundas,” he says.
It’s fitting, then, that the Valley Town is a major theme of this exhibition. Many of the platters, bowls, pitchers, mugs, teapots and tiles boast Dundas landmarks, including Picone’s and the Carnegie Gallery.
Going all blue and white is a new venture for Barnim. He often looks to the past for ideas on new shapes and challenging techniques. This time, inspired by 19th-century English transferware platters, he tackled cobalt blue transferware.
“The images transferred to the pieces are all silkscreen-printed by hand,” he explains. “Leaving the brush behind was hard, every aspect of how you choose to decorate a piece had to be anticipated 10 steps back in the process.
“I used my own photographs and drawings, along with a bit of line-art elements. Creatively it was a very different way of thinking and working, and it’s important to push one’s 60-year-old brain out of its artistic comfort zone.”
Views of the escarpment and Dundas Valley, “where I do some of my best thinking,” appear on the sides of seven lidded ginger jars.
The central images, however, feature seven sins and virtues. Each jar displays a virtue on one side and a corresponding sin on the other.
One jar gives us Chastity-Purity: a single male in shorts standing on one leg, his hands folded in front of his chest. The other side features Lust: a male in shorts with one hand on his genitals.
“It was easy and fun to illustrate the sins, the virtues took effort,” Barnim recalls. “Traditionally they are portrayed as young women confidently presenting their authority over their virtue. I chose to illustrate them with men, because I think it’s men who really struggle with their sins and virtues.”
Barnim has also included portraits of himself and his loved ones. On the belly of “40 Years,” his selfie accompanies a portrait of the man in his life. The headand-shoulder portraits flank an hourglass. The large vessel’s shape echoes a bell krater, an
ancient Greek bowl.
“Being a husband and a father was very agreeable to me. The end of my marriage was very hard, hard for both of us, hard for our sons,” he says. “I find myself now dating a very nice man, a place I could never imagine myself being in 40 years ago.”
A similar bowl includes text referring to a gay man’s suicide in the 1980s.
“Working in the arts put one in a front-row seat of the AIDS crisis. To witness the social achievement of how far Canadians have enlightened ourselves is extraordinary. It angers me to hear politicians push our sex education curriculum backwards to the time when nonconforming persons were so shamed they killed themselves.
“We have to remember what we left behind and why it matters that we move forward.”
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Regina Haggo is giving an illustrated talk, No Angels, Please: Understanding Realism. The talk, at the Carnegie Gallery on Tuesday, Oct. 30, begins at 7 p.m. For more information and tickets, phone 905-627-4265.
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@the spec.com Special to The Hamilton Spectator