Moved by metal
Exhibit shows fine works of silver and gold
Sixteen years ago, while preparing to participate in a group art exhibition, Corner Brook metalsmith Wesley Harris wrote to his mentor, asking for a loan of a particular item. It was a small box, crafted in sterling silver and labradorite, that Harris had made almost a decade earlier on commission from the same man, and he wanted to include it in the show.
The mentor, Ontario artist Arthur Brecken, sent the box as requested, and included a lovely and poignant note.
“Dear Wesley, Please keep the stone box. I hope that all goes well at your show. My days are numbered as I enter my 86th birthday. I will not be around much longer, so now is the time to pass it back to the creator. Many people have seen it. It is time for you to show others. Thanks again. Arthur.”
Brecken died a year later. Today, that box — and 72 other metalworks by him or Harris, or both — is featured in “Mentor and Metalsmith,” an exhibit running at the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador gallery in St. John’s.
Harris curated the exhibit on his own, as a tribute to the work of Brecken, who never really showed his work much in a gallery setting while he was alive. It’s also a tribute to Brecken’s inspiration in Harris’s own work.
The pieces clearly fit together in theme and general style, but the differences between the two artists’ work are obvious.
On one hand, Brecken’s pieces reveal touches of Asia (where he had lived as a child), of art deco style, of ornate details and a love of twisted silver wire.
On the other, Harris’s pieces are more minimal, with flowing lines and a melodic touch.
Harris was a high school student in Ontario when he first met Brecken, a local artist invited into the school to provide an otherwise non-existent art program.
Brecken’s instruction touched on all types of art, from fashion design to painting, but it was the metalworking that intrigued Harris and a small group of other students.
Brecken, whom Harris says never charged for his art instruction, often invited his students to his house to continue their projects at his kitchen table, leading them to rename his home “Kitchen College.” At that point, Harris was interested in art, but focused on music, and stayed in touch with Brecken while he completed a music degree at the University of Toronto.
Harris later realized he was perhaps not cut out for the musical stage, and turned to visual arts, earning a master’s degree in metalsmithing from Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan.
After winning a national silver design competition — with a silver and moonstone chalice included in the current exhibit — in 1980, Harris landed a job as a commercial silver designer.
He returned to Canada and began working as a freelance metalsmith in 1986, and met his wife, Margaret, on the ferry to Newfoundland that year. They married and settled in Corner Brook two years after that, where they had two daughters and still live and work — he as a metalsmith and jewelry artist, she as a family doctor.
Harris and Brecken remained in touch, becoming dear friends.
“Mentor and Metalsmith” took Harris more than two years to organize, and includes 23 of Brecken’s pieces, 11 of Harris’s early works directly inspired by Brecken and 38 of Harris’s recent works, paying tribute to him.
Some of the works are specifically paired: Brecken’s tiny doll-size but fully functional tea set, intricately created in 1967, is displayed next to Harris’s full-size silver and mahogany tea service, completed recently. Salt and pepper shaker sets display similarities but clear differences in style, as do perfume bottles, spoons and stunning sculptural rings.
Both men draw obvious inspiration from nature, specifically flowers, and Harris’s parallels with water and his musical background are echoed in the flow and curves of his lines. He’s fond of using precious and semi-precious stones in an exquisite but understated manner, allowing them to jump out at the viewer at the last minute in most cases.
There are vases, pendants, letter openers, bells, and a quirky silver and opal mustache comb in the show, but Harris’s best work is perhaps in his decorative art. His “Violin and Bow” sculpture, which he started in high school and completed last year, is a tiny silver, yellow gold and white gold violin with thin, silver, tunable, pluckable strings and a bow of silver and white plastic.
“Lotus and Landscape,” his first-ever non-functional piece, contains a silver lotus blossom with a citrine and yellow gold centre, resting on a carved jade leaf. The rounded top opens, revealing a mountain landscape inspired by Brecken’s stories of the Himalayas.
Harris’s “Labrador Wave” is unmissable, and features two Arctic terns carved in pure silver, fighting over a rose gold fish. One bird is resting on a sheet of silver and iridescent Labradorite, shaped to display water movement; the other seems to hang in mid-air. The piece has already been purchased by The Rooms and will become part of its permanent collection.
“Mentor and Metalsmith” will run at the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador gallery until April 21. It will then move to galleries in B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia before returning to Newfoundland at the Tina Dolter Gallery in Corner Brook’s Rotary Arts Centre Jan. 9 to March 4, 2019.
More information on Wesley Harris and his work can be found online at www.wesleyharris.ca.