A celebration of works from metalsmith and mentor
ELORA — In the early 1970s, in tiny Erin District High School with its student population of about 300, Wesley Harris happened to wander into the art room looking for a peaceful place to study.
The room might have been quiet but the sketches tacked to the walls, the metal works on shelves by art teacher Arthur Brecken screamed inspiration and these many decades later, it’s still screaming.
Brecken became Harris’s art teacher, mentor, patron and friend in a relationship that spanned more than three decades until the artist’s death at age 87 in 2003. Now, an exhibit, the first time the works of both student Harris and teacher Brecken have been exhibited together, is on a cross-Canada tour, with one stop near Elora.
“Mentor & Metalsmith: the Silver Art of Arthur Brecken and Wesley Harris” is on at the Wellington County Museum until Oct. 28, when it heads back to the East Coast.
“Some are in tribute to him,” said Newfoundland-based Harris. “It’s an extended retrospective directly inspired by Arthur.”
Harris is a metalsmith of extraordinary skill, his work appearing in collections around the world. He was commissioned to create a pin for Princess Anne depicting the Royal Newfoundland Regiment coat of arms. In 2015, Harris was inducted into the prestigious Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Because of his successes, Brecken and his influence is never far from Harris’s thoughts, though their styles are quiet different.
This exhibit consists of 23 of Brecken works, some on loan from the artist’s niece, Grace MacNairn, from Nova Scotia. Each of Brecken’s pieces is identified with a small, clear plastic square marked with an understated though fluid “A” for Arthur.
Harris, who holds an undergraduate degree in music from the University of Toronto and a master of fine arts in metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art, in
Michigan, spent three years collecting enough pieces for this touring exhibit and he created a fully-illustrated 172 page catalogue.
Harris contributed 11 of his early works as well as 38 recent pieces and he speaks about his art in poetic terms, how his style evolved to more “smooth lyricism” in contrast to Brecken’s highly detailed
twisted wire enhancements.
In all cases there is the pure beauty of the silver, its glimmering sheen and smooth, curved lines. The rings by both artists in particular are beautiful, each one unique and a work of art, enhanced with precious and semi-precious stones. These are not mere finger
decorations.
Harris was born in Guelph, grew up near Erin and moved to Corner Brook after meeting his wife-to-be Margaret Culliton, a medical doctor, on the ferry to Newfoundland. The couple married in 1987 and settled in Corner Brook where he became a stay-athome dad and worked in his studio, always with Brecken’s words and inspiration guiding his work.
Harris said in this exhibit he has grouped pieces together to reflect the teacher and the student, their similarities and differences such as Brecken’s miniature but perfect tea set adjacent Harris’s full sized, functional one.
There are four obvious themes to the exhibit: nature/gardens, humour, music and faith.
Set on the second floor of the museum, case after case of exquisitely crafted works are displayed, mostly practical items such as tea pots, perfume bottles, spoons, salt and pepper shakers and jewelry as well as a few sculptural pieces, plus there are those fun touches of whimsy like a moustache brush, a pickle fork and a foot-shaped shoe horn entitled “Happy Feet.”
For this exhibit, Harris allowed himself an indulgence: to think in terms of sculpture rather than practical use.
“These sculptural pieces helped me to go in a new direction, a non-functional piece,” said Harris who is particularly proud of “Labrador Wave,” a pure silver sculpture of two Arctic terns fighting over a golden fish, set on a surface of blue/ black Labradorite, a very finicky and brittle material to work with.
The result is stunning. Every angle takes on a different hue.
Brecken often created works that were of pure imagination, much of it inspired by his years living in China as a boy.
Born in 1917, his father died in a work accident and his mother, possibly shocked into early delivery at the loss of her husband, died in childbirth. Fortunately for the tiny orphan, a Methodist missionary couple, Egerton and Vida May Brecken, had just returned to Canada on furlough from their work in China and put their names in for adoption.
At six months of age, Arthur was bundled up by the Breckens for the trip across the Pacific, then 3,800 kilometres up the Yangtze River to the city of Chengtu, in western China near the Himalayas. There, he would live for nine years in a magical playground surrounded by mountains, where seven rivers converged. He learned to speak fluent Mandarin.
“He was very humble, his values were shaped by his youth in China,” said Harris. “His faith was very important to him.”
Returning to Canada, Brecken went on to study at the Owens Museum of Fine and Applied Arts, Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, graduating in 1940. He was already an established artist when he moved to the slightly dilapidated 1850 Wedgewood blue cottage in Erin. The high school principal, who was just down the street, recognized Brecken’s talent and asked him to volunteer as an art teacher, a job he eagerly began in 1969.
The program was so successful that Brecken was hired to teach full time, but then the school board stepped in and he was released simply because he didn’t have a teaching degree. Brecken was removed from his job in 1975 and in an ironic twist that was the same year the town named him “Citizen of the Year.”
Brecken’s time at the school might have been short, but it was long enough to influence students such as Harris and he simply moved operations to his home. Harris regularly rode his bike to the house for lessons and one day he joked “another kitchen college.” The name stuck and Brecken would go on to teach adults and children alike in Kitchen College.
When Brecken taught, he never restricted lessons to conventional art. He included sketching, watercolours, high-fired enameling, leather tooling, woodcarving, copper tooling and of course, silversmithing, inspiring generations of artists such as Naomi Smith, the present folk artist-inresidence at Schneider Haus.
Harris said part of Brecken’s success as a teacher came from his kindness and deep interest in his students and he often became their patron, commissioning art which he would eventually return to the artist, what he called “the maker.”
And what would Brecken think of this exhibit that celebrates him and his work?
“I think he’d be pleased,” said Harris. “He made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives.”