Review | Three artists blow away the winter blues at Earls Court Gallery - Hamilton Spectator

Brenda Nieves says she fell for clay the moment she touched it.

That was 10 years ago. A friend had encouraged Nieves to take an art course at Toronto’s Central Technical School.

“To ease the tension and stress I was experiencing having a fragile child,” Nieves tells me. “I thought I was going to be painting, a hobby I loved as a child. I loved sculpture: wood, clay, metal. With clay though, there was a visceral response to the touch. I had to do more.”

Since then she has created an impressive body of work — and teaches at the school where her love of clay took off.

Nieves joins Diana Rosa and Mimmo Baronello in “View Life,” a winter-blues-busting exhibition at Earls Court Gallery.

Nieves embraces both functional and sculptural ceramics. In her teaching she focuses on skills needed for functional work, because these skills are the same as those used for ceramic sculptures.

“Sculpture is my passion but when I am procrastinating, throwing a functional piece is just what I need to get me going.” In this exhibition she is showing what she calls her mythical sculptures. She hand-builds these hollow, almost life-size busts from stoneware, often adding unexpected materials such as cloth and wood.

“I do a lot of experimenting with texture, techniques, glazing. I love to think of ways to have the clay show different aspects of emotions and energy, delicacy or strength.”

“The Keeper” is loaded with visual and tactile appeal. Twisted rings encircle the horns at the root. Hair consists of curly shapes which frame the face and fall onto the shoulder. Face, neck and shoulder reveal contrastingly smoother surfaces. The base is made from folded cloth. One eye is closed, the other open — a suggestion of inner and outer vision.

“One sculpture leads to another,” Nieves says. “Thoughts of how I am going to execute each sculpture start my thoughts of the next sculpture I want to try.”

“Medusa” taps into the ancient goddess who turned men into stone. Needless to say, she became the evil woman in patriarchal societies. Nieves says Medusa incorporates strength, power — and vulnerability.

Medusa’s hair is one gorgeous mess of energetic snakes with open mouths, proof of Nieves’s awesome technical expertise.

“Gaya’s Gift” pays tribute to an earth goddess with a head of leaf-like hair. The sculpture rests on small birch logs.

Nieves says she wanted “to challenge the viewer to reconcile the beauty of the figure with her state. In popular culture, beauty is synonymous with perfection,” she says. “Persons who are different or differently abled are often seen and judged within that context. I watched my beautiful, brilliant, courageous child deal with these perceptions every day. Gaya’s Gift is to help us view beauty on its own terms. ”

Rosa, too, deals with themes of beauty. An award-winning artist, she has been exhibiting locally and internationally for more than 15 years.

“I value the spontaneous approach and instincts to guide my hand,” she says. “My work starts with a number of sketches on paper. Sometimes I don’t paint, I just dedicate days to draw and move my hand creating shapes and magical places.”

She gravitates in her paintings to the human figure, using line to build up complex patterns and fantastical figures. In “Let it Bloom,” a well dressed couple sit facing each other. In placing them against a plain background, Rosa creates an ambiguous space. “My work is based on my dreams and humans’ emotions.”

This painting is about inner beauty, she says. “It’s the contrast between fashion and makeup and the possibilities of flowering, blooming and growing internally. The fruits and flowers are the accumulated information, history and everything within the heart, mind and soul.”

Baronello’s paintings are more lifelike in style. Yet his compositions, inhabited by humans, animals or birds, are also fanciful. In “Bulb of Life” he replaces iris bulbs with light bulbs, uniting bulbs, stems and purple blooms in a joyful tangle.

RH

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

View Life

Who: Brenda Nieves, Diana Rosa, Mimmo Baronello

Where: Earls Court Gallery, 215 Ottawa St. N.

When: until Feb. 18

Hours: 10 to 5 Tuesday to Friday, 10 to 4 Saturday

Phone: 905-527-6685

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Review | Three artists blow away the winter blues at Earls Court Gallery - Hamilton Spectator
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