This is part of an ongoing summer series. Come back each week to learn about another hidden gem.
For more than 30 years, The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery has been bringing some of the best art from across the country and beyond to Waterloo Region.
“We collect, exhibit and research clay and glass, as well as vitreous enamel,” Denis Longchamps, the executive director and chief curator, said. “One thing that’s important for us is that it’s a public gallery. We are free admission, so anybody can come and everybody is welcome.”
The gallery features about 15 exhibitions every year, often featuring multiple ones at once, throughout their building on Caroline Street North in Waterloo.
There’s also a permanent collection that contains about 1,500 pieces of ceramic, glass and enamel art.
“We’re always changing the exhibitions throughout the year,” said Peter Flannery, senior curator and collections manager. “That involves bringing in work by artists from across Canada and often internationally.”
Exhibits are planned three to five years in advance.
“We’re looking at which artists we want to include, what kind of themes and things might be relevant to the community, and then building with those artists that we select from across Canada to develop those exhibitions,” Flannery explained. “That often includes loaning pieces from other galleries or private collectors, and a lot of the time from the artists themselves – bringing them here, setting it all up, and then having the exhibition.”
Denis Longchamps, left, and Peter Flannery, right, are involved in deciding what exhibitions to bring to The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
Current exhibits
Flannery said deciding what themes to feature is a balancing act between what’s topical right now and what will still be relevant in a few years.
“It’s adapting to what’s going on in the community,” he said. “If we need to make changes, we try to do that to make sure we’re having things that the community wants to see, seeing themselves represented in the exhibitions and really telling important stories that aren’t being told elsewhere.”
There are a few exhibitions on display this summer. One is titled ‘Form and Reform.’
“It’s our major exhibition featuring works by Bruce Cochrane, who taught at Sheridan for many years and he’s really well known within the ceramics community,” Flannery explained. “It’s a really interesting way of working with ceramics, as well as architectural themes and styles.”
Part of The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery’s ‘Patterns that Bind Us’ exhibition featuring Hello Kitty glasswork. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
There’s also an exhibit called ‘Patterns that Bind Us’ which is part of the Emerging Talent Series.
“’Patterns that Bind Us’ features glassworks that relate to Priscilla Kar Yee Lo’s experience as an Asian Canadian and the ways that different stereotypes and standards are placed upon Asian women, and ways to break through those in kind of subtle and interesting ways using images like Hello Kitty as this kind of critique,” Flannery said.
Part of The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery’s ‘Patterns that Bind Us’ exhibition featuring Hello Kitty glasswork. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
Additionally, there’s a small exhibit called ‘A Better Tent City.’ It was created through the gallery’s Sharing Experiences program, which invites different community groups in to work with clay.
“We invited their clients and the staff to come and do a plate while sharing their experiences, so it was humbling to listen about homelessness, how they got there, and their wanting to go back into society,” Longchamps said. “I think art can play a big role in changing the perception of people, so sharing those experiences and having an exhibition, people can come and see and read about those experiences that people share with us. I think it’s creating awareness.”
A look at the A Better Tent City exhibition at The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
Connecting to the community
The gallery wants to appeal to people of all ages, backgrounds and interest levels by offering a variety of different programs. There are summer day camps, Saturday art activities, teen and adult workshops in September, and more.
“We try to connect with the community,” Longchamps said. “It’s a way for people to come and engage. That’s why we have sketchbooks on benches, because people can leave notes and leave their thoughts. Sometimes reading them is quite humbling as well, to see the baggage sometimes that people bring here, and to find hope or an answer to a question.”
Form & Reform exhibition at The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in Waterloo. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
Offering programming for children is something that holds personal significance for Longchamps.
“In my case, my art teacher in Grade 3 made all the difference because I didn’t feel that I belonged anywhere,” he explained. “I was not good in sport, I was not good in gym. I didn’t feel that I belonged. And then I found art as an outlet, and the art classes is where I was quite successful.”
He’s hoping to offer that same feeling to other kids.
“It’s giving them an outlet where they can express themselves and they can hopefully grow up and that stays with them. I think we need to start engagement with art at an early stage for people to understand it. It’s not in all schools’ curriculum anymore, so at least here they have a chance to engage with it and discover it and hopefully they’ll come back.”
Longchamps said he hopes everyone who walks through the gallery’s doors feels welcome and included.
“[I hope they] recognize themselves in maybe some of the displays we present,” he said. “Through the years, we’re trying to address different issues, different communities, different groups. We’re trying to bring voices that we don’t hear anywhere else through the arts.”
It’s also giving a platform to artists who might not get the opportunity elsewhere.
“I think we’re the only gallery in Canada that focuses on clay and glass, so it gives us a really unique opportunity to highlight artists that aren’t being shown in a lot of other galleries, and just do very creative exhibitions with their work,” Flannery explained.
With free admission all year round, this hidden gem has its doors opened for everyone.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
