By Sandra Marshall
Taunyee Robbins was raised by the sea in the small town of Rockport, Massachusetts. She lived in Cape Ann, an artist’s community with a long tradition of famous painters who came to represent the beautiful scenery en plein air. Her mother, Mary Robbins, was a fabulous watercolour painter and taught Taunyee how to paint when she was around ten years old. She was surrounded by an appreciation for all the arts, and continued her studies at the Massachusetts College of Art.
One summer while she was waitressing, she served a family who were speaking French, of which she had a beginner’s knowledge. Taunyee wondered if they were from France, but they responded that no, they were from Quebec. “Quebec?” she queried. “Canada”, they replied. During her school years, Canada was shown as entirely white on the map… snow obviously, she had imagined. Obviously not! She wanted to know more, so asked a girlfriend to join her on a road trip to a place called Quebec City, and off they drove. That little road trip in the summer of 1969 introduced her to a whole new culture and a whole new country.
She fell in love with all of it and returned home to announce that she was going to go live in Quebec for a while. But she told her family not to worry, she would be still connected by land so she could always find her way home!
On New Year’s Eve, of that year Taunyee became a landed immigrant in Canada and changed the whole course of her life in the blink of an eye. However, when she arrived in Quebec, she quickly realized that, her high school French skill was not going to get her far! As a new immigrant she was offered French classes with all the other immigrants. They had a terrific teacher and enjoyed that time. She became a Canadian citizen around 1980 and holds dual citizenship.
Taunyee has wanderlust -She says that she prefers the more exotic countries such as Morocco, Jordan and Egypt, as well as some of the Caribbean islands. They stir her imagination with their colors, fragrances and music! But over the years she has lived in Montreal, St. John’s, and Roddickton Newfoundland (a village on the Great Northern Peninsula) and rural Quebec.
When she arrived in Montreal, she was fortunate to land a job with The Montreal Star newspaper. They taught her how to paste-up, design ads, and do graphic design. She continued in that field for a couple of years before she married and started a family.
In 1985, after her marriage ended, Taunyee moved to Ottawa with her three children. She also met Allen Stanish then, who would become her future husband in 1990, at a Centretown community center where aspiring jugglers and unicyclists practiced.
Taunyee re-entered the field of graphic design at Maruska Studios in Ottawa’s lively Market area. What a wonderful creative job! She designed, created colour mock-ups, cut and pasted… everything was hands on. Then in 1986 the company design work ‘transitioned’ to a square box called an Apple computer.
She missed hands-on creating and enrolled at the Ottawa School of Art in a sculpture class. Her first oeuvre was a life size bust in solid clay and she needed a forklift to move the head around. She created a plaster mold of her work and cast it in concrete. She says that she never had so much fun in her life! So, that was the beginning…
Garden sculpture had always appealed to her and she decided, with her newfound skills, to make some for herself. She designed a series of sculptures based on mythic creatures, gargoyles, lions, Greek gods, the Sun, the Windman, the Green man… Friends and family were taken by them and wanted her sculptures too. That was the start of Taunyee’s own business, Cosmoz Design (Capricious Compositions of a Peculiar Nature). Her husband Allen learned how to make molds and cast the pieces in concrete, accompanying each sculpture with a fable or story. They continued the business until 1999, when they moved back to Massachusetts to stay with her mother for a while. They were prepared to return to Canada in 2008 after her mother passed away, but then the American financial market crashed and they only made it back in 2014.Two years later Allen passed away.
In time, Taunyee began to work in clay again, only this time in fired ceramics. It was a whole different ballgame! It was a challenge to create a hollow clay sculpture and to learn the different techniques of fabrication and firing. She discovered the engineering side of her brain! She had to keep the sculpture from blowing up in the kiln and discover the million different ways to finish the piece. She began using simple oxides and has recently been experimenting with underglazes and a scratched design technique called sgraffito. Cold finishes such as acrylic paint and even pastel were also explored. Taunyee feels that she just touched the surface of what is possible.
Over the years she has worked in every medium she could find: oil and acrylic painting, print and paper making, pastel, ink, multimedia, concrete and clay. Each experiment in these media has contributed to her creative expression.
In her clay work, Taunyee is moved by an idea first, and then determines how to express that idea in clay. She makes a number of loose sketches to capture the attitude or flow of the piece. If it is a face, the expression is the most important to her. However, a sketch doesn’t take you very far in the three dimensional world. After the idea, she must figure out how to construct it, which is the most difficult part and challenging for her. It’s called trial and error! However, once things are settled, she allows the clay to express itself. Taunyee loves how her animal and human characters take shape. They seem to emerge out of the clay by their own volition, a sign of her receptivity to new ideas.
Her only plan for her future work is to carry on exploring. She has really just begun and there is so much she wants to learn and try.
The advice she has for anyone starting out is to take some classes for the basics, and then just keep working at it. Taunyee quotes the poet Rumi “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
Taunyee wants to touch people on an emotional level, to uplift their hearts or invite them to look deeper. That is her special skill.
She joined the National Capital Network of Sculptors in September 2017, where she found like-minded artists and has exhibited at the annual sculpture show since then. She also sells work when people contact her from her Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/Taunyeesculptor
Taunyee is a member of the Ottawa Guild of Potters as well and you can find her profile at www.ottawaguildofpotters.ca
Don’t forget to check out Taunyee’s work in our Online Gallery at https://sculptureottawa.ca/online-gallery-2/
It was a steel wire sculpture made by eight-year old Bastien Martel that set his future direction in art. A camp project of twisting wire into a three dimensional figure was a revelation that he could not forget. His journey in education and art subsequently took many twists and turns – business school, wood working, furniture design and production, painting, drawing and sculpture all had important lessons for him as they lead him from Montreal to Victoriaville, Toronto and then to Honolulu.
Bastien considered welding classes and programmes but they all seemed too long and involved at the time. It is when he joined Jean-Louis in his studio in Montreal that he had the opportunity to discover metal cutting and welding. It was the perfect opportunity to learn sculptural skills. It also led to discussions: What is art? What makes someone an artist? What does being an artist entail? Bastien was exposed to the many facets of the art world. New techniques were tried –
Martel has worked with wood and stone but found both unforgiving materials. Steel allows him to rapidly create an image and it easily accepts additions or reductions. Steel has the strength to tolerate the abuse of the journey. Bastien’s experience in furniture production and design taught him design concepts, preparation work, planning, measurements and inventory. But mostly it confirmed his love of steel and metals.
In recent years Bastien has explored the breakthroughs of 20th centrury modernist painters using contemporary 3D welded steel. He continues the tradition of objets d’art.
Bastien recently completed series of figurative, portrait and surrealist sculptures, exploring themes of loneliness and isolation. His current exploration is abstraction. He was looking for a quick creative release for feelings of anxiety and confusion created by our imposed Covid confinement. He delved into these emotional states using his clay work technique with welded steel pieces, using the differently shaped metal pieces as his color palette. Between chaos and control, the variously shaped pieces were dropped or thrown onto the clay surface and welded together, in gesturally expressive abstract sculptures.
For others who may wish to take up sculpture, Bastien encourages a studio-based education through college or university, including large components of business management. He recommends this to be followed by apprenticeship with an established artist. There are so many hats an artist must wear and so many skills required for success.
At a young age, Rocky Bivens’ interest in art was first piqued by museum shows such as a Van Gogh exhibition at the Detroit institute of Art, but he did not engage in the art world at that time. Although he has been a clay artist for over 40 years, Rocky started his adult life in mathematics and philosophy at Oakland University in Michigan. He immigrated to Canada and moved to Toronto working at a warehouse. Then about two years later, he joined a commune in Wabaushene Ontario where he and associates designed and built a geodesic dome, one of the first privately built in Ontario.
second year, he began to teach classes at night. Once he graduated, the school asked him to teach full time. He was drawn to the sculpture-making process in a visceral way, interested in abstract work and insisting on being spontaneous in his methods.
Rocky favours three-dimensional work. Functional and decorative pottery was his initial interest, but he welcomed the challenge and possibilities of clay sculpture, as he became less enamoured in making traditional pottery. He glazed his early sculpture but found that he wanted more control of colour. Now he chooses to glaze some sculptures and for others he employs acrylic paint, playing with colour and texture. Bivens’ sculptures are primarily abstract, anthropomorphic forms. He is strongly moved by form -“from the human abstractions of Henry Moore and essential forms of Constantin Brancusi to the soft, flowing beauty of Auguste Rodin’s La Danaïde and his emotive Burghers of Calais”.
He builds his structures using coils of clay, leaving a hollow centre, important in the drying and kiln firing technicalities. Interestingly, it takes as much time for him to finish the work by smoothing or texturing, as does the construction. Once complete and fully dry, the kiln is fired to about 1,000 degrees Celsius. If he decides to glaze it, he then re-fires the piece to around 1,250 degrees. He may decide instead to use an unfired glaze, such as acrylic paint. Once completed, the painted work is coated with an outdoor rated varnish-like finish.
Hengameh’s interest in art began before she left her native land. Although women were not permitted to study pottery in Iran, she persisted in her desire to learn that craft at the ministry of culture in Tehran at the age of 28. Over a period of several years and her courage and determination against denial, she learned wheel throwing and improved her skills by making many vases, opening the way for other women. But she found her life constrained by the political sentiments of the time where authorities forbade the uncovered appearance of the human body in artwork, particularly if the subject was female. People were punished for thinking or dreaming outside of their appointed cultural conditions. Today, her drive to social justice springs from the injustice that she witnessed under the dictatorship. She strives to make us aware that this cruelty will happen in every country if we close our eyes to what is really happening. Hengameh cites a Persian poem that describes her belief:
“If you have no sympathy for human pain
But clay had left an indelible attraction for Hengameh, and she returned to that medium when she became familiar with the Ottawa art community. She became a member of the Ottawa Guild of Potters to connect to clay artists and began courses at Sunnyside Community Centre, where she could have her work kiln-fired and glazed. Her first Guild sponsored ceramic exhibition was in 1999 when she was accepted to the Guild’s annual pottery sale. This encouraged her to keep improving her skills. When the Sunnyside clay studio was closed, she found the Dempsey Community Centre to continue her passion for clay – hand building rather than wheel thrown work. As Dempsey did not have a kiln, she worked with unfired paper clay, applying an oil patina to solidify the work. Her sculptures were free flowing, following the inspiration that hand-building clay gives her. She designed the pieces for wall hanging, where her delicate pieces would not be damaged. Her process begins with a clay base into which she incorporates elements for hanging her works. Once this preparation is done, she engages with the soft clay, building confidently, moving the clay according to its bidding, moulding the curves with her deepest feelings.
In 2011, Hengameh Kamal Rad joined the National Capital Network of Sculptors. The fact that two of her juried works of fired paper clay were part of the 2013 sculpture exhibition at the Museum of Nature in Ottawa, gave her positive feedback. Her sculptural work is energized by the outdoors – the glorious flow of water and snow. The mysteries of design in nature and space, of life and reproduction are all part of her creations.
Edna’s life had a somewhat royal beginning, as her parents were employed by Britain’s Royal Household and they lived in the Royal Mews in London, England. As a girl she had wonderful freedom to roam and explore the stables, and nearby St. James Park and Hyde Park. Her life was filled with visions of huge horses, carriages, blacksmithing, all manner of birds, fish, flowers and trees that have become inspiration for her artwork. Edna’s first art impulses were sparked by the colourful and free illustrations of impressionists Van Gogh and Gaugin in her school classrooms. After high school she turned to courses in technical illustration. Adept at this work, she was later able to skillfully translate the plans and elevations of mechanical equipment into 3-dimensional drawings, a skill still useful in building her 3D sculptures.
In 1962, newly married, she and her husband Clement moved to Quebec City where he became a professor at Université Laval. As their family grew from none to four children, Edna took evening art classes where she was introduced to new concepts each month, such as leather work and painting nature. She found it a relief to be engaged in these creative activities while adjusting to her new home and new language.
With some colleagues after university, they found rental space in unused buildings where they worked on projects together and even rented advertising space in buses to show their work. It was very reassuring to Edna to be with other artists and to see their unique patterns of work. When the studio spaces became unavailable, Edna began to work from home, but she needed, in Virginia Wolf’s words, “a room of one’s own”. Her personal studio became a creative world of her own. This space gave Edna the freedom to develop her artistic individuality. She says that it’s a very messy place but a personal oasis for her to expand and grow.
Papier mâché captured her attention when she spied the work of Victor Tolgesy hanging from the ceiling of the Byward Market Building. She contacted him for information about the process and she found him very accommodating and kind. Tolgesy’s work appealed to Edna’s sense of play and joy. She was also influenced by René Magritte as she recognized that he changed visual reality into his own creative reality where anything was possible.
with an image in her mind which is not well defined. Using papier mâché allows her to make changes and offers her hands the impetus toward her vision of the finished product. This process begins by drawing on a foam board. She then builds a skeleton using strong wire which is glued to the foam core. At this stage the framework can be twisted and bent to achieve the desired shape. Multiple layers of newspaper are applied with glue to build the shape. The glue, Natura, is allowed to dry between each additional layer. For the final layer, paper towels are applied before finishing the work with acrylic paint.
“With the galleries being closed I’m not particularly motivated to create new works. I’m trying to work on some online workshops and tutorials but needed a little boost. In my trade show days as a graphic designer, 25+ years ago, I used to do stage design and some contract work with an interior decorator. I would do colour coordinated oversized paintings for large walls – very loose abstracts or florals. We recently moved so I decided to do a colour schemed texturized acrylic painting for my new bedroom to coordinate with my bedspread. It works . . . and the creative juices are starting to stir again.”
National Capital Network of Sculptors 