Artist: Jim Thomson (1953 – 2013)

Title: Untitled (pot with lid)

Medium: Clay

Dimensions: 10.5 “x 9” (h x w) with a 32” circumference at its widest

Signature: Signed on base

Price: $1200.

 

 

Brief Biography

1953	Born Ottawa, Ontario.
1973	Vancouver School of Art, Vancouver, British Columbia.
1976	Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario.
1978	Studied in Thailand and Japan.
1982-83	The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta. Winter Cycle Master’s Program.

 

Exhibition History

1991	Ashton’s Gallery, Toronto, Ontario.
1992	“5th National Biennial of Ceramics”; Trois Rivières, Québec (City of Trois Rivières’ Prize). “Calendar”; The Craft Gallery, Ontario Crafts Council, Toronto, Ontario.
1993	“Boboli” Summer Courtyard Installation; Burlington Art Centre, Burlington, Ontario. “Into the Corners: A Look at In-depth Collecting”; Burlington Art Centre.
1994	“6th National Biennial of Ceramics”; Trois-Rivières, Québec.
1995	Prime Gallery, Toronto, Ontario.
1996	“Reshaping Tradition: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics in Asian Modes”; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario.
1997	“FIRE+EARTH: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics”; Burlington Art Centre. “Jim Thomson”; Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, New York.
1998	“FIRE+EARTH: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics”; Itabashi Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. “Regatta”; Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario.
1999	“Canada – Clay Today”; curated by Susan Jefferies for the George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art’s touring exhibition first shown in Amsterdam during “The Ceramic Millenium” conference. “A Grand Design” (multi-media installation); Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
2000	“FIRE+EARTH: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics”; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2001	“FIRE+EARTH: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics”; The Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan. “Recent Work” (solo exhibition); Prime Gallery, Toronto, Ontario.
2002	“FIRE+EARTH: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics”; Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay, Ontario. “Fire at Both Ends” (solo exhibition);Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario.

 

 

Publications
Sitting on Top of the World. Ontario Craft Magazine, Winter 1990-91.
Jim Thomson: Vanishing Vessels. Work Seen, Artist’s Forum, Winter 1991-92.

 

INTERVIEW: 

Artist Profiles – Jim Thomson

The following article first appeared in “The Low Down to Hull and Back News” in the December 21, 2005 issue. Reprinted with permission.

Finding trust in the raw material

by Catherine Joyce

There comes a time in the life of an artist when one arrives at a certain place that is familiar, a place of quiet depth and trust where the need to constantly reinvent disappears. Things just are, both within and without.

Jim Thomson has come to this place. After 30 years of experience as a ceramic artist, he has learned to let go. “You spend all this time figuring things out. Gradually a freedom comes. You trust in the raw material. You recognize the bigger picture – you’re part of it. Now you respond to your place, to where you are, and you find the language to express it.”

Essentially self-taught, Jim remembers key figures who inspired him to see: his mother, who gave him chalk and permission to draw on the walls as a child; Betty Brydon, his art teacher at Hopewell School, who challenged him to self-expression; and Reva Dolgoy at Glebe Collegiate, who encouraged him to listen to his inner voice, to understand the importance of awareness.

Then there was that moment in 1972 – Jim was nineteen, taking one year in the Vocational Art program at the High School of Commerce when he opened his first bag of clay “I smelt this moist, mouldy, garden-earthy smell. Time and space merged. There was no going back. I always knew I would be making art, but up until then I expected to become a painter. Clay took me over completely.”

At the Vancouver School of Art, where he majored in painting, he drew pots, circles, and volumes, until his teachers said, “Just go to the Ceramic Studio, Thomson!”

“I began to suspect that in Fine Art I was going to have to answer to ideas other than my own. In the clay studio, that pressure wasn’t there because the professors weren’t really interested in art theory I felt free to express myself and to find my own way.

“Later, after I began to understand functional ceramics, I rediscovered ‘Art’ issues. I embodied formal elements like shape, surface and colour, with elements referencing my idea of experience’. The work began to dance between the two worlds of art and craft. ‘Art’ seemed to be about experience whereas ‘Craft’ seemed to be experience.”

Exploring notions of beauty, where the shadow of ugliness, illness and death subverted each piece, Jim went on a journey into his own head, producing wild and eclectic work that soon garnered him a national and international reputation. His annual Open House, now into its 23rd year, moved from the Ottawa Market area to East Aldfield this year – to Lolaland, where he now teaches ceramics at his Studio school.

For the last three years Jim has been experimenting with the primary shape of the funnel, its simplicity, its beauty, creating what he calls “Familiars” – where function and mystery meet.

“The ‘Familiar’ is not what you think it is, or it’s more: an entry point, an architectural construct that defies everyday conventions of how things get situated. It suggests a kinship with how we create our perceptions of reality. “I’ve learned much through the experience of making Art. At times I think I’ve sensed the ‘Other’, and the possibility of knowing where I am within the universe. The ‘Other’ is out there and after years of devotion, it will reveal itself. It always does. The ‘Other’ will become a ‘Familiar'”

And Jim Thomson will be at home to receive it.