A Return to the Muses of Greece

By Suzanne Fournier

The following article is a shortened version of
a much longer piece which appeared recently in
Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 80 and is
reprinted in its current form with permission of
the author.

‘The English poet and literary critic Matthew
Arnold observed a century ago that virtually
all of the major cornerstones of our culture,
from law to medicine, science and religion, to
the arts and architecture, derived ultimately
from the ancient Greeks. For Suzy Birstein,

a Vancouver-based ceramic artist, a return to

Moon lights up the night..., by Suzy Birstein.

Greece in her recent work as both a creator
and facilitator of art, represents a full-circle
return to the spiritual inspiration for her
chosen calling as an artist.

Tt was in Greece as a 20-year-old student
that Birstein’s artistic muses first tapped her on
the shoulder. Luxuriating in the magnificent
Greek islands of Corfu and Crete, absorbed
in the ancient art and architecture on offer,
Birstein felt in touch with freedom, creativity
and passion for new experience (see PGBC
Newsletter, April 2009: www.bcpotters.
com/newsletters/200904PGBCNewslett
er.pdf). Since her graduation in 1980 from
the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design
with an Honours diploma in ceramics,
Birstein has gone on to create a wide and
diverse body of handbuilt pottery, ranging
from functional tableware to a series called
Portrait Masks and large double-sided Duet
busts replete with multicultural motifs. She
embraces such diverse influences as Picasso,
Modigliani, Frida Kahlo and Beatrice Wood
to Busby Berkeley and Carmen Miranda.
‘The cultural icons that recur in her sculpture
include the busy many-handed Indian gods,
Venetian-style masks and now, the ‘classic
Greek-influenced Birstein columns and busts,
all created to the ever-present outpouring of
music ranging from tango, opera, blues and
jazz, from Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter to
Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen,

Birstein communicates through the faces
and figures that dominate her art, driven by a
stream-of-consciousness drawing and painting
technique that draws on widely-disparate
cultural themes.

“Within a single statue, there can be a
Chinese warrior, an Egyptian god and a
cancan dancer,” notes Birstein. When she
says, “I long to merge the power of Nefertiti
with the spirit of Carmen Miranda” Birstein
is speaking literally and descriptively. Her
ceramic sculptures blend “archetypal icons
that embrace the power of ancient and
contemporary world cultures” with the

with SUZY BIRSTEIN

where Mama Mia was filmed!

popular culture of music, film and dance
that she has embraced since childhood. In
her work, all of those influences and themes
somehow combine harmoniously, brought
together by the brilliance and subtlety of the
way she wields colour on earthenware slabs and
coils with fired and cold surfaces, combining
multiple glazes, underglazes, pencils, black
line, lustres, acrylics and patinas on bisqued
surfaces and the rich textures she achieves with
stamped, figured and embossed wet surfaces.
To Birstein, who invariably wears a brightly
jewelled bindi on her forehead in the midst of
her cascading, multicoloured Greco/African
style braids, all of the artistic reflections of
her life are about honouring the diverse fabric
and social harmony in the Canadian culture
in which she lives and works,

It is in her latest body of work that
virtually all of Birstein’s artistic influences
and inspirations came together. In a typical
synchronicity, she was on her way to a tap
dance class when she saw Greek columns in
a shop window and instantly saw how they
could be combined with her own sculpture
to form life-size figures. “A voice inside cried,
‘Columns. Nine Greek columns for the nine
Greek muses,” says Birstein. The series had
actually already begun with a muse that called
on the personas of King Tut and Ganesha, the
first in a new direction Birstein had begun
toward large clay sculptures, which barely fit
inside her home-studio kiln. The torso and
head of the Ganesha figure survived but the
base, upon loading, broke into thousands
of pieces. Spotting an elephant column that
day in the shop window, Birstein could
visualize her Ganesha perched atop it. She
envisioned eight more sculptures that would
incorporate Greek columns as foundations.
“Each ceramic character would be inspired
by its found column,” Birstein decided, “and

I would glaze, paint, patina the ceramic and

Continued on Page 11,
Melding cultures

r

as Se

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter « July/August 2040

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