By Zane DeNoncourt for The Saint Joseph’s Community Newsletter
Meet Fenn Martin of Ohio West: artist, ceramist, bon vivant, philosopher, inventor, champion of rural life and small scale farming. Living here and producing art in his studio, Fenn is truly a dynamic whirlwind, a force to reckon with, a voice to listen to.
At NSCAD, Fenn studied figurative sculpture, portraiture, human anatomy sketching, ceramics, and so on. He now describes himself as a « ceramist » (not a sculptor or potter or tile maker.) As part of his specialist studies, he went to Istanbul, Turkey, where he discovered the art of tile making with repeating or tessellating patterns.
Fenn’s rural surroundings in the Ohio Valley, Antigonish county, was the ground for the subject matter of this current show. He is deeply concerned about rural depopulation. Echoing development activist Jane Jacobs, Fenn says “The slow irreversible exodus of youth to urban centres is the single most important trend now happening in Canada, especially Eastern Canada. Consequently, 10,000 years of know-how in small scale agricultural and family farm lore will be lost foreverâ€. This has become the subject matter of his art.
In the current show, there will be three styles of work. The first is a series of busts, sculpted in clay, featuring 5 elders from the Ohio Valley. Traditionally, such heads were used to document, immortalize and pay tribute to elite persons, ranging from Roman Emperors, benefactors and the politically powerful. In sculpting the likeness of local small-scale farmers, Fenn advocates the importance of these individuals and this time and place.
The second part of Fenn’s work is a series of friezes. Traditionally a series of friezes was used to decorate the facade of a public building and to tell the complex story of a particular time period in a compact graphic format. In keeping with his world view, Fenn sculpts images that celebrate vanishing rural life : milking a cow by hand, horse-drawn machinery, square bales, shingled barns, using the Ohio scenery as a background.
In the third facet of the show, Fenn collaborates with fellow Ohio artist Nicholas Johnson, a “Romantic†painter trained in Austria with internationally known expert Fuchs. Johnson works in egg tempera technique. In their collaborative work, Fenn creates repeating tessellating patterns on decorative tiles, using wrenches, sockets, chain-saw chains, etc. Then Nicolas paints integrated panels using the subdued warm earth colours natural to this landscape: the color of hay, of winter vegetation, forest greens. Fenn speaks of the delight in collaborating with Nicholas : “We complement one another in our work.â€
Fenn’s pride in commemorating this time and place is evident and contagious. His artistic work is very accessible. People can view these works and see a pastoral world mirrored back to them. They will be delighted by the audacity and freshness of the collaged material. Fenn feels immense satisfaction when viewers interacting with his pieces are moved to create their own monumental tales.
Fenn’s recent work will be shown at the St FX Art Gallery from January 8th to February 8th. The Opening is on Thursday January 8 from 7-9 PM. There will be a « Meet the Artists» session on Wednesday January 15, at 12 noon.
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