Transitions of a Still Life: Ceramic Work by Tam Irving (review)

Carol E. Mayer’s Transitions of a Still Life: Ceramic Work by Tam Irving is a delight to read as she situates Irving in the context of contemporary Canadian ceramics. It is clear from the introduction that Carol E. Mayer and Tam Irving are friends with many shared experiences. Mayer notes that they first met in 1989 when she called upon Irving for advice on installing a kiln at the Museum of Anthropology, where Mayer is a senior curator. Their rapport is evident in the ease with which Mayer discusses Irving’s life and work, and the access she enjoyed to his intimate thoughts on surviving as a ceramist. While this may run counter to the scholarly imperative that demands neutral subjectivity, the approach is charming and effective. She has distilled her many conversations with Irving into fluid descriptions of his ceramic works, which come to life through glossy images. This conversational tone is underpinned by substantial research into Tam Irving’s career progression, and Mayer is careful to present historical references to support her arguments.

The book is broken up into six chapters that trace a linear chronology of Irving’s life. A remarkable story emerges of a determined man who fell deeply in love with clay. Born in Portugal to a mother who practised maiolica ceramics, Irving received a degree in agriculture from Edinburgh University in 1952. He moved to Vancouver, then Winnipeg, where he took night classes in ceramics at the Winnipeg School of Art and rented a basement studio from the renowned ceramist Jack Sures. Irving was accepted into the University of California–Berkeley, to work with Peter Voulkos, a guru in the world of conceptual clay. Mayer recounts how Irving realized he was in love with the notion of the ‘pot,’ rather than sculptural, non-functional ceramics. Here the book is a departure from much of the literature on contemporary ceramics; whereas many publications celebrate Voulkos and his Canadian counterparts in the California Funk/Regina Clay ceramics movements (Marilyn Levine, David Gilhooly), Mayer offers an important counter-narrative – the story of the production studio potter. She does a good job outlining the difficult realities faced by Irving the production potter, and how they contradicted the utopian vision of studio pottery put forward by Bernard Leach. This theme runs through the chapter on Irving’s transition into a pottery instructor at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design) in 1974.

As a studio potter turned ceramic professor, Irving struggled to adapt his self-sufficiency into effective teaching for students. In addition, ‘It wasn’t long before he started to realize that craft at the art school was marginalized.’ Mayer offers a glimpse into the tensions between ceramic’s emphasis on skill and the school’s conceptual art focus. Irving developed ‘a series of objectives for his teaching that were based on his own practice,’ including an understanding of history, emphasis on skill, constant experimentation, individualism, self-criticism, and technical competency. Throughout the book, images of Irving’s ceramic works accompany the text, providing important reminders of the luscious surfaces, architectural forms, and utilitarian ergonomics that remain central to Irving’s clay sensibilities.

Mayer dedicates a chapter to Irving’s still lifes. These are a series of compositions ‘investigating how he might thematize the vessel,’ made up of a backdrop, a shelf, and clay vessels. These are remarkable studies derived from still life paintings that featured clay vessels. Irving’s former studio assistant, Ron Vallis, argues that by copying the painted ceramics forms of artists such as Giorgio Morandi and William Bailey, Irving was responding to ‘being at the art school.’ The book ends with the chapter ‘New Works,’ and here Irving surprises us by introducing colour and hard-edged forms. While these look miles from his humble brown pots, Mayer has carefully led the reader into understanding why Irving headed in this direction.

The art historical monograph is a tricky beast...