The Daily NewsThursday, June 13, 2002

Ostrom serves up garden influence

By Marilyn Smulders - Artscape
The Daily NewsThursday, June 13, 2002

Walter Ostrom
Photo: Janet Kimber

Enter the art gallery and your mouth starts to water. Mmmmm... dessert. Cheesecake, key lime pie, trifle.

It’s the power of suggestion, because of course there is no dessert, only the plates to serve it on.

Renowned ceramicist Walter Ostrom elevates the humble dessert plate to high art in the exhibition, 120 Dessert Plates, on display to July 14 at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery. Painted in light pastel colours and hand-painted with botanical themes, there are 30 sets of plates altogether, arranged in rows on the walls.

In his flower-shaped plates, Ostrom marries two passions: ceramics, and his garden on the rocky shore of Indian Harbour. Like digging in dirt, Ostrom has pushed his fingers into the cold clay — his prints dot some of the surfaces or he uses a finger to swoosh around a pretty pattern. Decoration is inspired by the plants he tends: stamens, leaves, roots, the papery-thin blossoms of the rhododendron.

While all the plates were made with a mould, each set of four is highly individual — “I was interested in finding variety within uniformity,” explains Ostrom, a longtime professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Talk to Ostrom for any length of time, and you’ll discover his enthusiasm is contagious.

“I really believe pottery is the signifier of civilization,” he says. “When we came out of the trees, what made us special is that we could make pottery.

“It’s no mistake that all through the history of the world, ceramics have been the record of mankind. Every piece, even the most humble, has been a container for social, cultural and aesthetic information.”