ABOUT DAVID
I am a ceramic artist and a retired lecturer of Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Jamaica, of which I am also an alumnus. I have been a recipient of several awards including organisation of American states (OAS) fellowships, one to study ceramic restoration in Panama at El Instituto Nacional De Culutura, 1979, and the other other to study ceramics at L'Instituto Statale D'Arte Di Sesto Firoentino, Italy, 1984/85. I have received several awards in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's (JCDC) National Festival of Fine Arts Competition in the Bronze and Silver categories, and the Prime Minister's Certificate of Recognition, 1988.
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I have participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions at major galleries in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, USA and Italy. My work can be found in many private and public collections in Jamaica and overseas.
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I now use my extensive experience and uccess as a professional potter to help in the cultivation of another generation of ceramic artists, through my involvement in helping high schools (currently Wolmer's Girls School) to develop ceramics in the classroom. He provides clay and firings for students and gives workshops in throwing, mould-making, free-form pottery, mosaic and slip casting, and converts electric kilns to gas kilns.
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EXCERPT TAKING FROM HEALTH, HOME AND GARDEN JAMAICA MAGAZINE.
In a zinc roof shed, under the spreading branches of an othaetie apple tree at the back of a house on a quiet street, David Dunn spins clay into art. Only a few blocks away from Molynes ROad area of Half Way Tree, Kingston, chaos reigns in a noisy street theatre to win passengers.
But in this backyard studio of his childhood home, Dunn is oblivious to the hustle and bustle.
Coaxing soft lumps of clay into the rounded beauty of vases, pots, and jugs and into sculpted masks and platters is like therapy, he explains.
"It soothes and relaxes. I look forward to coming to work because you can tune out the violence and the bad news that's happening around you. It brings out the inner me. You can be working on a piece and it can take you anywhere." It's been that way since Dunn bumped into the world of ceramic art about 30 years ago. A student of the Jamaica School of Arts (now the Edna Manley College of the Visual Arts), Dunn only knew that he wanted to do some form of art in the early '70s when he enetered the institution (located down the road from the national stadium in Kingston).
The school's rotation system, which exposed students to a whole cross section of the arts, was an eye-opener for the Gaynstead High Schhool graduate. "The idea of taking a bit of clay and within seconds turning it into a functional or decorative piece of art captured his imagination.
"You could color on it, paint it, and draw on it. It was fascinating."
"Up to that stage I had no clue that ceramics was a viable option." he explains.
He was hooked.
So spellbound was he that some nights would find him in the studio watching the senior students at work - all night.
"The more time I spent at the studio the more my appreciation grew."
As a child he painted and drew comic strips, but ceramics, he reckoned, offered far more. "You can create sculpture, jewellery and more. You can paint and draw on the pieces. It encompassed all the areas (of art) and I felt it would give more of a challenge," says Dunn, a soft spoken man with quiet brown eyes.
Since then, he has spun his way to the forefront of the Jamaican ceramic art scene, splitting his time between teaching (at his alma mater) and creating and selling his pieces.
Through the years he has had exhibitions across the island, studied at the El Instituto Statale D'Arte Di Sesto in Florentio, Italy, on an O.A.S (Organisation of American States) scholarship and scratched his name in the local artisitc landscape. (Along the way he also found time to play major league football with the Cavaliers in the '70s and then the Masters League in the '90s.)
In Addition to the studio in his parents Half Way Tree area home and another at his home in Green Acres o the outskirts of Spanish Town, St.Catherine, his works are on display at the the Bank of Jamaica and the National Gallery in downtown Kingston. His pieces have also found their way to places like the Ja-Ja Originals Art Gallery (Coco La Palm resort) in Negril, and in the hands of private collectors.
His passion for gardening and the outdoors is reflected in the flowing lines of the rivers, trees and butterflies that decorate his pieces.
"I'll go out in the garden at home and do drawings o I'll take photos of the landscape, blooms, insects and rivers," he says in explaining how he fires up his imagination to reflect the beauty of nature.
His fondest creation (he resists using the word best as "your best piece is always your next") is a large relief platter he made for the 50th anniversary of the Enda Manley College of Arts in 2000. The platter spoke to protecting the environment and had plants, insects, snakes and other elements of nature carved into it. He sold it for a bit more than $20,000.
However, while a perfectly finished piece with gorgeous hues and eye-catching decoration may fetch thousands of dollars, this can also be a business of heartbreak.
"A lot of times you do a piece that you put a lot of effort into and it develops cracks."
Cracked pieces can't be sold so you go back to the drawing board, adds Dunn, hoping that everything will go right the next time.
Unlike painting, for example, ceramics is a tedious business because it has so many stages. There's the process of throwing (working with the clay on a spinning wheel), glazing firing it up in the kiln, painting, etching, carving. Anything can go in the kiln, Dunn says he's never quite sure what he'll get when he opens the door. The temperature in the kiln can make a world of difference. A temperature of 900 degrees Celsius will produce different results from one fired up to 1000 degrees.
"This is one of the things that make it fascinating because no matter how simple a lot (the pieces) a lot can happen - color variations or pieces sticking together. Each time I open the kiln, there's anticipation and fascination.
"When people see pieces for $20,000 to $40,000 they don't realize what went into them."
Still the rewards are good. The trick, reckons Dunn, is to create an artistic and monetary balance in order to survive. In his case, he puts his creative juice into action about half the year, spinning and hammering out functional pieces - that you can eat and drink from - as well as decorative items. The other half of the year he devotes mainly to selling his pieces at craft fairs and on the north coast, for example.
Teaching also provides another balance, he says. "It gives the opportunity to give back some of what you got. It's a good feeling you get when you have something you can offer."
Dunn's wife is also an art teacher who works with students at Wolmer's Girls School in Kingston. In fact, he notes that the Dunns (includes three children ages 23, 22, 13) are a creative lot. His 22-year old son has decided to formally enter the artistic world with a career in graphic arts.
These days Dunn is moving to take his art to another level with ceramic murals. Like regular painted murals, the ceramic version tells a story but uses a mosaic of broken tiles, shells and stones. The ceramic murals of Rome, the Italian capital, (which he visited a number of years ago) has stuck in his memory and serve as his inspiration into this venture.
To date he has done a wall at the Edna Manley College and is the process of doing his bathroom, and kitchen walls at home, but his goal he says, is to take these murals into public places.
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Written by: Grace Cameron