Sometimes it is about a sense of place, of landing in just the right spot. Travellers search it out every summer with great journeys, but sometimes it is found much closer to home. Potter, Darren Emenau and his partner, artist, Alexandra Flood, found their place among the rolling hills of the Lower St. John River, not more than an hour’s drive from where both of them grew up. Of course, it wasn’t a direct line of travel that took them there.
Both had spent time away from New Brunswick and both had thought that they might come back for a while and then move on. A drive along Route 102, south of Gagetown, changed all that. They had just crossed a stone bridge when they saw the faded ‘For Sale’ sign and a tumbled-down house that had stood at this corner of the world for more than a century. Alexandra says, “It looked like something out of ‘The Hobbit’.” They decided then and there that they would have to save it.
Although the house has some interesting angles, it is back on a solid footing, surrounded by a wild English country garden. Alexandra has a room to paint in and Darren has the gallery space he needs. When there are no guests, Alexandra closes her studio door and follows the landscape of her imagination. When visitors arrive, “I become ‘Ye Olde Shoppe Girl’ for M.N.O. Pottery, and greet visitors and take them on a tour of Darren’s gallery.” If Darren is around, he is only too happy to chat, but often he is up at his studio, in a newer house that they bought nearby, or chopping wood for the kiln - a lot of wood.
Like the firewood, there is another special thing about their Jones Creek location… Darren can get his materials by simply pulling on his rubber boots, walking out his front door and squishing his way into the mud. The creek bed supplies the clay. “I just go down and dig it up,” says Darren. “ I don’t screen it either. I like to leave the rocks and twigs in it for a more organic look. There is a lot more breakage, but I like to push things to the limit.” A sense of place embedded in every object.
Darren also makes his own traditional glazes from local rocks and minerals. He has notebooks filled with the results of his experiments. “It isn’t just random, although you can never replicate exactly what you did before,” adding that, “Every firing is different.”
Alexandra and Darren weren’t planning to stay, but what they have found on this lazy curve in the road is a place to bring to life in their art the nature that surrounds them.
Darren Emenau
Alexandra Flood
M.N.O. Pottery
9 Olinville Rd.
Central Greenwich
506-468-2030
www.mnopottery.com