Gregg, Erica Deichmann

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1992
ERICA DEICHMANN GREGG
to be Doctor of Letters

One can only say that this University's recognition of the life and achievement of Erica Deichmann Gregg is long overdue. Here is a woman who, with her husband Kjeld, created an artistic tradition in ceramics unique not only to New Brunswick, but to their chosen country, Canada.

Erica was born in Wisconsin of Danish parents. She met her husband-to-be, Kjeld, in western Canada. Together as a young married couple in the early 1930s, they settled in New Brunswick, a brave choice in an era of Depression, made even more courageous by a decision to pursue careers together in the art of pottery. For two years, Kjeld and Erica Deichmann studied pottery and pottery glazing in Denmark before returning to their tiny farm in Moss Glen on the Kingston Peninsula, with the sweep of the Kennebecasis before them. They fired up their first home-made kiln in 1935: hope had triumphed over improbability.

The pottery they made together became the perfect blending of two creative instincts. The shapes were his - bold, innovative, future-looking; the glazes were hers - experimental, brightly provocative, searching. They attracted attention. Other artists came to see and to talk, a unique cultural centre blossomed. Tourists came to browse, admire, and to buy and governments began to pay attention. The Deichmann pottery was modern and dynamic, some said; perhaps Danish modern, thought others. They exhibited at the Paris World Fair in 1937; the Glasgow Exhibition, the New York World's Fair. Their pieces appeared in leading galleries in Canada, the United States, in Europe. They began doing lecture-demonstrations in other provinces, in New England, at the Rockefeller Center in New York. By the 1950s, they had achieved national and international recognition for their work, periodicals wrote about Modernism in the Maritimes, and the National Film Board told their story on film. Awards flowed: best pottery, best glazes, the Canadian National Exhibition, the Canadian Handicrafts Guild. And in the years following Kjeld's death in 1963, Erica continued to be honored for their work with membership in the Royal Canadian Academy and the Order of Canada.

In 1991, more than a quarter century after the last firing of the Deichmann kiln, the Canadian Museum of Civilization mounted a special exhibit: "The Turning Point: The Deichmann Pottery, 1935-1963." Erica with her artistic eye was somewhat critical. It was stark; individual pieces sat isolated from one another. But she should understand that for New Brunswickers who know her, and who see her creative personality in her work, who detect her probing intellect in the written descriptions of her glazes, who see the mischievous twinkle of her eyes reflected in the mythical little animals which enlivened her design, this exhibit was both a moving tribute to two remarkable artists and a deeply satisfying artistic experience.

"Truth is subjectivity," wrote Kierkegaard; "subjectivity is truth." The Deichmann art is a statement of such a principle. To understand the Deichmann art, you will not study history or custom or tradition. This art is not about New Brunswick, it is not about a place. It is not simple craft, turned on a wheel of local custom or the folk idiom. It is the expression of self, indeed of two selves. It speaks of hope, of the future, of a different world, a world shaped and molded and coloured in the ethic of self-understanding. Created in a world that was economically depressed and then war-torn, in a poor and unsophisticated province, the Deichmann pottery expressed optimism, the triumph of beauty and uniqueness over mechanical production, and an incredible faith in the human potential.

We dwell here on Erica, the artist. There is, of course, more. In the years following Kjeld's death, she married a long-time family friend, our one-time president, Dr. Milton Gregg. She served with him in his position of Canadian Commissioner to British Guiana, now Guyana, and then in later years in those dozens of projects that bespoke their common love of humanity, of the cultural life of this province, of nature and of nature's creatures.

Today we salute one of New Brunswick's most remarkable women: Erica Deichmann Gregg, artist, thinker, and humanitarian.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3