This weekend in Chickland, ceramic artist Bunty O'Connor is showing the art she has created over the past three months. Finished pieces of pottery line the shelves in her living room, are mounted on the walls around the kitchen and spill out into the garden.
Trees and grass drip with recent rain. The smell of guava is in the air, and round every bend, some fresh flower, deliciously dew-dipped, shows its head.
It's hard to separate Bunty's art from the pink house in Chickland or the garden with the secret door and ever-changing view of the Northern Range.
Bunty–as everyone calls her–has been making pottery for 30 years or so. Largely self-taught, her work was a lifelong education through the process of making, glazing, firing clay and a venture into enterprise, as much as it was an exploration into the soils and history of pot-making in Trinidad.
With sensitivity and skill, her hands seem to have evolved a language of their own that perfectly expresses Bunty's love for her island home, its creatures and plant life in all forms. A quirky sense of humour emerges–always tempered by compassion and grace.
In the Open House at Ajoupa Gardens in Chickland, taking place over the weekend on November 21 and 22, you're invited to take home your own piece of Bunty.
Of course, there's a story behind every piece. The calabash is a starting point for many of Bunty's bowls and you will find new versions of calabash pots. She is always experimenting with glazes and pigments, so the calabash you may have bought a couple years ago may now have a companion piece from the 2016 collection–only the shape is constant. Choose a leaf plate. Make a Christmas cornucopia with a boat-shaped platter inspired by the bracts of coconut trees foraged from a beach in Tobago.
Mosaics have long been part of Bunty's repertoire. Impressive wall pieces or tables feature trees of life, swimming fish or a Mayaro beach. Garden pieces feature Mother Earth in her many manifestations: reclining nymph or rainbow lady. Look for her in the voluptuous big-bottomed woman with the sweet smile; the woman with birds.