This plate was the property of Edna and Carl Bjarnason. It was in their possession for some fifty years prior to its donation to the University on October, 2005. The Development Office took possession of the plate at that time and transferred it to the Archives in March 2008.
Scope and Content
The plate measures 26 cm in diameter and is white with blue glazing. The centre of the plate depicts the Brandon College Original Building and the words "Brandon College, Brandon Manitoba." The outside of the plate is a flower motif. On the back of the plate, in the same blue as the front, are the words "Canadian View Series, Brandon Manitoba." There is also a trademark of a bird with a banner reading "Trademark England."
Professor Lin Xu was born in Inner Mongolia, China. Her family moved to Beijing when she was 12. Following graduation with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Professor Xu worked as an engineer for a couple years, then switched to graphic design and worked in the advertising industry for a longer period of time. She loved art as a little girl, and always intended to gear her life in that direction. After saving some money, she left China when she was 27. In 2000, she completed her undergraduate studies in Visual Arts, and applied to attend graduate school. After four years at Washington State University - three to complete her studies and one year of teaching - she joined the new Fine Arts program at Brandon University.
Custodial History
This artwork was created on site in its current location in the spring of 2008.
Scope and Content
This artwork was commissioned by the President Dr. Louis Visentin in 2005. It was designed as a public art for the BU community to enrich an environment, to communicate about life and culture, and to provide people with a visual source to contemplate.
Titled Gyration, the artwork consists six slender poles ranging from 7 to 8 feet high, each measures approximate 5 inches in diameter. Five are decorated with black and white line drawings inspired from micro-biology images. They are completed at the top with organic shapes and solid colors. The five decorated cylinders represent the essential contemporary technologies such as Text. Data, Voice, Image, Networking, and Human Factor. The one left white represents the unknown.
The artwork was created from porcelain - one of the purest and the strongest clays on earth, it was then cleared glazed and fired to 1240 Celsius. The material and the process echo the purity and the strength of human spirit nourished by the earth and the nature environment.
The circular wheel-throwing marks create a sense of upward movement and energy of grovvth, representing human being' s never ending search for knowledge, perfection, and unknown. It is hoped that the colour, the tree like vertical lineal rhythms, the vessel forms, the images, and the sense of movement will appear to the viewers in a different way and produce free associations and connections, and yet to bring together a symbolic world integrating science and art, form and mind, nature and human.
Notes
The description contained in the scope and content note is taken verbatim from an e-mail from Lin Xu to Tom mitchell 22 May 2008.The original was filed in the correspondence file Brandon University Administrative Records 16.3.Biographical note adapted from Lin Xu's biographical note at http://liszt.brandonu.ca/BUDirectory/BUProfile/Default.aspx?Dep_Key=30&Per_Key=871
