Brother Thomas Bezanson

"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and there finds the Divine by which Nature herself is animated." – Auguste Rodin

Brother Thomas Bezanson, an internationally known potter, died on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at his home.

Brother Thomas was a ceramic artist, a master of complex glazes in his colors and of purity of line in his forms who said, "I struggle to express my intuition of the beautiful. I want my work to be as much a spiritual experience for others as it is for me."

Brother Thomas, born Charles Bezanson in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on August 5, 1929, graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Design in 1950 and received a degree in commerce from St. Mary's University, Halifax. He had, at that time, also begun his work in ceramic art.

In 1959, he became a monk of Weston Priory, Vermont, a community of Benedictine men. He continued both his art and his formal education at Weston. Brother Thomas received the PhD in philosophy and the University gold medal from Ottawa University in 1968. He says, of the gift Weston was to him and his art, which he learned from his brother monks, that: "The first extension of love and freedom is creativity, and without them there is no possibility for art to exist in this world."

In 1978, Brother Thomas was invited to travel to Japan where he met five Japanese potters, designated "living national treasures" by the Japanese government. These men deeply influenced his work and his thought. He wrote, "Japanese master potters touched my spirit. They taught me to appreciate my own work and to recognize my responsibility as an artist." In 1984 he was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1985, he has been artist in residence at Mount St. Benedict Monastery, Erie, PA where the Benedictine community, privileged to share his life and his art for these past 22 years, mourn his loss.

As Brother Thomas developed his glazes, his goals were: "color, depth of surface and uniqueness." "Technology" he said, "is the bridge (or barrier) to realizing the intuition. Glaze is headwork while the form is contemplative." Of the forms of his pots, Thomas said, "The line defines form and encloses a space; it gives at the same time the space within and without." His practice was, first, to throw the pot, then, having studied the line of the pot, to choose the glaze so that each could enhance the other. "Sometimes there is that rare happening which is a very special experience. It is a beautiful piece that seems as if it was done by someone else. Those are rare pots, rare moments, full of the transcendence beauty calls us to." "I feel like someone with a message to deliver, which is why the cycle [of making the pot]…is completed only when I am able to share that message with others…That's the moment of completion – the shared mutual recognition of the beautiful. My work is from myself but not for myself.

Over the past 35 years, Brother Thomas's work has been exhibited at more than forty one-man shows. His pots are held in more than eighty public collections in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Internationally, museums in Japan, Canada, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel and the Vatican also hold examples of his work. Brother Thomas was the author of numerous articles, monographs, books and lectures on art and its spiritual aspects.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Charles Alonso and Jessica Revels Bezanson; his sisters, Marjorie Webb, Clare Vaughan, Mary O'Toole and Marianne Hartley; and his brother, Reginald. He is survived by his sisters, Ellen MacFarlane, Sharon Harland, Jacqueline MacLeod; several nieces and nephews.

Visitation will be held at Mount St. Benedict Monastery on Tuesday, August 21 from 2 to 7 p.m. A Service of Memories will be held on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Further visitation will be held on Wednesday from 1 p.m. until the Mass of Christian Burial celebrated in the Mount Chapel at 5:30 p.m. Interment is private. Memorials may be made to the Benedictine Sisters of Erie at Mount St. Benedict Monastery, 6101 East Lake Road, Erie, PA 16511. Arrangements handled by the Dusckas Funeral Home, Inc., East, 2607 Buffalo Road.

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