Fine arts professor Ann Roberts has a retrospective
     exhibition on display at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.
     Its title: "Ann Roberts' Harvest -- Coming Full Circle".
 
          She has indeed come full circle with her ceramic non-
     functional art work. She started off with budding vessel-
     like forms in 1972 and again in 1992 produced many vessel-
     like spirit stones.
 
          In between, Roberts produced sculptures of armour,
     animals, mythical goddesses and other figures, and wall-
     hangings of gardens.
 
          Over the years, she has explored and repeated various
     themes.  They range from aspects of fertility and
     regeneration, to human passions and emotions. Some themes
     come from her close observation of nature and interactions
     between humans and animals.  Others come from her interest
     in persistent ancient myths.  Some combine the two.
 
          Duality runs through her work and allows her to depict
     her themes with subtle ambiguity. Roberts's use of duality
     probably comes from her childhood in South Africa. To her
     Adam and Eve and the African creation myths intermingle.
 
          Some dualities she looks at are hard and soft, push and
     pull, male and female, yin and yang, nurturer and nurtured,
     life and death, power and weakness.
 
          A 1977 ovoid container suggests a pregnant belly.
     Child's hands seem to be caressing the belly. (The hands are
     actually her son's imprint. Before Roberts fed him lunch one
     day, she made him put his imprint in the clay, Roberts
     explained during her slide lecture at The Seagram Museum.)
     She's included a set of hinges mounted the wrong way so the
     container won't open.
 
          The first sculpture people see when they enter the
     gallery is a circle of spirit stones. "They depict
     continuous life," she said at the lecture.
 
          But for Roberts, the circle needed a point to enter, so
     she's added a tall totem of two figures superimposed on each
     other.  "Tree of Life: Back to Back", a 1992 sculpture
     that's one and half metres high, is a good example of
     Roberts's concern with duality. It shows the "yin and yang"
     and is a mixture of myth. It also suggest that animal, bird,
     reptile and human are all part of the Tree of Life.
 
          The female figure holds a nest with eggs and has a
     snake superimposed on her front. The male figure has an
     Egyptian goat-like figure superimposed on his front.
 
          "Phoebe", a 1985 full-size seated figure, is one of her
     river goddesses.  Phoebe sits in her chair, examining two
     halves of a fish, deciding what to do with it. She seems at
     ease with herself. Since she's neither western nor oriental,
     young nor old, she depicts every woman.
 
          The show continues until October 25. It then moves to
     the Burlington Cultural Centre from November 27 to January
     3.
                                                              LJH