Linda Hynes — Doing What Comes Naturally

Linda Hynes — Doing What Comes Naturally - theHumm October 2024

By Sally Hansen

Art… and Soul

Sometimes fate steps in and moulds the rest of your life. As she was graduating from Ontario College of Art (now OCADU), and contemplating a future in the arts, Linda Hynes accepted an invitation that has resulted in her spending a vast portion of her life turning clay into beautiful functional pottery. Linda was selected to be an apprentice to Jack Herman, a renowned potter and Canadian icon. (One of his studio visitors was Margaret Atwood, and one of his eight-inch plates is currently listed on Etsy for $195.)

Linda joined Jack and his wife Lorraine in their historical white schoolhouse near Kleinburg, Ontario, and started honing her throwing skills, learning how to make glazes, load kilns; eventually she started selling her own spice jars and other functional pieces. Just as importantly, she was introduced to the business side of becoming a professional potter, including marketing, seeking retail outlets, and putting on studio shows. She worked with Jack Herman for seven years until moving to Eastern Ontario, having met Bill Dobson. He was an antique dealer, she was an antique collector, and in 1983 she moved to his farm between Smiths Falls and Merrickville.

There Jack Herman and Ken Cumberland, a well-known potter in Perth, helped her build a gas kiln in a small, barnlike building on the edge of a little creek across the road from their house. For fifteen years at that studio location, Linda participated in the annual Merrickville Artist Tour, the first artist tour in Eastern Ontario. She was also putting on her own Christmas pottery shows and participating in the annual Ottawa Christmas Craft Show at Lansdowne Park and the One-of-a-Kind show in Toronto. In 2005 Linda was one of thirteen Merrickville artists who opened the Grotto Artworks in Merrickville, a cooperative gallery where they showcased their arts and crafts until its closure in 2020.

Merrickville Arts Guild Studio Tour

On October 5 and 6, from 10am to 5pm, Linda Hynes’ Pottery Studio at 1105 Matheson Drive in Smiths Falls will be Stop 11 on the MAG 2024 Studio Tour. In addition to her wide selection of beautifully crafted, durable, functional and decorative pottery, her studio will also be host to eclectic works by Herman Ruhland, painter and maker of assemblages of found objects and formal sculptures.

Pottery truly is Linda’s calling. Twenty-four years ago she relocated into a wonderful new two-storey log cabin studio and showroom on the family farm, and she still gets excited each time she loads her large gas kiln. From each freshly made collection of stoneware and porcelain pieces that she has carefully glazed, she selects pieces on the basis of which will work best in different sections of her kiln. From years of experience and experimentation, she knows that certain combinations of specific glazes on stoneware or porcelain will respond differently in cooler or hotter kiln spots. Then she spends two days after the firing waiting for the kiln to cool down before she can see the results. It is slow work, but the results never fail to inspire her to start on her next burst of creativity.

As a long-time collector of functional pottery, I am impressed with the range and quality of Linda’s pieces. Her years of practice forming different shapes in a wide range of sizes, coupled with her inexhaustible appetite to experiment with glazes, provide collectors with a cornucopia of choice. Some pieces are carved and then covered with particular glazes that enhance that technique. Other pieces are created using a wax resist technique featuring overlapping glazes. She works with both stoneware and porcelain; the former with a coarser texture and more rustic look and finish, and the latter with a finer grain and smoother texture. Both are heat resistant and durable, and equally decorative in the hands of such a talented and artistic potter.

Pottery may be her passion, but antiques continued to play a large role in her life, especially when Bill purchased an antiques trade paper, The Upper Canadian, in 1987. For eighteen years Linda worked extensively with him to produce the bimonthly (a useless adjective; in this case it means every two months) publication until he sold it in 2005. Together they were heavily involved in the antiques business, organizing and participating in numerous antiques shows in Ontario. The shows were sold as Bill became active in local politics and Linda was busy running the Grotto Artworks. Bill and partner Jan Bos still organize the Kingston Winter Antiques Show in February. Bill also has an antiques museum on their rural property, and continues to participate in the antiques shows he used to run.

Why Is There a Sheep On this Plate?

Ever since she was about nine years old, Linda’s daughter Caitlin (Cait) has added a touch of adorableness to some of her mother’s pieces. The animal magnetism of Cait’s sheep, turtles, and other decorative touches is guaranteed to put a smile on your face if not a piece of pottery in your possession. Today Cait and her husband Kyle White are the proud proprietors of Milkhouse Farm & Dairy, located adjacent to Linda’s and Bill’s home, Linda Hynes’ Pottery Studio, and Bill Dobson’s Montague Farm Museum.

Annual Milkhouse Farm Tour

This amazing amalgam of family business ventures can be experienced during their annual fall farm tour this year. From 10am to 3pm on two consecutive Saturdays (October 19 and 26) you can visit Linda Hynes’ ideal log cabin pottery studio/showroom, and contemplate her current collection of superb functional pottery. Joining Linda at her studio will be Urban Woodworks — woodturner Stephane Gendron — with a selection of his fine turned wooden pieces.

You can also wander around Caitlin’s and Kyle’s farm, meet their sheep and their llama Archie, visit their milking barn, and agonize over their selection of delicious raw sheep’s milk cheeses, wool duvets, and grass-fed lamb available for sale. And last (but definitely not least, depending on your interests), you can drop in at Bill Dobson’s collection of antique farming equipment and speculate on the function of some of his fascinating 19th century agricultural tools.

As always, the back of Linda’s Artist Trading Card at the top right corner of this page makes it easy for you to keep track of her coordinates and follow up on Facebook to learn about more opportunities to enjoy her exceptionally attractive and well-made functional pottery.

Artist Trading Card

WHO Linda Hynes

WHAT Potter

WHERE Her studio/showroom at 1105 Matheson Dr., Smiths Falls, hynesdobson@gmail.com , facebook.com/linda.hynes.798 , Instagram: @lindahynespottery

WHEN Oct. 5 & 6, 10am–5pm, Merrickville Arts Guild Studio Tour, Stop 11, 1105 Matheson Dr., Smiths Falls, mag-artists.ca ; Oct. 19 & 26, 10am –3pm, Milkhouse Farm Tour, 805 Rosedale Rd S, Smiths Falls, milkhouse.ca/farm-tour

WHY “A master potter offered me an apprenticeship and I’m still grateful decades later.”