The first potter I ever met was Helen Brink. I was at her home in Greensville for dinner. That evening seems a long, long time ago, but I still remember the pleasure of holding and eating out of the vessels she had made.

Brink's pottery, along with that of Helen Beswick, is showcased this month at Dundas's Carnegie Gallery.

Not only do the two well-established and highly successful potters have the same initials, hence the exhibition's title, but both are active in the community. Brink is a passionate environmentalist, Beswick served as a Dundas town councillor, among other things.

Both have had their hands in clay for more than 40 years.

The exhibition comprises about 100 teapots, bowls, pots, plates and mugs from each potter, mostly stoneware and porcelain.

Brink's vessels boast clean, straightforward shapes that beg to be touched, held and used. Her pieces are sized for humans, but she occasionally works on a smaller scale, making exquisitely tiny bottles and a teaset for dolls, complete with miniature mugs.

When it comes to decorating her creations, Brink prefers brown and blue glazes, and turns to nature for inspiration. The inside of one shallow blue bowl is dominated by a lush pale tree, which seems to want to grow beyond the rim.

Other favourite motifs include stylized leaves and vines. One bowl features what looks like numerous eyes, the kind found on ancient Greek drinking cups. The bowl's handles are simplified scrolls, like little ears. On another bowl, made of white porcelain, a bird sits on the lid and functions as the handle.

Beswick builds vessels that are, like Brink's, a pleasure to use. Her twisty handles and lumpy knobs are especially delightful.

But where Brink is satisfied with one white rooster on a blue plate, Beswick stuffs five blue roosters onto the interior of a white bowl.

Beswick seems to use her ceramic surfaces like a canvas, adding humans, mermaids, animals, landscapes and various abstractions. She enlivens everything with glorious colour.

A lidded jar with an ample body that slightly narrows at the top and bottom contains a narrative. Sinuous trees divide the space into three panels.

In one panel, a voluptuous nude with dancing black hair glides on a swing. In traditional art, swinging usually means something sexy.

A basket full of apples sits on the ground. And one apple has been eaten down to the core. Could this woman be Eve in the Garden of Eden?

We need to look behind to see the jar's other side. Ah! The second panel contains a reclining nude male - Adam. And a tree with red fruit occupies the third panel. So this must be paradise.

Beswick is partial to images of women having fun: A mermaid swims with fish, people chat at a cocktail party, a hatted woman sits in a room that looks out onto a landscape.

Because of her eye-catching decoration, Beswick walks a kind of tightrope, where she deftly manages to keep the decoration from distracting from the shape of the vessel.

Showtime

Who: Helen Beswick and Helen Brink

What: HB2: Pottery Retrospective

Where: Carnegie Gallery, 10 King St. W., Dundas

When: Until Sept. 28

Phone: 905-627-4265

Regina Haggo is teaching Love, Death and Modernity, a course on late 19th- and early 20th-century art, at the Dundas Valley School of Art. Classes start on Sept. 22. You can sign up for Monday or Friday afternoons. To register phone 905-628-6357. dhaggo@thespec.com