Iceland review - 2016, Page 20

18 ICELAND REVIEW
The first time bank teller
Bjarni Sigurðsson touched
a chunk of clay, his creative
ability exploded.
There are those who break into a
bank and those who break out
of a bank. Bjarni Sigurðsson is
among the latter. He is the teller who, at
the age of 31, said goodbye to the bank
and hello to the world of art. According
to his former branch manager, Hanna
Pálsdóttir, who has long since retired,
Bjarni was not the average teller: “He
was the best one I ever had—immensely
creative, full of ideas and always ready to
try new things,” she says. “The day he
turned in his resignation letter, I refused
to accept it. ‘You’re not going anywhere,’
I told him. But he left, anyway.”
So creative had Bjarni been that two
years earlier, his partner, now a respected
psychologist, encouraged him to sign up
for an art class. Bjarni didn’t have the
courage to apply to the Iceland Academy
of the Arts, but decided instead to take
a class once a week in window displays.
“I was the only guy in the class and it
felt kind of weird,” he now admits, “but
I ended up acing the class. That gave
me the guts the following semester to
apply to the Academy. The classes were
taught in the evening, so I kept working
full-time at the bank. We learned to draw
and paint, but one night, the teacher
gave us a chunk of clay, taught us how to
knead it and told us to make anything we
wanted out of it. At that moment, some-
thing happened, and my teacher noticed.
Suddenly, I felt totally in my element,
and I couldn’t stop creating new forms.”
BY VALA HAFSTAÐ.
PHOTOS BY ÁSLAUG SNORRADÓTTIR.
BREAKING
OUT OF THE
BANK