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Multiplicty: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture
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| by Diana Lyn Roberts
"Multiplicity" is a concise, coherent and visually striking exhibition. Comprised of eight to ten pieces (depending on the venue), the show focused on works made from a multitude of finely crafted ceramic elements. It's simple in a way: when intelligent artists take many small, identical (or nearly so) objects and configure them in certain ways, compelling patterns, shapes and associative responses emerge from the repetition of form. In this sense, and as a collection of provocative, effective artworks, the show is very successful. Where it fails is the somewhat overdrawn curatorial positioning expounded in the accompanying catalog, which overcomplicates the ideas presented so eloquently in the exhibition.
Organized by the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso, Multiplicity opened at the Portland Art Center in Portland, Oregon, before embarking on a Texas tour at the Rubin Center, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, Landmark Arts in Lubbock, and the Southwest School of Art & Craft in San Antonio. Curators Kate Bonansinga, Director of the Rubin Center, and Vincent Burke, Associate Professor of Ceramics at UTEP, set themselves an ambitious goal. Looking broadly at the many U.S. artists working in this vein, they successfully narrowed the field to eight artists with different perspectives and working methods, and selected representative works that fit together in a remarkably beautiful, pared-down show.
Most of the works move away from the handmade precious object, with the exception of Bean Finneran's elemental "Red Core". An obsessively precise, radial stack of thin, porcelain rods of intensely saturated red rests on a low white pedestal. The tactile nature of the elements is contradicted by the precision and delicacy of placement, and the fragility of the rods themselves: disturbing this perfection would be purely destructive.
Shawn Busse's "Metronome" exploits the opposite extreme: cold, hard, industrial porcelain violins rest in casketlike, cast-iron cases arranged on individually suspended, morguelike slabs. Here, the mass production of consumer goods defies the nature of the object itself: no strings, no resonance or warmth of tone, only a printed barcode to differentiate them; the anti-Stradivarius.
Marek Cecula's "Interface Set IV" also plays with the impersonal manufactured multiple. Like a set of medical models, five glazed porcelain blocks with a human ear molded into the center of each are displayed such that the inner canal, pierced through in descending diameter from piece to piece, lines up with the next. If one peers through at the right height, one can see through to the final canal. Cecula is interested in making sculpture that appears more utilitarian than sculptural. Yet the work is clearly intended to engage the viewer physically, both in the act of leaning over to look through, and by the fact that one is peering through a series of human ears.
Many of the works are abstract and formal in nature. "Same But Different" by Gregory Roberts presents a minimalist, wall-mounted circle of dark, dome-shaped objects. Jeanne Quinn's "Porcelain Curtain" suggests a three-dimensional, jewelry-like Rorschach test [see Ceramics Monthly, February 2007, page 24].
Kay Hwang's "Generation II" is comprised of several hundred nearly identical objects protruding from the wall in variable patterns and densities. The vaguely phallic white forms are individually ambiguous, but the occasional bloody red tip gives them a sinister, violent potential that is, nonetheless, intriguing in its accumulated abstraction.
Then there's the added metaphor of multiplicity of meaning. Juana Valdes' "The Journey Within" is comprised of 75-100 small white porcelain folded paper boats, placed directly on the floor in a flowing, organic pattern. Valdes is sensitive to the multiplication of form and content: one boat seems like a child's toy while, in her words from the catalog, "...twenty boats becomes a regatta, a hundred boats is an invasion and a thousand an exodus."
The inevitable variation from venue to venue plays a subtle role in Multiplicity's overall effect. Comparing the San Angelo and San Antonio installations with the catalog images, different relationships evolved between works, their interaction with the space and, to some degree, the arrangement of the works themselves.
Denise Pelletier's "Purgáre" is an elaborate mobile/stabile of slip-cast replicas of various medical purging devices, joined and suspended by irrationally looped, draped and cantilevered copper and rubber tubing. Reconfigured at each venue, it was sometimes fully suspended and sometimes, as at the Southwest School, attached to the wall. In all cases, the overall effect was of a large-scale, elegant drawing in space, a three dimensional diagram of medical paraphernalia full of interpretive possibilities. Breast pumps, bedpans and other objects, some of them altered, take on an ambiguity of purpose: urinals with elongated spouts could be ancient oil lamps; arterial "spouts" emerge from a human heart-shaped pump of another purpose. The paradoxical formal elegance of such devices interacts with the visceral, body-fluid reality (and potential revulsion) associated with them.
Unfortunately, not all of the works traveled. Bean Finneran's "White Cone," a beautifully fragile, spiky pile of thin ceramic rods, and Jeanne Quinn's "Suspended" were only at select venues. And this was a disappointment: Suspended combined cotton swabs and glaze-beaded pins inserted into the wall to form a sort of large-scale, embossed drawing. It was also one of the few works in the show that came anywhere close to the "architectural scale" incorporating the viewer, the pedestal-free "manipulation of space" the curators discuss as being a major trend in contemporary ceramic installation art.
The question that begs to be asked is why ceramic installation art is so different from other media? Multiplicity of form is not unique to clay. Yet when those forms are clay, according to the curators, it references the whole history of American ceramics: from the industrial revolution and the Arts and Crafts Movement, to the post-war U.S. Studio Craft Movement, the influence of Japanese folk pottery and postmodern installation art. They also reference the theories of Alfred North Whitehead, Soetsu Yanagi and Donald Judd. Don't quite buy it? Me neither.
The curators provide a useful and valid overview of the history of ceramics as a fine art medium, but they seem to force the connections. Clay has always been an easy material for quick, multiple, mass production-whether it's industrial toilets or cheap, low-fire utilitarian ware handthrown by the thousands in primitive potteries. Multiplicity tends toward the cooler, less expressive aspect of ceramics, to more intellectualized objects and industrialized processes, toward installations and "environments" in the postmodern mold. It's not really the medium at issue, it's the perception and prerogative of the artists. Clay just happens to be an expedient medium-and an effective one, at that.
Diana Lyn Roberts is a Texas-based art critic and frequent contributor to Ceramics Monthly.
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| Clay on the Wall: 2007 Clay National |
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 | The following was excerpted from Matthew Kangas' juror's statement:
The fact that all of the works in "Clay on the Wall," the 2007 Texas Tech University competitive exhibition, at Landmark Arts of the Texas Tech University School of Art in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (www.landmarkarts.org), are mounted on the wall is not as important as the various themes that are represented: the figure (which includes human and animal); nature; symbol and sign; installation art; and abstraction. Although the range of subjects and themes was much wider among the 153 artists who entered over 500 examples of their work, the 45 artworks by 43 artists fall into these categories. Their entries were both the best-looking and the most interesting in terms of subject matter and content. Much contemporary American ceramic sculpture in the present moment is facing competing factors of tradition and innovation. The most effective artists among them-like the artists in Clay on the Wall-manage to reconcile materials and ideas without tipping the scales too far in either direction.
The collapse or disappearance of nature has inspired artists of all stripes to comment, warn and reminisce about our imperiled environment. Shannon Sullivan's "Strands" treat nature as manipulated and compartmentalized, just the way we experience nature in cities. Sullivan's microview focuses on plastic-encased cellular views of growing things.
Abstraction in contemporary ceramics has survived and outlived 20th-century modernism, but is still indebted to pioneering artists who rejected the realistic representation so associated today with postmodernism. Besides Ogihara's prizewinning "Fancy," an amazing work that overlaps figurative, natural and abstract categories, there is a variety of approaches that is both encouraging and promising.
Make of them what you will, my selections for this year's Clay on the Wall are also meant to provoke the viewer's responses. I have assembled aspects of the figure, nature, symbol and sign, installation art and abstraction. With individual artworks blurring and overlapping categories, the viewer may begin to construct his or her own opinion. With that in train, appreciation, meaning and judgment are sure to follow.
Matthew Kangas is a Seattle-based independent art critic and curator who has written extensively about ceramics.
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| potPOURri: Pots That Pour |
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| "potPOURri: Pots That Pour," a national invitational exhibition featuring pouring pots by 83 artists, will be on view February 2-23 at the Clay Art Center (www.clayartcenter.org) in Port Chester, New York.
"The word potpourri, which happens to contain the words 'pot' and 'pour,' is defined as 'a mixture of miscellaneous things,'" said program director Leigh Taylor Mickelson. "This exhibition will definitely be a mixture, but of pouring vessels. Pitchers, ewers, gravy boats, cruets, creamers and more, as well as non-functional works about pouring, will pack the galleries, revealing the breadth of technique, style and function that the field of ceramics has to offer. potPOURri will make us think about our daily rituals, encouraging us to use handmade pots for our pouring practices in the kitchen, as well as at the table."
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| New West Coast Design: Contemporary Objects |
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| "New West Coast Design: Contemporary Objects" will be on display through April 28 at the San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design (www.sfmcd.org) in San Francisco, California. The exhibition includes new work and projects by more than fifty California, Oregon and Washington designers and studios.
"Ted Cohen and I have a strong interest in ceramics as curators and exhibition designers," said co-curator Kathleen Hanna. "More personally, Ted is also interested as a collector, and I feel that contemporary American ceramics is my strongest area of expertise as I am a potter, as well as historian and teacher of the subject. Thus, we gave a lot of time and thought to our search for clay objects to include in New West Coast Design.
"We were looking for original work that displayed strong technical ability and integrated smoothly into contemporary interiors for which many of the other works in the exhibition are destined. There is a lot of extraordinary figurative clay sculpture accomplished currently on the West Coast, but in the realm of functional or functionally referenced work we found that James Aarons and Christina Corbin were producing pieces that perfectly suited our purpose.
"Using the smoothest low-fire white clay body available, Christina Corbin throws forms, assembles pieces, paints underglazes and carves a scraffito design. To further enhance color and texture, the fired pieces are waxed with a wood sealer. Aarons is also working with low-fire clay and surfaces which he labors over to create the smoothest possible canvas for his intricate free-hand one-of-a-kind glaze pencil drawings. Both artists are creating elegant forms enhanced by very personal surface design."
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| "Don Reitz: Hands on the Goddess," will be on view through March 1 at Armstrong's Gallery (www.armstronggallery.net) in Pomona, California. "The current work of the legendary Don Reitz captures the voluptuous depth of fresh clay and the breathless intensity of fire in forms of comfort and wholeness," said gallery director Julie Gibbs. "Evident in this grouping of new works is a masterful surrender between maker and material."
"Although the sculptures are basically slab and cylinder constructions, I want them to retain the freedom and plastic quality of the clay," said Reitz. "The combination of free form slabs and rigid cylinders that have been cutout, punched-in and unwound is tremendously exciting. I think of these sculptures as three-dimensional drawings that will be visually transformed by the long, six-day wood firing. Placing the sculptures in the kiln so that each will receive the best use of the ash and flame to create color and markings that are appropriate to each piece is a challenge."
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| New work by Kellogg Johnson was on view recently at Gerald Peters Gallery (www.gpgallery.com) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"Johnson has long been drawn to the vessel form as the essence of ceramic art," said gallery representative Karen Rogers. "Instinctively aware of the depth of meaning within our ancient human engagement with ceramics, he has evolved an archaeological metaphor in his work. He builds large-scale vessels and takes them through a physically arduous and hazardous process of firing and finishing with the result that his pieces already appear to be artifacts of great antiquity. Stained and scarred, burned and blemished and sometimes even broken and repaired, they seem as if they had lain in the earth for millenia, relics of some long-forgotten ancient pottery-except, perhaps, the great clay jars called 'pithoi' found in the labyrinthine storage magazines of the Palace of Minos."
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| Recent work by Val Cushing will be on view through March 9 at The Artisan Gallery (www.theartisangallery.com) in Northampton, Massachusetts.
"I aspire to make pottery that is both beautiful and useful," said Cushing. "I place as much emphasis as I can on the sensuous qualities of a pot. I do this mainly by the use of color, form and surface textures that are as stimulating to see as to touch. The goal is to make use more pleasurable. All of my work, whether pottery or vessels, employs various references and influences that help direct the visual dynamics. But nature, above all else, is my primary source. I think about how and why things look as they do. I make drawings from nature, from the landscape, from growing things and from my thoughts about them-something coalesces from all of this and becomes a piece. The work is most successful when interesting ideas are executed with the best possible skill and craftsmanship."
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| "Drawing With/In/On: Clay," a regional juried exhibition, was on
display recently at the Olive DeLuce Fine Art Gallery on the campus of
Northwest Missouri State University (www.nwmissouri.edu) in Maryville,
Missouri. This was the first juried ceramics show held at Northwest
Missouri State University.
Juror Anna Calluori Holcombe,
Director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of
Florida in Gainesville, Florida, chose works that interpreted the theme
of drawing with, in or on clay, and awarded a Juror's Choice Award to
Erin Furimsky's wall-hanging piece, "Pearl". Other artists included in
this exhibition were Joe Madrigal, Jason Burnett, Harris Deller, Kelli
Sinner, Nancy White, Laina Seay, Laura O'Donnell, Margaret Biddle,
Scott Lykens, Diane Rose Dailing and Fumi Yasukochi. Artists applied to
the call for entry with a wide variety of interpretations of the theme
of the show, responding to the statement, "...using the ideas,
processes and subjects of drawing as an activity, impulse or tool for
communication." |
| Ceramic Sculpture: Fire and Ash |
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| "Ceramic Sculpture: Fire and Ash," an exhibition of unglazed wood-fired
sculpture, curated by Lucy Lacoste, of the Lacoste Gallery in Concord,
Massachusetts, was recently on display at the Fuller Craft Museum
(www.fullercraft.org) in Brockton, Massachusetts.
"This
exhibition explores the sculpture of seven ceramics artists who use the
richness of woodfire to bring to life abstract sculptural form," said
Lacoste. "Joy Brown, Chris Gustin, Karen Karnes, Don Reitz, Tim Rowan,
Jeff Shapiro and Malcolm Wright were selected because of the strength
and power of their ceramic sculpture and their range of creative
wood-firing techniques as a means to fulfill their vision. As with all
techniques, woodfiring is a tool that allows the artist to take
traditional elements to new levels to create contemporary works of art.
"The
abstract ceramic sculptures in this exhibition reference nature, human
form, architecture and machinery. They can convey a sense of movement
and emotion. The wood-firing process produces surfaces that accentuate
the forms, bring out the texture of the clay and give a rich and varied
surface. Ceramic Sculpture: Fire and Ash demonstrates the contribution
of ceramics to the discipline of sculpture and how the form is enhanced
by the wood-firing process." |
| "Rina Peleg: Dust to Dust" was recently on view at Rhonda Schaller Studio (www.rhondaschallerchelsea.com) in New York City.
"I make white fragments, hints of things long gone that once were much more than what remains, each one embodying a secret utility lost forever," said Peleg. "Each piece invokes a memory, of a role in a past life, reconstructed and imagined. My 'Paleo-Tool' series contains a vision of what remains of a people who fight for identity, for awareness of their own humanity, and win."
Each piece in the Paleo-Tool series is crafted by hand. Peleg uses the slab roller to create the slabs, then she cuts the shapes by hand and lays them out to dry. Once they are leather hard, she works on the final shape, so that the edges are sharp like a knife. When they are dry, pending the final work, she either dips the small paleo tools in terra sigillata, or, for the large paleo tools she uses Duncan crackle glaze CR800. The handles are found objects such as hammers, baseball bats, brooms and old tools from flea markets and second hand stores.
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| "From the Ground Up XXIII," a regional juried exhibition of works by artists from the Rocky Mountain states, was on display recently at Las Cruces Museum of Art (www.las-cruces.org) in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The exhibition featured works by 26 artists from five states.
"From the Ground Up XXIII gave the communities of southern New Mexico a lovely slice of the caliber of work that is taking place in both national and global levels in contemporary ceramics," said juror Miranda Howe. "My focus in selecting work for this show was to exemplify a cross-section of functional, sculptural and installation ceramics with an underlying theme centered on surface. From silk-screening on porcelain tiles, to vivid electric-fired teapots, to the nice earthen qualities of pit-firing with banana peels and chilis, works rich in surface had a home in this exhibition. Groupings of other themes came into play under that broad umbrella-human and animal elements, organic components, and geometric and architectural forms were all highlighted. Though the work greatly ranged in scale, firing, and technique, From the Ground Up demonstrated harmony through diversity, further revealing the expanding scope of the ceramic field.
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