| From the Pages of Ceramics Monthly
Review: Material Transcendence
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John Byrd's Rabbit.
David East's Year to Year.
Jeannie Hulen's Baby Blue
and Orange Swing.
Jeffrey Mongrain's Philosopher's Halo.
Jeanne Quinn's Lacemap.
Benjamin Schulman's Celebrity.
Julie York's Inkblot Plate VII.
| by Bethany Springer
In his curatorial statement, Benjamin Schulman asserts the primary objective of the artists selected to participate in “Material Transcendence: Clay as Commentary” is “to create a commentary through their artwork, the material functioning only as the secondary focus.” The invitational exhibition was one of two included in “CRAFTING CONTENT: 2008 Ceramic Symposium” organized by Jeannie Hulen at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (http://art.uark.edu/ceramics).
Both exhibits examine ceramic arts’ exclusion from high art venues and discourses and thus reference the enduring fine art versus craft argument that has been plaguing artists, communities and institutions for the past forty years. Is it possible now in the twenty-first century for ceramics to compete with the likes of painting and sculpture? It is appropriate at this point to mention my allegiance with “Sculpture.” As an outsider, I cannot identify with the art world prejudice against clay nor fully comprehend why the expansion of clay into installation is what John Perreault, critic and juror for the second Symposium exhibition “Ceramic Objects/Conceptual Material,” calls “big news” for the ceramics world. It is true that it is not for anyone on the outside, nor is selecting material to convey concept over technical process a new strategy in object-making. That said, I experienced this exhibit as a provocative fusion of mixed-media sculpture, installation and site-specific objects in which material is unmistakably the foundation for concept rather than a byproduct.
The myth that ceramic artists produce only utilitarian or decorative items is cleverly addressed in the works of Rain Harris [for representative work, see CM, March 2008, pg. 24] and Jeannie Hulen. Both artists use inherent and applied color, combining handcrafted and mass-produced objects in configurations that serve to attract and repel. Harris’ Florid marries high and low taste through the interplay of porcelain, decals and wallpaper in forms that oscillate between kidneys and candy hearts. Hulen’s Baby Blue and Orange Swing is similarly saccharine as a slip-cast porcelain toddler swing suspended by striped nylon rope and decorated with knitted collar and air filter. As a ceramic object, the work is a vessel in the form of precious receptacle; it is still functional as a swing, but functions more as dress-up doll than lawn décor, a subversive metaphor that alludes to identity manifested in cheap consumerism.
John Byrd’s Untitled also addresses hierarchy in an abbreviated version of the animal kingdom: An amputated and half-blind hare is impeccably rendered as a scientific model and mounted on a base that reveals a roach scavenging from a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box. The two are positioned in a showdown, a survival of the fittest stand off between idealist and realist, and the roach seems perfectly poised to win.
Several works allude to utilitarian purpose, yet transgress standardized function to focus on spatial experience of objects instead. In Denise Pelletier’s Clean [for representative work, see CM, February 2008, pg. 19], the visceral network of porcelain, copper and rubber inputs and outputs, torn and lubricated in places, represents nourishment and waste in a self-contained system which seems to render the device inactive, yet valves situated within the viewers’ reach indicate that the system is interactive. Julie York’s Inkblot VII and Absolute/Abstract reference symbiotic relationships gone awry through a connect-the-dots arrangement of porcelain food, compartmentalized trays, funnels, plungers, perforated metal and text-etched glass. Although physically separated in space, viewer and object assume participatory roles as predator and prey in these specimens, implicated in cycles of violence and ignorance.
David East also deals with consumption, but through mundane routines that threaten to swallow identity. In three car.meta bio [not shown], a cookie-cutter suburban home spawns parasitic molecules that mimic tennis balls in color and scale. East records his own daily habits and often brands his work with tiny numeric decals that serve as a timeline of repeated action, stacked in succession on his objects as a summation of experience. Issues of control, both internal and external, are weighed here, and the viewer is left to examine whether their body is actively inhabiting time and space or being inhabited by patterns of existence.
In W.S. Variation No.2, Nicholas Kripal [for representative work, see CM, March 2008, pg. 30] acknowledges both consumption and consumerism by casting earthenware multiples in Martha Stewart Collection Cathedral Bundt Cake Pans. Henry Van de Velde’s belief that mass-production warrants accessibility yet threatens creativity and individuality is addressed via the casts which are symmetrically organized on the floor as hybrid form suggesting Gothic quatrefoil tracery, nave and vaulting designs and constellations. Kripal’s sculptures are usually site-specific to sacred spaces, such as the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York and Glasgow Cathedral in Scotland, which posits the congregation as viewer. Kripal smartly juxtaposes his architecturally-inspired sculpture as enigmatic symbols within architectural iconography, knowing the work will be experienced in relationship to ritual and mystery.
Jeffrey Mongrain analyzes mysteries in the form of relics by intimately situating mixed-media sculpture on religious objects. Philosopher’s Halo is a site photograph from an installation at the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel in Christus Church, Baltimore, Maryland, in which a concentric clay halo with optical lens at the core frames the face of the famous theologian’s statue. The lens offers a distorted view between viewer and Saint, and makes reference to the relic (the head of St. Thomas Aquinas was removed by monks at the Cistercian abbey at Fossanova Abbey, where he died and is currently enshrined at the Basilica of St. Sernin, Toulouse, France). Even in documentation, removed from installation site and direct observation, the image is compelling as it equally venerates and subjugates the Saint as subject in divine and human roles. Historically, both relics and photographs have acted as evidence stimulating and terminating belief, and Mongrain situates the viewer in a position oddly sympathetic as if looking through an imperfect microscope.
What makes clay a transcendental material? Perhaps it is the ability to infiltrate any space, private or public, or the ability to reveal and conceal its own nature. Clay, as pottery, as domestic objects, as objects associated with body maintenance, and in the form of architecture among other uses, has permeated space through time to interact with the body routinely despite hierarchy—an advantage in one sculptor’s opinion.
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Installation view of "The
Living Room."
Installation view of "The
Living Room."
Lucie Rie's Small
Pink Bowl.
David Shaner's
Garden Slab.
| by Janet Buskirk
“Using the Museum’s collection of historic craft, “The Living Room” is an examination of the renewed interest in mid-century Modernism through an abstracted contemporary domestic setting.” (Quote from exhibition materials).
On display recently, The Living Room exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org) in Portland, Oregon, is a unique look at crafts from the mid-1900s in the United States. It showcases some of the Museum’s fine historical collection of ceramic work, as well as a few pieces in wood, metal and fiber. This work is displayed on a cut-away cross section of a living room or dining room furnished in a Danish-Modern style.
This exhibit focuses on a time when both crafts and living spaces were undergoing huge change. In the mid-century, defined here as the mid 1940s through the 1960s, crafts in the United States experienced a renaissance as people became better educated and more affluent. During that time, the modern “living room” came to be the central part of most homes.
An interesting aspect of this show is the reminder that much of our modern home and office furniture design harkens back to the mid-century crafts movement. However, much of the decorative ceramics, wood and fiber from that period have but a distant, grandfatherly, relationship with modern work. It is somewhat disconcerting to the viewer to see what we perceive as “older” ceramics displayed on what otherwise feels like “modern” furniture.
The goal of the furniture in the exhibition seems to be two-fold: to display mid-century furniture; and to use the furniture as a display fixture for the other craft objects. This mixed goal leaves the furniture in a strange limbo. Some of the furniture is historic, mid-century furniture. Other pieces are modern, mass-produced items that are reminiscent of the earlier era.
The ceramic works in the exhibition are important historical pieces. There is work by nationally important artists like Robert Arneson, Rose Cabat, Betty Feves, Shoji Hamada, Howard Kottler, the Natzlers, Lucy Rie, David Shaner, Robert Sperry and Peter Voulkos. There are also pieces by regionally influential artists like Ray Grimm and William Creitz. This work is part of the Museum’s extensive and important collection of ceramics.
Overall, The Living Room is an interesting show, but it can leave the viewer feeling confused. The exhibition is housed in a cross-section of a home that is constructed in a modern style, and the cut-away floor and walls are at first puzzling. At first glance, the modern readymade furniture, some purchased from mass production outlets like Ikea, seems disappointing to see in a Crafts Museum. After reading the literature, one comes to understand that this furniture is no more than a display device, no different from a white pedestal in any other show. However, the cut-away house and furniture have a modern feel, while the ceramics, one of the major focuses of the show and the Museum’s historical crafts collection, feel (appropriately) dated and seem to be overwhelmed by the installation itself.
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64th Scripps College Ceramic Annual
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Charles Long's 100 Lbs.
of Clay.
| “Arm’s Length In: Ceramics and the Treachery of Objects in the Digital Age,” the 64th Scripps College Ceramic Annual, was recently on view at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery (www.scrippscollege.edu) in Claremont, California. The exhibition included works by MyungJin Choi, Sadashi Inuzuka, Jim Melchert, Jeanne Quinn, Annabeth Rosen and Charles Long.
“As the ceramic annual continues to probe the boundaries of ceramics, it is fitting that this year’s curator Phyllis Green looks at the intersection of clay art and new media,” said Mary Davis MacNaughton, gallery director. “She explores the ways in which six artists combine three-dimensional clay with two-dimensional virtual elements, which include audio, animation and video. In her exhibition title, Arm’s Length In: Ceramics and the Treachery of Objects in the Digital Age, Green alludes to Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s painting, The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe) 1929, which questions how we identify objects and assign meaning to images. What is the relationship between the object and its representation? In the works in this exhibition, Green suggests this and other questions. What is the relationship between the real and virtual, the material and immaterial? What new visual experiences emerge from their combination? Each artist’s work gives us a different answer.”
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| Joseph Pintz: Sense of Place |
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Joseph Pintz's Dinnerware.
| New work by Joseph Pintz will be on display from May 3–24 at the Clay Art Center (www.clayartcenter.org) in Port Chester, New York. Pintz will also give an artist talk, which is open to the public, on May 2.
“With this exhibition, one should expect to take a step back in time,” says Program Director Leigh Taylor Mickelson. “His forms, though contemporary objects, reference a day gone by. The word ‘yore’ comes to mind. His simple yet elegant troughs, tool boxes, bread pans and grain buckets have rich inviting surfaces that suggest the passage of time, the comfort of everyday use and the worn sheen of the familiar. Similarly, his utilitarian works–the thick bowls, stacking plates and dinnerware sets–look like found objects transformed–unearthed and given new life.”
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Meredith Brickell's Articles
and Impressions I.
| “Weights and Measures,” a solo exhibition of works by Meredith Brickell, will be on view at Dubhe Carreño Gallery (www.dubhecarrenogallery.com) in Chicago, Illinois.
In the exhibition, Brickell pairs large, hand-built vessels (Tanks) with a group of small, enigmatic forms presented on the wall (Articles and Impressions). The ceramic forms of Articles and Impressions are suspended from delicately rendered steel and silver fittings. The series borrows from the realm of the hand-held (tools, toys, found objects) but these forms are intentionally ambiguous. “Within a single form, I cultivate a balance between contrary elements: irregularity and exactness, strength and delicacy, exposed and hidden spaces,” said Brickell. “I am inherently drawn to such relationships and find them to be the most engaging and complex aspects of our own surroundings.”
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Speaking Low: Surfaces in Earthenware
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Neil Hora's Jar-Vent Large.
| “Speaking Low: Surfaces in Earthenware,” a group exhibition curated by Linda Arbuckle, Professor of Ceramics at the University of Florida, as well as a Ceramics Monthly advisory board member, was recently on view at The Clay Studio (www.theclaystudio.org) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The exhibition featured 28 artists who are currently exploring the use of earthenware or low-fired clay bodies in the creation of their ceramic work.
“Earthenware pottery has a long and venerable history, from ancient Chinese Yang Shao works to new-world Mimbres bowls, and much between and beyond,” said Arbuckle. “These remarkable works, often with decorated surfaces, inspire us today as high points in ceramic art.
“In the last half of the 20th century, there was a tendency by aficionados of the high-fire vessel school to vilify earthenware as a contemporary medium for ‘serious’ potters.... Low-fire was associated with punky, under-fired folk pottery that didn’t stand up to daily use. Earthenware was relegated to flower pots and floor tile.... Fueled by technical advances (the availability of frits, stains, inclusions stains, and advances in electric kiln technology and shared information about what was possible), a wave of iconoclastic clay artists who broke many kinds of ‘rules’ in both pottery and sculpture, and the open, questioning attitude in ceramic education, new generations of potters have found their personal vision is best pursued in a low-fire vocabulary.”
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