| From the Pages of Ceramics Monthly
Red-and-Black Figurative Form, 14 in. (36 cm) in height, stoneware with slip and feldspar glaze, cone 6, 2008.
Red-and-White Envelope Form, 61/2 in. (16 cm) in height, stoneware with slip, fired to cone 6, 2008.
Lidded Jar, 20 in. (51 cm) in height, stoneware, slips and feldspar glaze, fired to cone 6, 2008.
Black-and-White Envelope Form, 10 in. (25 cm) in height, stoneware with slip, fired to cone 6, 2008.
Black-and-White Bell Form, 12 in. (30 cm) in height, stoneware and slips, fired to cone 6, 2008.
White Altered Figurative Form, 23 in. (58 cm) in height, porcelaneous
stoneware, slips and feldspar glaze, fired to cone 6, 2008.
Red-and-Cream Bell Form, 11 in. (28 cm) in height, stoneware with slips, fired to cone 6, 2008.
Black-and-White Altered Jar, 19 in. (48 cm) in height, stoneware, slips and feldspar glaze, fired to cone 6, 2008.
| by Matthew Kangas
Matthew Allison's exhibition at Northwest Craft Center & Gallery (www.northwestcraftcenter.com) in Seattle, Washington, was shared with veteran production potters John Benn and Reid Ozaki. Unlike his colleagues, however, Allison's individual thrown or hand-built pots and vessels take on quasi-sculptural qualities.
Even with the holes in their tops, there are other reasons why Allison's work is not exactly sculpture: it's too small; it has no mass or volume. Maybe we need to go along with craft-friendly art critic John Perreault's special categories of craft art that is hollow: it becomes a hybrid art form that celebrates its own unique status without needing to kowtow to the art world.
That said, what is it about these Seattle clay artists (such as Ben Waterman [see CM, J/J/A 2008, pg. 22-23]) who are always alluding to their road trips as primal inspirations for their clay imagery? Is Seattle so far afield that, unless they come here, they never see the rest of America in between Wisconsin, Illinois and Washington State? Allison noted in one of his two mercifully short artist's statements, "The imagery in this work is largely the result of countless road trips across America's western states, which left me with powerful images of the land and the western myth-distant, desolate vistas, jutting edifices of rock and the stratified layers of earth lifted into view over the course of hundreds of millions of years . . . ."
I wonder if this sounds better translated into Japanese? Allison's ceramic studies and teaching at Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music between 2001 and 2006 might seem to be a bigger or at least equal influence on the look of his pots than his road trips. Since he could never be fully accepted in Japan as a non-Japanese ceramic artist, coming up with the intensely "American" subject matter probably made good sense (although this never stopped Rick Hirsch or others from delving more deeply into Asian appearances in their works).
Allison's 84 cups, vases, lidded boxes, bottles, jars and sake sets have to be set into the context of the Japanese potter-worker. Industrious to be sure, the creativity and artistic qualities of the potter-worker become secondary afterthoughts, overly proud pretensions sure to be cut down to size, like the old Japanese proverb, "The shiny nail is the first to be hit."
No "shiny nails" here, but a brief survey of a few of Allison's more individual works gives a clearer idea of his aesthetic: primarily Japanese, indirectly American. An astute student of Japanese ceramic history, 37-year-old Allison narrows his palette to colors that work within and over the red, white or brown clay bodies, integrating color and surface texture onto the stoneware support rather than crisply separating them. Red-and-White Envelope Form stresses Japanese asymmetry; its top hole is set off to the upper left side. It emulates the repeated wave patterns one often sees on Japanese textiles. The waves are more generously spaced and separated on Black-and-White Envelope Form. With the flattened front-and-back format, Allison is able to make the slip covering more prominent with little recourse to pictorialism-or glaze.
Even with an all-white clay body of porcelaneous stoneware in White Altered Figurative Form, subtle surface variants occur like a dimple, a possible mountain range half way up the side of the form, and cracked, vertically striated lines. For such a big show with such a narrow palette, no single piece was the same as any other and several had fully developed surface imagery. Lidded Jar has light orange drips at its base over a warmer brown tone. More explicit mountain ranges are topped by white-tinged clouds above. These are quiet effects that only emerge after contemplation.
Black-and-White Bell Form and Red-and-Cream Bell Form take another shape-a rocking, scoop-topped vase-and add comparably dried-earth-looking decoration. In the former, chalk white slip has been combed over a chocolate-colored surface rising to a deep brown ring beneath the vase's opening. The latter intensifies the Utah or Wyoming State Park look with its red band above a white "sky," jagged "mountain range," and wavy, crackled lines near its base. The flattened forms better allow for such allusions than do the more uniformly thrown works.
In Black-and-White Altered Jar, premonitions of future work may have a heartening appearance. Scratched throughout, like a knife through skin, this work's surface lets the white show through the black and treats the black as a filmy under-covering with a greater blend of mark making than any of the other pieces. Varieties of marks, plus stepping back from landscape pictorialism, push Allison toward a new calligraphic, abstract surface decoration. Vernacular Japanese covered rice pots as well as humbler Korean serving bowls come to mind.
Considering such an impressive range of treatments within such a tight set of forms suggests there might not be anything Allison cannot pull off. One question remains: how can Allison gain greater recognition and art-world respect without increasing the size of the pots, let alone the spectrum of colors? The answer is bound to be worth watching.
the author Matthew Kangas, a frequent contributor to CM, also writes for Art in America, Sculpture and Art Ltd. His full-length study of a Seattle ceramic sculptor, potter and filmmaker, Robert Sperry: Bright Abyss, is available now from University of Washington Press.
Images courtesy of Northwest Craft Center & Gallery, Seattle, Washington. All works by Matthew Allison. Photos: Tom Holt.
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Review: The Scholar's Eye: Contemporary Ceramics from Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio's Collection
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Lucio Fontana's Concetto Spaziale and Spatial Concept, 17 in. (45 cm) in height, porcelain, 1968.
Jean-Pierre Larocque's Untitled (head), 40 in. (102 cm) in height, stoneware, 1996.
Georges Jeanclos' Kamakura, 20 in. (51 cm) in height, earthenware, 1995.
John Mason's X Plate, 93/4 in. (25 cm) in height, stoneware, 1956.
Peter Voulkos' Untitled Vase/Stack, 401/2 in. (103 cm) in height, stoneware, 1969-71.
Richard DeVore's Vessel, 113/4 in. (30 cm) in height, porcelain, 1981.
Sir Anthony Caro's The Achaians-Xanthos from the series Trojan War, 691/4 in. (176 cm) in height, stoneware, steel, 1993-94.
Claudi Casanovas' Plate, 32 in. (81 cm) in diameter, ceramic, 1994.
| by Diana Lyn Roberts
It's a museum curator's dream: a well-known scholar and collector approaches your institution, offering a major gift of works from their private collection that not only fills the gaps in your current holdings, it gives your museum one of the leading exhibit and research collections in the country. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (www.mfah.org) found itself in this enviable position last year, except the collection they received was hand-selected by not one, but two of the ceramic world's leading scholars, collectors and gallerists: Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio. The MFAH exhibition, "The Scholar's Eye," was on view recently and showcases some of the masterworks included in this remarkable gift. With 40 or so works on display, the show merely hints at the breadth, depth and quality of a collection that now exceeds 400 pieces.
Focusing on modern and contemporary ceramic art from the 1940s to the present, the MFAH Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio Collection ranges from functional ware to narrative and fully abstract sculptural pieces. The Scholar's Eye presents only a fragment of the entire collection, but includes works by major innovators and practitioners in the field of ceramic art: Peter Voulkos, Ron Nagle, Richard Devore, Ruth Duckworth, John Mason and many others. It also features works by contemporary artists not typically associated with the medium, such as Sir Anthony Caro, Lucio Fontana and Roy Lichtenstein.
Cindi Strauss, MFAH curator of modern and contemporary decorative arts and design, says she selected the show as "an introduction to the riches of this collection. I wanted it to work on multiple levels, so that if you knew nothing about contemporary ceramics, you'd still appreciate the diversity of the works on display. For those who know about ceramics, it's a sort of a 'Who's Who'." The exhibition labels are coherent and informative, providing context for some of the major trends within an artist's work or within the broader trajectory of ceramic art.
In some cases, multiple works by an artist are on display to emphasize the depth of the collection. Four works from Ron Nagle, ranging from 1980 to 2001, show various aspects of the artist's exclusive use of the cup to explore multiple facets of form and surface design. Three works by Peter Voulkos show his transition from the fairly traditional Green and White Bottle of 1950 to the less traditional Chalice of 1953 and the fully sculptural, classic Voulkos Stack of 1973.
The breadth of the collection is also displayed. From the technique intensive, self-referential "ceramic-ness" of Adrian Saxe to Richard Devore's elemental Vessel, John Mason's X Plate and Ruth Duckworth's Platter, The Scholar's Eye reveals some fundamental concerns of artists focused on a single medium and the myriad ways they deal with those issues. For example, the ultra-clean lines of Bodil Manz' quintessentially Scandinavian, design-oriented fine porcelain Cylinder No. 3 with Black and Black Lines is juxtaposed with Andrew Lord's installation of Six Mexican Pieces, Biting. The work is comprised of six oversized, over-decorated, intentionally awkward, broken and repaired non-functional forms based very loosely on Mexican folk ceramics. Whatever "concern" these artists address is glibly undermined by Lichtenstein's commercially produced place setting, featuring his famous Pop Art cartoon style on the surface of bland, every day, mass produced dishes.
Figurative works show an equally diverse range. Viola Frey's kitschy, intentionally tacky earthenware tableau Esther Williams and Deborah Kerr at the Pool is contrasted by Jean-Pierre Larocque's primordial Untitled (head) and Georges Jeanclos' reverential, almost spiritually spare Kamakura.
Equally elegant and reverentially spare, Lucio Fontana's Concetto Spaziale is one of the most elemental works in the show. More well-known for his assertively yet elegantly slashed canvas wall pieces and constructions of the same generic title, Fontana effectively translates his abstract formal concerns into two lozenge-shaped porcelain objects, one black and one white, with the characteristic "slashes" expressed as engraved lines and gashes in the surface of the clay. Arman's Four Stages of Conversation, featuring slip-cast white earthenware teapots cut in half and stacked on a white wooden shelf, and Anthony Caro's steel frame with roughly modeled clay elements in The Achaians-Xanthos show how sculptors more well known for other materials have appropriated clay as an effective sculptural medium.
The Scholar's Eye presents some exceptional works and introduces a range of styles, trends and undercurrents in contemporary ceramic art. Yet, as an exhibition, it isn't particularly satisfying. The cursory overview doesn't offer much coherence, and some of the works seem more representative of trends rather than being masterworks in their own right. Perhaps it's just the knowledge that there's so much more to both the collection and the field than can be encompassed in 40 works. To be fair, it isn't the point of this show to be comprehensive. Strauss says there are plans to create a full catalog and a more complete exhibition of the Clark-Del Vecchio Collection in the future, but the current show would benefit from more focus and a few additional works to complete the thoughts just barely addressed in the present selection.
Still, there's something to be said for access. Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio are arguably the most important gallery dealers in modern and contemporary ceramics. Since opening their first gallery in Los Angeles in 1981 and their famous New York venue in 1983, they've established firm footing in a fine art market that typically excluded ceramics. Independently, Clark and Del Vecchio have produced scholarly, art historical texts that helped establish academic credentials for the field. In effect, their efforts and their choices have helped create a currency for fine art ceramics. Most important, they possess an unmatched commitment to ceramic artists and a propensity to collect.
With the recent announcement that Garth Clark Gallery would be closing its physical location and moving online, they are also showing their generosity. The Clark-Del Vecchio gift also includes an artist archive with bios, images and correspondence, and a resource library of around 1000 items ranging from exhibition catalogs to artist monographs, catalogs of major ceramic collections, scholarly texts and other research materials, which are available to the public through the MFAH Hirsch Library.
the author Diana Lyn Roberts is a Texas-based independent art critic and a frequent contributor to CM.
All images courtesy of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio Collection.
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David Hicks’ Still Life 2007, 83 in. (211 cm) in length, terra cotta, stoneware, glaze, bronze, wood, steel, multi-fired terra sigillata, luster, 2007.
| New work by David Hicks will be on view through December 31 at cross mackenzie ceramic arts (www.crossmackenzie.com) in Washington, D.C.
“Hicks’ compelling and original ceramic wall installations hover in the air, between the natural and the artificial—the imagery is hard to pin down,” said gallery director, Rebecca Cross. “His clay surfaces contrast the organic raw and tactile with the machine polish, pairing rough hand formed terra-cotta objects with industrial steel cable. In the most recent piece, the artist glazes slip cast elements in highly reflective bronze lusters, then suspends them with a natural fiber twine. Meticulously executed, Hicks creates installations of layered units of enigmatic origin. At times, the units seem seedpod like and other times like fishermen’s sinkers or encrusted floating buoys. The viewer glimpses human anatomy morphing into factory made stacks of unfamiliar vessels. Hicks studies the moment of transition from one state to another—he is interested in the potential of the seed not yet mature and the decaying fruit, beyond ripe, about to drop. Each element is like a stilled pendulum, caught in the moment between swings; the fragility of the unsupported material adds to the tension.”
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Lillstreet International 2008
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Michael Helke’s Cups.
| The first annual “Lillstreet International: Functional Porcelain” was on view recently at Lillstreet Art Center (www.lillstreet.com) in Chicago, Illinois.
Sam Chung, who juried the exhibition stated, “It was an honor to jury the first annual Lillstreet International exhibition. As I first went through the images, I felt humbled to have the opportunity to select from such a creative pool of ceramic work. The diverse representation was refreshing, and it was inspiring to see conventional perspectives on function presented with new voices. Many pieces impressed me with their luscious surfaces or remarkable craftsmanship. Yet many others left me curiously intrigued—not knowing what to think at first glance. These works had to be revisited, and became increasingly interesting. I realized the effect that time had on my attempt to understand certain pieces of work. Not all pots are created with the same hand, and so not all pots can be understood in a standardized time frame. I tried to be as thoughtful as I could in my decisions and asked several questions with each entry: How was this made? How is surface working with form? How is function addressed? What is truly unique about this work? One must also realize that these decisions are based on a 4×3–inch jpeg. A clear disadvantage was not having the ability to touch these pots.
“As a potter, I am all too familiar with applying to juried exhibitions, so I understand the elation and disappointment in hearing the results. Unfortunately, all work cannot be included. This is, after all, what makes it a competition. I congratulate those who were selected, and encourage those who were not to keep working hard and to never lose sight of your ultimate goals. You can’t go wrong following your passion.”
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Beauty Sandwich: Martin, Chung, Martin
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Frank Martin’s Teapot,
11 in. (28 cm) in height, porcelain, 2008.
| “Beauty Sandwich: Martin, Chung, Martin,” a group exhibition of work by Andrew Martin, Sam Chung and Frank Martin, was on view recently at Santa Fe Clay (www.santafeclay.com) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“In a clearly playful frame of mind, the artists came up with Beauty Sandwich, an apt title given the artists’ names and the work,” said Peg Rivard, Gallery Sales Manager. “Like many of the accomplished potters in their field, Andrew Martin, Sam Chung and Frank Martin make reference to the thousands of years of history attached to ceramic art in their forms and their treatment of the surface. Each of the three artists address the particular challenges raised by clay in their own unique way.
“Frank Martin has experimented with materials, designs and styles. Yet his natural surroundings remained the touchstone of his work. Known for his bold use of color, as well as for disassembling and then piecing together his forms, Martin challenges the viewer’s idea of function, while creating a beautifully realized and functional form."
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Barbro Åberg’s Time Yarn,
14 in. (36 cm) in height,
clay with perlite and paper fibers, 2008.
Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye’s
Turquoise Vessel, 9 in.
(23 cm) in height, stoneware,
2008.
| “The View from Denmark: Contemporary Danish Ceramics,” a group exhibition, was on view recently at Lacoste Gallery (www.lacostegallery.com) in Concord, Massachusetts. The exhibition featured works by thirteen leading Danish ceramists.
“The Danes have a long history of ceramics going back to the founding of Royal Copenhagen in 1775. Fostered by artists’ studios there and at Bing and Grondahl, as well as other potteries such as Saxbo, the country had a serious dedication to studio pottery going back to the early 20th century,” said Lucy Lacoste, gallery director. “The Danish treated the vessel as an art form from the beginning, with their formal sense of abstraction placing the container on a sculptural plane. They also reacted to the material, with the textural quality of the Danish clay being an important element.
“Barbro Åberg, working with clay augmented by volcanic ash and paper, creates extraordinary forms with titles like Wave and Time Yarn that resemble fluid archetypes of ancient symbols and myth. . . .[while] Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye claims her Turkish heritage while being identified as Danish. Her minimalist forms are all about the perfect line of a bowl, how it passes imperceptibly from curve to a flat surface at its base, and about the purity of color, as in her brilliant turquoise works.”
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Claudia Alvarez’ The Silence
of Water, figures 26-28 in.
(70–71 cm) in height, earthenware, mixed media, 2008.
| A solo exhibition of new work created by Claudia Alvarez during a residency at the Gerber Jez Foundation in Cholul, Mexico was on display recently at El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Yucatán (www.macay.org) in Mérida, Mexico.
María Teresa Mézquita Mendez, who wrote about the exhibition stated that, “The motivation for Alvarez was working with children in a Sacramento hospital, the immediate revelation of the little figures awakes in the viewer the annoyance of sadness and vulnerability, of human fragility, greater when that human being is a little one—their immature anatomy, still in progress, is even more fragile, more ephemeral. The faces, looking up, hope for an absent answer, drowned in time, conveying uncertainty, a question with no answer. These children with no arms are not allowed to hug anyone, not even to hold on to life. This is how this installation undresses itself, raw in its absolute simplicity. The exhibition is made up of seven child-sized figures. The only character that actually has arms lies on the floor, rolled up like a fetus, more like a corpse than a living being. And the viewer’s annoyance begins precisely with the subject because it seems that when it comes to childhood (since the Gerber baby), everything has to be happiness and smiles.
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Rebekah Bogard’s Dead
Weight, 18 in. (46 cm) in
height, earthenware, underglaze, plastic eyes,
acrylic paint, 2007
| “Twilight,” a solo exhibition of new work by Rebekah Bogard, was on view recently at E.L. Wiegand Gallery, Oats Park Art Center (www.churchillarts.org) in Fallon, Nevada.
“I find myself increasingly nostalgic,” said Bogard. “I long for warm summer nights, the feel of grass under my bare feet and sleeping under the stars. Twilight is a magical time of day that signifies things are about to change. It turns night into day and day into night. It is both the beginning and the end. As if in a dream, the lines of reality become blurred. As sleep overtakes me, interior becomes exterior and exterior becomes interior. ‘Twilight’ is a place where I lost my love and faith, but gained renewed passion and abundance in conviction.”
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Ted Neal and Charity Davis-Woodard
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Charity Davis-Woodard’s pitcher with bridged spout,
11 in. (28 cm) in height, wood-fired white stoneware,
copper saturated glaze, 2008.
Ted Neal’s Indestructo, 9 in.
(23 cm) in height, high-iron
stoneware,
steel, 2008.
| New works by Ted Neal and Charity Davis-Woodard were recently on view at the Robert T. Wright Gallery (http://gallery.clcillinois.edu/) at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois.
Neal, as assistant art professor at Ball State University, deals with the proliferation of the objects of industry and mass production reformatted into ceramic vessels. Davis-Woodard creates utilitarian ceramic pieces using organic forms and bright contrasting colors.
Neal states that, in addition to industry, the themes that dominate his work include, “the modern social need for portability, and the veneration of the common place. Of particular interest to me are objects that are often discarded or have simply become part of the background of our daily life; industrial forms that have traveled the road from useful object to garbage and in many instances back again. I enjoy looking at our mechanical wasteland for structures that I can reformat around the ceramic vessel. The objects that I select are of interest to me because of a subconscious affinity I have with them. There is little doubt in my mind that my personal experiences have drawn me toward these intuitive selections that serve to express my ideas.”
“I can trace my aesthetic sensibilities back to the rustic contemporary home in the woods where I grew up,” said Davis-Woodard. “Constructed of wood, glass and brick, it was filled with primitive antique furniture, old tools, crockery, stringed musical instruments, an eclectic mix of china, pewter and glassware, and shelves overflowing with books. The rough and refined elements of the house and its contents combined into a simmering stew of influences which now filters down into my work, in both strong and subtle ways, as I seek forms and surfaces that reflect these aesthetic instincts.”
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Stories from the Earth: Voices of Contemporary Ceramic Artists
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Beth Lo’s Then and Now,
26 in. (66 cm) in height, porcelain, epoxy, paper,
acrylic, 2008. | “Stories from the Earth: Voices of Contemporary Ceramic Artists,” a group exhibition of narrative works, was on view recently at Old Dominion University’s Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries (http://al.odu.edu/art/Gallery/gallery.shtml) in Norfolk, Virginia.
Curated by Richard Nickel, the exhibition included works by Erin Furimsky, Carrianne Hendrickson, Marlene Jack, Lori Mills, Beth Lo, Virginia Scotchie, Carol Schwartz, Michaeline Walsh, Jenny Mendes and Anna Freeman. Each artist, using a wide variety of storytelling, explores personal views on a variety of topics from relationships between significant others to childhood memories. Personal symbols, carved, molded, painted and thrown onto each form, invite the viewer to relate their experiences with those present in the works.
Beth Lo describes her work as “revolving primarily around issues of family and my Asian-American background. I commemorate major events in my family’s history, the day to day challenges of parenting and my own childhood memories of being raised in a minority culture in the United States. I also enjoy investigating, celebrating and sometimes satirizing traditional Asian aesthetics; I often make visual reference to calligraphy, origami, scrolls, Socialist Realist artwork, mahjong, as well as the many rich traditions of Chinese pottery and Tang and Han dynasty figurines.”
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