| From the Pages of Ceramics Monthly
Review: From the Fire: A Survey of Contemporary Korean Ceramics
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Ro, Hae Sin's Square (6 pieces).
Choi, Sung Jae's Dawn.
Guac, Roh Hoon's Form–Series 1.
Kim, Jiu Kyoung's
Netting Clay 1.
Kim, Dae Hoon's
Stuffed Remembrance
(God's Promise).
Kim, Yik Yung's Faceted Square Bowl II.
An, Sung Min's
Origins of Life.
| by Dorothy M. Joiner
Praise for the unpretentious beauty of Korean ceramics has sometimes come from unexpected sources. The renowned Japanese potter Hamada Shoji (1894–1978) said “that in the whole world there are no pots which are so imbued with the spirit of a people as these, particularly the Yi [Choson] works. Between Japanese life and the pot, ‘taste’ emerges; with the Chinese, ‘beauty’ creates a distance, but in the Korean works the object contains the life of the people.” “From the Fire: A Survey of Contemporary Korean Ceramics,” brings to the U.S. the “life” of this nation as expressed in clay. Featuring 108 art works by 54 ceramists, it is the largest such collection to be shown in this country. A microcosm of Korea’s past and present, the exhibition demonstrates an abiding respect for tradition at the same time that it reveals an excitement in charting new directions.
The first group of works, termed by Curator Cho, Chung Hyun “Tradition Transformed,” offers time-honored though updated techniques, together with reflections of the country’s religious and cultural heritage. Kim, Yik Yung’s Faceted Square Bowl II is a striking reinterpretation of the spare white porcelain ritual vessels initially reserved for the nobility during the Choson Dynasty. Exquisitely simple, Kim’s bowl rises at an oblique angle from a low rectangular base, the short sides gently curved, the surface discreetly faceted. Like its forebears, the modern work embodies the purity, frugality and lack of affectation advocated by Neo-Confucianism, the dominant cultural philosophy introduced into Korea by the nobility during the 15th century.
Also reaching deep into Korean cultural history are the works inspired by a Daoist identification with nature and its concomitant freedom of expression. For Dawn, a sturdy, wide-lipped container, Choi, Sung Jae covers a stoneware clay body with cream-colored slip and splashes hasty calligraphic markings on the surface with his fingers. Both the spontaneity and the seemingly cavalier application of slip are quintessential qualities of the punchong aesthetic. In the 16th century when Korean potters were forcibly transported to Japan, they brought with them the punchong style, thereby fostering Japan’s preference for natural materials and unaffected folk pottery, the widely known Mingei aesthetic.
Together with the use of conventional techniques is the recurrence of time-honored East Asian symbols. Lee, Kang Hyo employs the onggi method of paddling coils of clay into a spherical vessel with a wooden bat before decorating it with wide-eyed fish and lotus seed pods, titling it My Garden. A ubiquitous Korean symbol, the fish is associated with life and fertility because of its prodigious production of eggs and is also the emblem of enlightenment. Blooming unsullied above murky waters, the lotus, particularly in Buddhist thought, stands for purity and transcendence.
Kim, Soo Jeong further exploits the lotus’s symbolic richness in Life-Lotus II. Joining a rust-colored seed pod to a blossom curiously angled on its side, she sets this plexus on a sea-green platter with an undulating rim, scored with plant-like striations. Suggesting time past, present and future—the backdrop of life’s cycle—the lotus encapsulates the stages of its growth in the seed, the bud and the flower.
No less respectful of the past are the works of the second group: “Ceramic Sculpture.” Inspired by Neo-Confucian rituals for the dead, Jung, Yoo Kun elevates two purposively rough-hewn clay chairs on open squares. As offerings honoring deceased ancestors, the artist places a silver knife encased in acrylic on the seat of one and on the other a silver hair pin.
Christianity, which has grown phenomenally in Korea since the ’50s, is also an inspiration to its clay artists. In Stuffed Remembrance (Human Oblivion), Kim, Dae Hoon embeds the tines of a rusted pitchfork in a thick gray slab, its surface scarred with deep cracks, like parched earth. This dramatically austere image proclaims the curse of Adam and Eve that banished them from Eden and condemned them to till the harsh land.
Kim’s complementary piece, Stuffed Remembrance (God’s Promise), offers the divine remedy for the curse, the promise of salvation recorded in Genesis. Inscribing the Biblical passage in English on a white clay tablet placed in a rough-sided box, the artist calls to mind the ancient custom of interring with the deceased a ceramic epitaph tablet recording birthday, area of origin and personal achievements.
Even in the Christian works, nonetheless, one sometimes senses the lingering echoes of a Daoist appreciation for the natural world. Kim Moo Keun’s Mystery of God is a coarse, ruddy, sanchung clay body. A declivity near the center begins as a perfect circle, then lapses into a less defined shape. Resembling a mortar, the piece hints at “grinding,” the diurnal movements of the divine throughout nature.
“Individual Directions,” the third group of works, are intriguingly innovative creations. An, Sung Min’s Origins of Life nods to her country’s honored legacy of porcelain. But she eschews functionality, fashioning instead a paper-thin ovular shape with an irregular hole—as though cracked—at the smaller end, setting the egg at an angle near the edge of an asymmetrical white base. Universally associated with creation, the egg in Chinese legend hatched the sky, the earth and the primal ancestor P’an Ku. Daoists, furthermore, used an egg to symbolize the Yin/Yang symbol, the germ of existence.
Two works aim at subverting clay’s classic solidity. For Form—Series I, Guac, Roh Hoon flattens narrow strips of clay plaiting a bulbous, webbed configuration, allowing only hints of see-through visibility. And in Netting Clay I, Kim, Jiu Kyoung fashions a woman’s blouse by wiring together myriad squiggles of white porcelain, adding a snowy cloth collar and cuffs. Similarly, Netting Clay II is a bikini and bra top assembled from “coins” of gleaming porcelain.
Much engages the sensibility in this exhibition: the predilection for the irregular, the spontaneous, the simple, the “pure.” And much, too, can be learned about Korean life and history. Many artists espouse traditional techniques, beliefs and symbols, yet do so with a creative fervor that transforms the heritage. Others interpret relatively new beliefs, especially Christianity, in the light of their own indigenous legacy. The viewer experiences, as it were, the “life” of Korea.
“From the Fire” was recently on view at LaGrange Art Museum (www.lagrangeartmuseum.org) in LaGrange, Georgia, and will on view this fall at Denison University Art Gallery (www.denison.edu/campuslife/museum/) in Granville, Ohio.
the author Dorothy Joiner is the Lovick P. Corn Professor of Art History at LaGrange College, LaGrange, Georgia.
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Review: 17th San Angelo National Ceramic Competition
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Susan Dewsnap's
Round Jar.
Steve Hilton's 53.405...53.406...53.407.
Jung Hwa Lee's The Girl
Matthew McGovern's
Coffee Service.
Veronica Juyoun Byun's Made in Chine.
Daphne Rohr Hatcher's Blue Green Portal.
Ana England's Shared Identity: Hurricane and Growth Rings with Thumbprints.
| by Diana Lyn Roberts
The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts (SAMFA) has a well-deserved reputation for its commitment to ceramics. Aside from a small but strong permanent collection of traditional and contemporary works, SAMFA (www.samfa.org) dedicates its beautiful galleries to clay-based art every spring, alternating invitational and juried exhibitions. The jewel in the crown is the San Angelo National Ceramic Competition, a biennial competitive show now in its 17th iteration. Inspired by the vision of long-time Director Howard Taylor, the competition and related events have made this West Texas town a Mecca for ceramics enthusiasts.
Along with co-conspirators Roger Allen of the Chicken Farm Art Center and the art department of Angelo State University, Taylor has crafted a collaborative, citywide art-fest with multiple exhibitions, workshops, a symposium and a growing reputation. This year’s competition brought in 1300 entries from artists in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Winnowed down to 120 objects by juror Anna Stanfield Harris, Curator of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, the resulting exhibition displays the array of style, process and subject matter explored by contemporary ceramic artists.
From large-scale installations to traditional teapots, what strikes the viewer first is the sheer range of formal and aesthetic concerns. The show is displayed in two separate galleries, each with a mix of traditional, functional objects and more purely sculptural or conceptual pieces. The quantity of work is a bit overwhelming at first. One is immediately struck by the eternal exhibition trade-off: more space for each object, or more artwork to look at.
With 1300 entries, we can forgive the juror for selecting ten to fifteen works more than the space can comfortably hold. A few pedestals less might improve circulation, but after one adjusts to the forest of objects, textures and colors, the intuitive logic of the installation starts to emerge. Juxtapositions of form and impulse, figurative and abstract imagery, color and texture, all come together to illustrate the fundamentally malleable nature of ceramic that makes it such a compelling, diverse medium.
Harris’ prize selections give us a starting point for analyzing the range. First Prize winner Steve Hilton’s 53.405 . . .53.406 . . .53.407 is a purely sculptural work comprised of hundreds of hand-crafted flat “rocks” painstakingly piled to form an archipelago, edged in fine black sand, on the floor of the smaller gallery, just as one enters. Viewed from a balcony accessed from the upper floor of the museum, it looks like a vista from a high cliff.
Harris’ Second and Third prizes went to figurative works. Leslie Laine Lewis’ 2nd Place Siren’s Song acknowledges whimsy and humor, while Melinda G. Marino’s 3rd Place Tibetan references the classical portrait bust, with a hint of modern socio-political commentary. Divergent tendencies are evident, notably in Verne Funk’s exquisitely crafted In the Paint, an almost Surrealist depiction of a small nude figure with dunce cap, collapsed in a puddle of paint atop the bald head, one supposes, of the artist himself. Jung Hwa Lee’s The Girl presents a disturbing, psycho-sexual image of a naked, pouting child with large glowering eyes, sitting in a defensive posture with red, perhaps bloody, hands and feet, atop baby-blue synthetic fur. Nuala Creed’s Babes in Arms splits the difference, exploiting the saccharine creepiness of three baby doll forms holding various explosives, using black humor to bring the point home.
Traditional forms comprise a significant aspect of the show. Paul Fehlberg’s Organic Form #39 is the ultimate thin walled, salt-fired stoneware pot, elemental and round, pushing the limits of its perfectly balanced, rotund form. Dale Neese’s Asian-inspired Ovate Jar is a veritable compendium of process: hand-thrown reduction fired stoneware clay, rope impressions, white engobe slip, shino glaze with wood-ash applications and feldspar chunk inclusions. Daphne Roehr Hatcher’s Blue Green Portal is a simple platter form, but its elemental beauty and simple elegance more than justify its presentation as an art piece on the wall. A host of teapots and other functional forms, some traditional and others in the mode of hyper-decorated, post-modern amalgamation, offer substantial variation.
Abstract and conceptual works give further dimension to the show. Jennifer Quarles’ Cuneiform Series: The Problem juxtaposes inscribed runes in handmade stoneware tiles, with Xerox transfer overlays of computer generated text and Venn diagrams showing various relationships between the words, information, data and knowledge. Veronica Juyoun Byun’s Made in China is a 4×4-foot wall-mounted puzzle of sculptural relief blocks. On closer inspection, the individual elements are revealed to be cast from custom formed Styrofoam packing materials, a comment on our globalized consumer economy.
Ana England’s Shared Identity: Hurricane and Growth Rings with Thumbprints juxtaposes the formal similarities of its subjects and draws subtle metaphorical comparisons. Joe Davis’ Nut Boll #1 is a study in texture and organic form, like a 3-D rendering of a microscopic organism. The only free-standing sculpture in the show, Danville Chadbourne’s Sacrificial Mystery–The Perpetuation of Power and Sally Brogden’s Untitled—a wall-mounted, elegantly reflexive loop—suggest more purely sculptural concerns.
With this much work, there’s no way to address all of the physical details and interpretations in any given viewing or discussion. Like other large competitive shows, the 17th San Angelo Ceramic Competition provides a substantial cross-section of the clay-based artwork being produced by artists across the nation.
What makes the San Angelo experience special is the unity and total lack of pretense in the event itself. A small group of works was on display at SAMFA by notoriously unpretentious Ohio artist, Jack Earl, who led a full-day workshop at the Chicken Farm Art Center. The works are from the private collection of SAMFA and competition supporters John and Darlene Williams, reflecting a special artist-collector-museum relationship. An adjacent SAMFA gallery presented the excellent touring exhibition “George Ohr Rising.” SAMFA’s satellite gallery housed a show of the Texas Clay Art Association, and numerous private galleries and studios participated in a city wide Gallery Stroll. Arizona State University hosted an open symposium featuring juror Anna Harris and invited artist Jack Earl, and the unplanned but invaluable participation of ceramic scholars and art dealers Garth Clark and Mark del Vecchio. Naturally, the weekend culminates in a grand barbecue at the Chicken Farm. In short, “Ceramics Weekend” has everything: exhibitions, workshops, symposia, camaraderie and a substantial amount of beer, barbecue and live music—it is, after all, West Texas.
the author Diana Lyn Roberts is a Texas-based art critic and frequent contributor to CM.
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Hiroe Hanazono's Ice Cream Bowls and Servers.
| “Just Desserts,” a group exhibition of sweet, dessert-inspired tableware, was on view recently at The Clay Studio (www.theclaystudio.org) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The exhibition featured work by Victoria Christen, Naomi Cleary, Silvie Granatelli, Hiroe Hanazono, Kristin Pavelka, Hide Sadohara, Karin Solberg and Shoko Teruyama.
“I create highly refined work that consists of simple lines and neutral colors—a minimal aesthetic that harmonizes with the domestic surrounding,” said Hanazono. “My desire as an artist is to create pots that serve not only as a vehicle for the finer taste of food but also transcend visual pleasure and to stimulate appetite. My intention is to highlight the act of eating as a vital component of everyday life, enriching our appreciation of the food and the ambiance of the space.”
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Eduardo Sarabia: History of the World
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Eduardo Sarabia’s History
of the World. Below:
History of the World 315,
detail of installation.
| “History of the World,” a solo exhibition of new work by Eduardo Sarabia, was on view recently at L.A. Louver (www.lalouver.com) in Venice, California.
“The focus of the exhibition is an installation of over six hundred ceramic plates, each a unique form that is handpainted with blue enamel,” said gallery representative Elizabeth East. “The plates include the artist’s signature iconography—automatic weapons, marijuana leaves, roosters, goats and scantily clad, provocative women—that relates to the symbols and language of black market and illegal cross-border commerce. This extensive body of work also embodies the artist’s interest in mining culture, and specifically traditional Mexican ceramic art techniques, to address contemporary issues. While each is an individual artwork, the plates are hung floor to ceiling within the gallery, to create a dense visual environment and site for storytelling.”
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Merrie Wright’s Construction Zone: Coyote.
Concrete Pastures: Deer.
| “Urban Wildlife,” an exhibition of work by Merrie Wright, was on view recently at the Appalachian Center for Craft (www.tntech.edu/craftcenter) in Smithville, Tennessee.
“Wright presents the viewer with a series of animal ceramic sculptures, each of whose natural camouflage has been replaced with the vivid colors and textures common to our cityscapes, giving them a new ‘urban camouflage’ suggesting a unique ability to evolve and adapt,” said ceramics artist Timothy Van Beke in an accompanying essay on the exhibition. “Each of the ceramic animal sculptures is shown alongside a large-scale digital print documenting them on-site and in the context of our manufactured landscape.
“It is apparent that each of these animals was specifically made for the environments in which they were photographed as the setting and the surface of the animals share distinct characteristics. Concrete Pastures: Deer presents a sculpture of a deer whose natural camouflage has been altered with the addition of black and yellow stripes, allowing it to blend into the surrounding parking garage that has replaced its natural form of shelter. Construction Zone: Coyote shows a similar camouflage; with bold white and orange stripes, the animal sits in the road blending into the series of orange and white construction barrels, witnessing the change in its environment and yet disappearing into its new surroundings, figuratively and literally.
“This work serves to remind the viewer of the destruction of natural habitats and the displacement of indigenous wildlife through urban sprawl. While a wide variety of wildlife continue to struggle to survive amongst us, Wright’s vision is left up to the viewer to be the final arbiter. One may view the work as optimistic in the animals’ continued ability to adapt or—without intervention—fatalistic in that their new ‘urban camouflage’ is ultimately a fantasy.”
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Marla Ziegler’s Chautauqua.
| New work by Marla Ziegler will be on view through October 11 at Craighead-Green Gallery (www.craigheadgreen.com) in Dallas, Texas.
“In the last several years, I have almost exclusively made works and installations for vertical surfaces,” said Ziegler. “In this current body of work, many pieces have surprisingly gravitated from the wall back to the pedestal and even to the floor.
“Form and a strong surface vocabulary remain foremost in all of my new work. I consider the ‘skin’ of each piece from inception. I may carve into a surface or press repetitive marks into the slabs of clay using everyday stuff around my house—things like string, spaghetti, toys, bubble wrap, cuttings from my broom—anything that is handy.”
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Bryan Hopkins’ Tile 1.
| “Transformations: 6×6,” a national invitational exhibition, will be on display from October 3–November 22 at the Clay Art Center (www.clayartcenter.org) in Port Chester, New York. The exhibition, which includes more than 600 tiles by 200 artists, is held in conjunction with “All Fired Up!: A Celebration of Clay in Westchester” (www.allfiredup.info) this fall in Westchester, New York.
“The goal of Transformations 6×6 is to have all participating artists, many of whom do not usually work with tiles, apply their creative voice and aesthetic into the format of a 6×6 inch tile,” said Leigh Taylor Mickelson, Program Director at the Clay Art Center. “The walls of the gallery will be filled with work that has been transformed from three dimensions into two, creating a visual assortment of color and content along with a synchronization of design and purpose.”
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Garth Johnson’s Wilderness of Warning.
| “Texting: Print and Clay,” a group exhibition exploring the use of print as both a subject and technique, will be on view through October 26 at Pewabic Pottery (www.pewabic.com) in Detroit, Michigan.
“The imprinting of clay with letters and other abstract communicative marks to carry a message are as old as the history of writing,” said Tara Robinson, curator of the exhibition. “Creating digital images that can be transferred to a clay surface is as recent as the explosion of computer imaging. However, the latter clearly follows in a direct line from the use of transfer prints on clay using much older printing methods. The use of fragments of text and images to convey abstract ideas in art devolves from the inventions of Pablo Picasso and George Braque, whose works incorporated words, letters and numbers, images of the labels of commercial products, and, ultimately, actual bits of paper and other materials in the pictures called collages.
“The works by the artists in this exhibition use print techniques, letters and numbers (printed, painted and carved) references to prints and printmaking, modern digital imaging, impressed letters and hand-drawn references to printed materials of all kinds to convey their artistic, personal and political ideas.”
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| Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic |
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Cynthia Consentino’s
Rabbit Girl V.
| “Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic,” a group exhibition featuring the work of more than 80 artists, will be on view from October 3–December 13 at the Westchester Arts Council’s Art Exchange (www.westarts.com) in Westchester, New York.
Curated by Dr. Judith S. Schwartz, the exhibition will explore social issues and human inequities in ways that are at turns pugnacious, unexpected, disturbing, humorous and ultimately enlightening. Confrontational Ceramics will be presented as part of “All Fired Up!: A Celebration of Clay in Westchester,” (www.allfiredup.info) organized by the Westchester Arts Council and the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York. “Historically, clay has been seen as utilitarian material, typically thought of as best suited for teapots and decorative tiles,” said Schwartz. “But the artists of Confrontational Ceramics break this traditional conceptual mold using clay as the most appropriate medium for their sculptural statements. Making use of satire, caricature, parody, erotica and the grotesque, these artists provide critical commentary on wide-reaching social, political and environmental issues.”
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| Gert Germeraad: Depicting Criminals |
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Gert Germeraad’s bust
from the Depicting
Criminals series.
| “Depicting Criminals,” a solo exhibition of new sculptural works by Gert Germeraad, was on view recently at NEON Gallery (www.neongallery.nu) in Brödsarp, Sweden.
“I am interested in portraiture in the broadest sense of the word,” said Germeraad. “I’m fascinated by thoughts and theories about character and personality. . . . This exhibition is about identity, specifically criminal identity. We often want to simplify identity so that it is defined by a person’s outer appearance, clothes and style. Yet how can we judge another person based solely on appearance? By looking at the nose? Behind criminal acts there may be complex patterns of cause and consequence, personal histories and psychological explanations.”
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| Aysha Peltz: Stolen Moments |
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Aysha Peltz’s
Three Bud Vases.
| An exhibition of new work by Aysha Peltz, “Stolen Moments/Recent Work,” was on view this fall at The Artisan Gallery (www.theartisangallery.com) in Northampton, Massachusetts.
“I seek to make pots that appear to grow from the process naturally and comfortably, that capture the essence of wet porcelain,” said Peltz. “‘Stolen Moments’ refers to my long held belief that by immersing myself in the ceramic process, the subtleties of porcelain are revealed. It also characterizes my studio life during the past two years. As a new mother, I have been adjusting to the abbreviated time that I now have in my studio. That time is now very focused and condensed. Time for research and development is too often a luxury. I move my work forward by focusing and clarifying ideas and forms already familiar to me.”
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Ellen Shankin’s Teapot.
| The National Teapot Show VII, on view recently at the Cedar Creek Gallery (www.cedarcreekgallery.com) in Creedmoor, North Carolina, featured 220 teapots by 170 artists. Begun in 1989 by Sid Oakley, this year’s exhibition included teapots that ranged from traditional to contemporary, functional to conceptual and whimsical in a variety of media including clay, glass, wood, metal, fiber and mixed media.
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Susan Budge’s
Eye Spy Pink.
| “CraftTexas 2008,” a juried exhibition featuring a wide-range of Texas–made contemporary craft, was recently on view at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (www.crafthouston.org) in Houston, Texas.
“There are some who may think that an exhibition with ‘craft’ in the title will necessarily result in a predictable collection of objects,” said Harlan Butt, one of the exhibition’s three jurors along with Kate Bonansinga and Jane Sauer. “Not so with CraftTexas 2008. Craftsmanship certainly is evident in every single work but the intention and overtness of that craftsmanship varies greatly. These are definitely pieces by object-makers and, even if many of the artworks imply ritual, viewer participation or familiar functions, the ‘objectness’ is overwhelming...in a good way. The tangible nature of these material things in itself points to a philosophical view of contemporary life that affirms a reality affected by humans not obsessed with preaching to us about it or addicted to its own self-importance.”
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Susan Gallagher’s Platter.
| New work by Susan Gallagher will be on view through November 30 at River Gallery (www.rivergalleryarts.com) in Rocky River, Ohio.
“I see my work as a connecting thread between intimate use and ritual and seek to create a balance between ‘perceived context,’ the mundane daily use of ceramic vessels and pots and the elusive sense of ritual which is evoked through familiar forms, surface imagery and a sense of place,” said Gallagher. “Making vessels that are intimate in scale and that generate both visual and tactile energy is an important aspect of my work. I have created a personal botanical vocabulary from nature, which I try to incorporate into my forms and the surface of my pots. The clay forms are either thrown or handbuilt, covered with a colored slip and the surfaces vigorously carved. The energy utilized in the carving process, combined with the pattern, color and glaze, gives each piece an animated quality and a vitality all its own.”
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