exhibitions

Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery / Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, OK, USA
April 20 - September 16, 2012

Opening reception: Friday, April 20, 7-9 pm.

Works of one of Oklahoma’s favorite potters, John Frank, are featured in a new exhibition, Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery, opening Friday, April 20, at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. The exhibit features a selection of work from Frank’s Oklahoma-based pottery factory that manufactured unique and collectable ceramics for more than 50 years. Highlights include a group of individual pieces made by the potter.

“This exhibit gives the University a great opportunity to honor the pioneer contributions made by John Frank to our School of Art, especially our ceramics program,” said OU President David L. Boren. “He came from the Chicago Arts Institute to start the ceramics program at OU. Using Oklahoma clay, he shaped ceramic pieces that would make him well known across Oklahoma and even around the world. Countless Oklahoma dinner tables were graced with his dinner ware.”

“It is a great pleasure to celebrate the life and works of a true Oklahoma artist,” said Ghislain d’Humières, director of the art museum at OU. “John Frank’s legacy continues both in the artistic integrity and the continued collectivity of works created in his factory nearly 80 years ago.”

In 1927, Frank founded a ceramics program at OU, where he taught for eight years. While teaching at the university, he established Frankoma Pottery, using local clays with colors and designs symbolic of the Southwest and Great Plains.

The April 20 opening for Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery is preceded by a daylong symposium at the museum. Scheduled from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Decorative Arts and the American West – the seventh biennial symposium of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West – is free and open to the public, with a nominal charge for an optional luncheon. Noted scholars, museum curators and art historians will discuss such diverse topics as ranch-style furniture, regionally inspired pottery and silver-mounted saddles.

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Silhouette ’12, Lacquer Sculptures by Murata Yoshihiko / Keiko Gallery, Boston, USA
April 7 – May 7, 2012

Artist Reception: April 7, 3 — 6 pm.

From its beginning, Keiko Gallery has been committed to introducing contemporary Japanese lacquer art to the American public. We are pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by a gifted young lacquer artist, MURATA Yoshihiko, whose work relies heavily on the external play of light and shadow. His recent lyrical Silhouette focus on anthropomorphic forms whose lines twist and turn, swell and fade, like the sounds from a musical instrument. Simple, exquisite and profound, they share much in common with the brief poetic form, haiku.

Among the increasing number of well trained and gifted young Japanese lacquer artists, each of whose work is idiosyncratic, Murata Yoshihiko’s work relies distinctively on the external play of light that creates silhouettes which extend his forms and flow indistinguishably from the sculptural pieces themselves into their shadows.

Like his slender anthropomorphic forms, his occasional use of the contrasting brilliance of raden (mother-of-pearl) reflects his early fascination with the elaborate hair ornaments (kanzashi) once worn by oiran,* the high ranking goddesses of Japan’s traditional entertainment world. When he was a student in lacquer at Kanazawa College of Art — a city once famous for its entertainment quarter — he first discovered images of these courtesans whose extravagant attire and richly ornamented hair styles had captured the imaginations of most artists of Ukiyoe, the paintings and wood block prints featuring the demimonde of the Floating World. In studying these images he realized that many of the hair ornaments suggested creature-like aspects. This resulted in his exploration of small sculptures that evoked creatures of the wild.

Murata currently lives in the rural part of Japan’s Toyama Prefecture which is famous for its natural beauty and a wide variety of wild life. His encounters with the animals continually inspires his recent sculpted silhouettes.

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Tim Rowan: New Works / Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY
April 5 - May 12, 2012

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 5th, 6-8 pm.

The American sculptor Tim Rowan’s personal quietude belies the depth and activity of his process. He allows his work to be his voice but sometimes this leaves much to the perceptions of the viewer. The work often depends on the viewer not only to intellectually grasp it but to intuit it as well. The Japanese aesthetic of Yugen or mysterious essence is an important part of his presentation. This work not only occupies gallery space but it also has a placement in the context of his studio and land. When you see his work in its birthplace you realize you are standing in the presence of one of the world’s great Poets of Place.

Tim Rowan’s work does not refer directly to the history of traditional Western ceramics. Of course aspects of all ceramic sculpture processes are universal but his work does not travel to us out of an evolution of Western form and surface techniques. By this token they barely travel out of Japanese form either, though there are parts of the process that refer to it obliquely; firing technique and flame markings for example. But his cups are not chawan, and his sculpture does not quote Bizen form. His urns are not mizusashi. If there are any references at all to the work of his teacher, Ryuichi Kakurezaki, they come from Rowan’s responding to that work despite the Japanese legacy that work comes from. When you look closely at Tim Rowan’s abstract pieces the implications of his freeform place in history come home to roost. You can compare his colors perhaps, his textures perhaps, his melted ash perhaps, but his forms are his alone. They are not utilitarian objects trying to break free from tradition. They are however, utilitarian to the eye and the soul, used in aesthetic contemplation and the cerebral and ephemeral pleasures therein. He is saying new things in an ancient language.

I am not sure I would label Rowan as anything but a Contemporary Artist. His expansion to found and shaped stone forms extend his ceramic vocabulary. He is a Minimalist but that is more a description of his affect than of any philosophical viewpoint. The tension in his pieces is not minimal. His work covers power with a veneer of control and calm; a dangerous directed power. It seethes. The spikes on his cups or in his bowls, the cracking and splitting of his geode-like forms whether ceramic or metal, reveal mineral turmoil and convey a universe that can be ominous and/or aggressive even in its quietest moments. He creates a geological ethnography with objects that have resonances beyond the membrane of our ordinary aesthetic recognition.

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Jason Hess: New Work / Plinth Gallery, Denver, CO, USA
April 6 - 28, 2012

Opening reception: Friday, April 6th, 6-9 pm.

Jason Hess is a professional ceramic artist and professor who lives in Arizona and instructs at Northern Arizona University. As an “avid wood firer”, his research for over 15 years has focused on the alchemy of the process — how the clay color, wood type, kiln design, and ash dispersion at high temperatures work together to “render a surface that is unattainable in other ways.”

A desire to have objects that fulfill specific purposes inspires him to make functional pots. The infinite and elusive variety of texture and color attainable through the various making and firing processes has generated an interest in the notion of presentation. Some of his work is presented so that a viewer might notice and appreciate subtle diversities in form and surface. By grouping similar forms of differing size and color the compositions create a visually dynamic display, which invites the viewer to enjoy the tactile nature of each individual piece and how they relate to one another.

His ceramic art has been featured in over 125 exhibitions worldwide. Jason has participated in residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation, in Montana, and at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. He has also received numerous research grants from Northern Arizona University to research his medium and for the construction of the kilns. Jason’s work is either utilitarian or refers to utility in form while the presentation is more like characters relating to one another. He holds an MFA degree from Utah State University.

Gallery Hours: Thursday - Saturday, 12-5 pm, and by appointment.

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Nicolae Moldovan: The minimal form / Galateea Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
March 29 - April 16, 2012

Galateea Gallery, Bucharest, presents a new ceramic exhibition by Nicolae Moldovan, comprising a series of minimal objects. The show runs from March 29 through April 16, 2012, with the Opening Reception on Thursday, March 29, from 6pm to 9pm.

“The Minimal Form” exhibition brings together works that live through their clean shapes and through the essentialized force given by the form. From time to time, the ‘original form’ interacts with elements from other materialities, starting a conflict and aggressing the original.

Nicolae Moldovan graduated in Ceramics at the National University of Arts, Bucharest (1998), being one of Alexie Lazăr Florian and Doru Marian’s pupils. In the last twenty years, he participated in group exhibitions in Romania, Germany, South Korea and Bulgaria.

Reopened in 2011 at the initiative of the Romanian Fine Arts Union, Galateea Gallery is the first contemporary ceramics gallery in Romania, located on 132 Victory Avenue.

Curated by Cristina Bolborea.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 12-20 pm. Saturday, 11-19 pm.

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Saint’s Sculptures between the XIX and the XX century / Casa Vestita, Grottaglie, Taranto, Italy
March 29 – April 15, 2012

Opening reception: Thursday, March 29th, 18.30 pm.

For the first time ever, there will be exhibited over 95 votive terracotta figurines representing some of the saints venerated in Puglia, a tangible sign of the widespread devotion to Southern home.

Fifteen photos by photographer Ciro Quaranta will open the exhibition, who in the last thirty years has been conducting a thorough research on the popular faith in Puglia, managing to put together a file that describes moments of faith and devotion that are cyclically repeated during the centuries.

The exhibition “Sacralità domestica”, maintained by the archaeologist Simone Mirto and ceramist Mimmo Vestita will open in Via Crispi 63/A on the 29th of March, and runs until 15 April, enriching the range of cultural offerings in regional during the Easter season when many tourists reach the Salento to enjoy the balmy spring temperatures or to attend the renowned Holy Week Rites in Taranto.

The votive statues accompanied by the photographs tell the intimate relationship between man and the sacred, an extraordinary exhibition which takes visitors through different eras of environments, all enclosed in the picturesque setting of Casa Vestita in the heart of the “City of ceramics”. Grottaglie is thus prepared to the first exhibition that puts a spotlight on an aspect of popular devotion, at a specific time such as Easter, in which the mystery of faith is particularly felt by the community.

“A recious and rare exhibition” - Simone Mirto, curator of the exhibition. Sacralità domestica is the first exhibition in Italy that traces the lower production of votive terracotta figurines made in Grottaglie.

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David Gómez Blaya / B4ZAAR Creative Market, Madrid, Spain
March 26-30, 2012

The Adolfo Dominguez Foundation presents the plastic artist and ceramic sculptor David Gómez Blaya in Madrid, Spain.

The Adolfo Dominguez Foundation will present the ceramic work of David Gómez Blaya, a plastic artist from Madrid between March 26 and March 30 in the B4ZAAR CREATIVE MARKET. The Foundation headquarters are located at calle Serrano, number fifth, next to Puerta de Alcala, subway station of Retiro in Madrid.

The B4ZAAR CREATIVE MARKET of the Adolfo Domínguez Foundation is dedicated to the promotion of emergent artists and designers. During the last week of March, David Gómez Blaya, a creator born in Madrid, will show his concept of sculptural pottery throughout his work. The visitors will have the opportunity to contemplate his ceramic pieces, as well as to meet personally with this versatile craft maker, and also to acquire his art that will be for sale.

David is a master potter and has a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts from Universidad Complutense of Madrid. He began his career in the art world through painting to later work mostly in artistic ceramics. He brings a renewed vision of the ancient potter skills which have been developed through humankind history and applied them to art creation. Departing from the intrinsic functionality of a wonderful tool, the pottery wheel, he reinvents his use as an artist instrument to elaborate very complex technically sculptures. Nonetheless, his artwork has great simplicity and visual impact. In addition, his neat drawing, with explicit lines and full of details, is an elaborate exercise of descriptive plastic images. Therefore, the decoration of his pottery becomes a visual surprise of rich and luminous colors for the human eye that projects his vision of the world.

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

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Mary Fischer and Patricia Sannit / Obsidian Gallery, Tucson, Arizona, USA
March 17 - May 12, 2012

Obsidian Gallery presents a two person exhibition of non-figurative ceramic sculpture by Mary Fischer and Patricia Sannit. The show runs from March 17th through May 12, 2012, with the Artist’s Reception on Saturday, March 24, 2012 from 6pm to 9pm.

The focus of Mary Fischer’s work is architecture, both in the wild and in books. The images “get jumbled” in Mary’s head and later sorted out by her hands.
The timelessness of indigenous architecture is an influence, as is the use of concrete by contemporary architects. Surface treatments and forms change over time as different structures capture her interest.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Patricia Sannit received her BA in Ceramics, Art History and Norwegian from the University of Minnesota and her MFA from the California College of Arts. She now lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Sannit’s work is influenced by her experiences excavating in the Near East and Ethiopia. Sannit’s most recent project is a large-scale ceramic installation, Citadel, based on an archeological site in Iraq.
Patricia Sannit’s work draws from humanity’s relationship with both its natural and man-made surroundings. She uses both found and repurposed clay to refer to historical art forms as well as the stratigraphy of the Earth. “I am interested in the story of the earth, our species, and pots. History is manifest in the scarred and worn surface of our planet and in a pot well made and well used.”

Obsidian Gallery has presented the best in contemporary craft to Tucson residents and visitors for twenty-five years. There is an emphasis on the traditional craft media of clay, fiber, metal, glass and wood. Contemporary fine art, and works in mixed media complement the selection.

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Generations: Betty Feves / Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, Oregon, USA
March 15 – July 28, 2012

First retrospective of work by important Northwest Artist
Curated by Namita Gupta Wiggers

The capstone exhibition of Museum of Contemporary Craft’s 75th Anniversary Year, Generations: Betty Feves is a comprehensive retrospective of work by this important Northwest Modernist ceramic artist. Opened in March 15, 2012, the exhibition includes work from every period of her 40-year career which began with studies under Clyfford Still and Alexander Archipenko, included studies in New York City during World War II, and later, decades in Pendleton, Oregon.

Feves was nationally engaged and regionally focused. She spoke at the first conference of the American Craftsmen’s Council (now the American Craft Council) at Asilomar, California in 1957 along with Peter Voulkos and Marguerite Wildenhain. At the same time she was deeply inspired by the Oregon landscape; rounded stone and basalt slab forms repeatedly found their way into her pieces. And Feves relentlessly experimented with materials and processes. She dug her own clays from locations like Oregon’s Dead Man’s Pass, sometimes mixing them with brick clay from LaGrande. And she created all of her own glazes from local sources such as grasses and the leaves of locust trees in her own backyard. “Decayed basalt, as she called it, became a routine ingredient in the clay mixture she used for sculpture, giving a texture and quality of color quite unlike any other,” says American raku pioneer Hal Reigger who collaborated with Feves beginning in the 1950s. “I believe one could look at just a small section of the surface of one of her things and know right off who made it.” With Reigger, Feves explored what they called primitive techniques including bonfire firings. Reigger was among those who praised Feves for her structural innovations in her large-scale Modernist sculptures.

Additionally, Feves was an important catalyst in her community, quietly mentoring and guiding scores of individual artists and musicians while she publicly advocated for the arts as a longtime member of the Pendleton School Board and while serving on the state’s Board of Higher Education. Feves helped to bring the Suzuki violin method to Oregon and to the Pendleton schools and gave private lessons to generations of young musicians. She took on a number of apprentices, but also reached out to younger artists like well-known Northwest painter James Lavadour, introducing him and his work to collectors and dealers. “Betty illustrated to me what an artist’s role is in a community, what an artist does,” Lavadour says. “An artist doesn’t just make art. An artist serves a community in many different ways.” Lavadour went on to found Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton.

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Turi Heisselberg Pedersen: My Garden / Copenhagen Ceramics, Denmark
March 29 - April 21, 2012

Opening reception with Garth Clark, New York-based critic, writer and gallerist: Thursday, March 29, 5–8 pm.
Artist Talk with Turi Heisselberg Pedersen: Saturday, March 31 at 2 pm.

“I love my garden, its plants and vigorous growths. Its potency of growth that within one season can produce an enormous plant from a tiny seed. It contains such a wealth of amazing and strange shapes, textures and colours. Furthermore it is a curious mix of nature and cultivation, of something dirty or beautiful, of poetry and ugliness. Certain things bloom and grow, some go wrong, unsuccessfully. It is a world of controlled nature, which is shaped, trimmed and reworked, not unlike the world of clay” Turi Heisselberg Pedersen explains on the inspiration for her show. Her garden can be experienced at Copenhagen Ceramics from 29 March through 21 April 2012.

For the exhibition My Garden Turi Hesisselberg Pedersen has created a new series of works inspired by the patterns, textures and structures in her garden. In the process of transforming this into ceramics works, two overall themes have emerged:

Vases inspired by buds and growths
On one hand you find a group of precise, simple and cultivated shapes. For example vases inspired by the tautness of swelling flower buds – formal expressions that may seem almost vulgar. Or abstract, simple vase-shapes miming the upward, rhythmic patterns of plant-growth. Both act as ceramic equivalents to the trimmed and cultivated nature of gardens and an interpretation of the underlying order.

The opposite theme renders visible the sprouting life under ground. Out of this, works in the shape of organic, bulbous forms and seed capsules emerge with coarse, expressive surfaces or fluted structures. Careless growths and root-like forms, testifying to the more unruly forces of the garden.

In her new exhibition, Turi Heisselberg Pedersen will be showing some all-new, expressive and asymmetric works, where she explores the inherent character and textural freshness of the clay. Other pieces are more typical of her and display her mastery of simplified sculptural vessels, where rhythm, lines and the interplay between forms are recurrent themes.

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Richard Slee: Camp Futility / Studio Voltaire, London
April 25 – May 26, 2012

Opening reception: Tuesday, April 24, 7–9 pm

Studio Voltaire presents a new commission by Richard Slee, comprising of a series of objects and installations made specifically for the exhibition. Slee is an important figure within contemporary ceramics and the exhibition will be his first presentation in a public gallery since From Utility to Futility, a solo exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010.

Central to Slee’s exhibition at Studio Voltaire is a number of works based on vernacular objects such as wood saws, hammers, pick axes and camping equipment. Inspired by a recent residency at Alfred University, in upstate New York, the works investigate particular myths and the symbolism of our ideas of America such as the great outdoors and the pioneer spirit. Lashed together workbenches that refer to old mining equipment, various scattered tools and an abandoned camp-fire can be read as an allegory to abandoned industries where whole communities move on to find employment elsewhere.

Ideas challenging the economy of productive labor are implicit in Slee’s combination of the hand-made and the found object. The uncanny hybrid of the de-skilled ready-made and the crafted object convey a subversive humourous vision that playfully investigates the limits of the ceramic tradition. Mass produced, everyday objects are meticulously realized with highly glazed, bright colors. These seductive surfaces recall a Pop or post-modern aesthetic that belies the more psychological, underlying cultural references of an object’s utility.

Slee (born 1946, Carlisle) works and lives in London. He studied Ceramics at Central School of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art. Until last year, he was a senior Professor at the University of the Arts in London. His work has been shown in London and internationally since the late 1970s and recent exhibitions include Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990, V&A Museum, London (2011-12), The Peir Arts Centre, Stromness (Solo, 2004) and Tate St Ives (Solo, 2003). Slee is represented by Hales Gallery, London.

Sponsored by SIMONE.
Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.

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