I Contain Multitudes, the 2023 NCECA Annual exhibition at Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati

I Contain Multitudes, the 2023 NCECA Annual at Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati

I Contain Multitudes, the 2023 NCECA Annual exhibition is on view at Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati

March 14 – May 7, 2023

On Friday, March 17, from 6 to 9 pm, the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will host a public reception for I Contain Multitudes.

Curated by Garth Johnson, the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Curator of Ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), this group exhibition of 47 ceramic artists from across the United States and beyond is presented in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts annual conference Current, in Cincinnati from March 15-18, 2023.

For his curatorial approach, Johnson has selected “the vessel” as a functional and symbolic form, rich with associations as the thematic link between the participating artists. Johnson states, “Even though the centuries-old hierarchy of materials that has relegated ceramic objects to the realm of “craft” has now thoroughly broken down; the vessel still does not command the amount of respect that it deserves. During the COVID-19 pandemic, countless people turned to pottery classes and episodes of The Great Pottery Throw-Down as a part of their self-care regimens. Somehow, during a time of profound disconnection, the vessel was there for us—from home remodeling projects to pop-up Instagram sales. How can this, the most tangible of objects, serve to connect us in a time of isolation? This is just one of the profound contradictions that reveal how profoundly the vessel is intertwined with our DNA. The vessel represents a radical vision of hospitality. The vessel represents the investigation and declaration of identity. The vessel can be a container for skill and technique, or it can be a barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. As Walt Whitman cannily observed in Song of Myself, sometimes it can be both.”