Indholdsfortegnelse for #103 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

2016 holds many opportunities for international travel for ceramics devotees. Events begin with the 50th conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, which is being held in mid-March in Kansas City, Missouri, US. Nearly 6000 attendees are expected from around the world. On the weekend of 8-10 April, Ceramic Art London is being held in a new venue, Central St Martins. Neil and Bernadette Mansfield are convening Clay Gulgong and continuing the tradition of Neil’s mother and founder of this journal, Janet Mansfield. This event begins on 17 April in Gulgong, NSW, Australia. This year will mark the 1sr International Latvian Ceramics Biennale | Martinsons Award, in honour of the late Peteris Martinsons. The symposium and event at which the award is presented begins on 15…

THE TITLE OF CANADIAN CERAMIST HEIDI MCKENZIE’S Toronto exhibition worked on a couple of levels. Part of it was geographic: some of the work included here was created during a residency in the ‘porcelain capital’ of Jingdezhen, China in the spring of 2013 (and, in the interest of full disclosure, some was done while in Denmark in the fall of 2014). And the other level was material: the vast majority of pieces in this show – just more than 20 in total – were, of course, porcelain. Multiple levels/multiple meanings are good. I mean, ceramics certainly is not a one dimensional medium (no pun intended), and it is important to keep in mind, to recall, that it is meaningful beyond the aesthetic (inclusive of the decorative and/or ornamental) and beyond…

SEPTEMBER MARKS THE ARRIVAL of new residents to Clay Art Center, which hosts two residents and two fellows annually. These emerging artists join the Clay Art Center community for a year or more of work and teaching. Each receives studio space, free firing, an exhibition in our gallery and the opportunity to support themselves through teaching in Clay Art Center classrooms. In exchange, they share their experience and expertise with an active community of 50 artists, 200 adult students and countless children. Each holding advanced degrees in ceramics, Residents and Fellows bring with them knowledge of contemporary ceramics and a deep understanding of the material. Their willingness to share what they have learnt inevitably has a perennial effect on the visual conversation in the classrooms and studios. In September 2013,…

As sentient human beings, we experience the world through a blending of perception and memory. While our sense awareness registers the physical qualities of our environment, our own projections and identifications play a significant part in our impressions. Phenomenologist architect Juhani Pallasmaa writes: “All experience implies the acts of recollecting, remembering and comparing.” Recognisable objects, in particular, carry memories and associations from our past interactions with them. If “embodied memory has an essential role as the basis of remembering a. . . place [or thing]”1 what happens when our consciousness is confronted with an object that resembles one thing, and whose peculiarities recall another? In his book, Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson notes, “our daily life is spent among objects whose presence invites us to play a part: in this,…

HUMAN BEINGS ARE TOOL MAKERS, AND HAVE BEEN from the invention of the axe, the knife, the spear. Charting human evolution – from hunting and gathering to agriculture to the machine age of reproduction – tools represent human ingenuity and our power over nature. The daily struggle to hunt, gather, or grow what sustains life has been the subject of art at least since ancient Egypt, when artists portrayed the fundamentals of human existence: the fruits, vegetables, fish and fowl that sustain us; the jugs, glasses, plates and bowls with which we eat. What began as emblems of prosperity, in time became symbols of brevity. By the 17th century, many still-life painters warn us of the fleeting nature of our bounty: Food rots or spoils, flowers drop their petals, jugs…

O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? ~ Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel. Your goal in drawing should be to encounter the reality of experience. . . to see ever more clearly, ever more deeply. ~ Betty Edwards, Drawing On The Right Side of The Brain. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CURIOUS about everything,” Charles Timm-Ballard tells me earnestly, as we discuss his work and artistic vision. His references and the scope of his intellect support this self-observation. In the course of one conversation, he moves through ideas seamlessly, bringing together the concept of ontological pessimism with our…

POTTERY HAS BEEN, UNTIL RECENTLY, A FULL-TIME industry for the women of Inyi, a small town in Oji River Local Government Area of Enugu State, south-eastern Nigeria, famous since colonial times for its finely crafted pots. According to Leith- Ross’s testimony in her magisterial publication, Nigerian Pottery: “The Ibo women are among the finest potters in Nigeria, more especially as regards their inexhaustible store of invention both in form and decoration and the individual touch which they give to the most ordinary article. Even centres like Inyi and Ishiagu where pottery making has been more or less a full-time industry for generations, have never fallen into a rut, anymore than have the women who bring their own few homemade pots to some cross-road market in the bush.”1 It was within…

Published by Schiffer Publishing Atglen, Pennsylvania, US ISBN: 978-0-7643-4642-2 176 pages | 190 colour/10 b&w photos | Hard cover $59.99 USD | www.schifferbooks.com The book’s cover, with the image of a rare Frechen Bartmann salt glazed jug, accurately represents the text and images within its 174 pages. The authors, while not potters, offer a historical perspective on this distinctive type of pottery. The first chapter gives insights into the development of Proto stoneware which was neither dense nor vitreous but was widely used until 1300. At that point the technology of clay body formulation and higher temperature kilns developed in Siegburg, Germany produced true stoneware, non-absorbent and more durable. Any potter with a minimal understanding of clay and firing can easily appreciate the story of this technological development. As a…

I ENTERED SHAMAI GIBSH’S STUDIO ON A CLEAR, SUNNY winter morning. From the corner of Jaffa Street, I could already see the warm lustre of the ceramic pieces beckoning. Gibsh was busy putting new pieces into the kiln and, as usual, he seemed to be in perpetual motion. The most recent works filling the studio seemed to be moving along with him. In recent years, he has focused on working with terra sigillata, This technique was employed by the ancient Greeks in their monumental artistic pottery. A thin layer of clay is applied, to seal and give the surface a sheen. His works range from functional pieces to sculptures, and what they all share is the rich and colourful palette of the terra sigillata, which he makes from a variety…

IF THE CURRENT CRY IS ‘CERAMICS IS EVERYWHERE’, ITALY can now be safely added to the equation. There is a new interest in ceramic sculpture that is expanding beyond the confines of the traditional venues for ceramics exhibitions such as the MIC (International Museum of Ceramics) in Faenza. It now includes the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome (GNAM), where 180 pieces by more than 60 artists were brought together in a survey of Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture in Italy (11 March to 7 June 2015), and the solo exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Ducrot (20 February to 10 May 2015) at Rome’s Macro Testaccio. Even the historic Roman gallery L’Attico of Sargentini hosted an exhibition (27 February to 25 March 2015) that juxtaposed the ceramic sculptures of Leoncillo…

Les manning was enthusiastic when asked whether he would mind being interviewed in his studio about his favourite piece. He warned, however, that where he lived was a little remote. He was not exaggerating. Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, is a long way from anywhere. The plains of central Canada seem to be endless, punctuated only on rare occasions by small farming and mining communities. Hour after hour the prairies stretch flat and unchanging in every direction, the only signs of life being clusters of oil pump jacks like giant rusted insects methodically sucking the land of its oily blood. The preferred form of local transport seems to be giant ‘trucks’ from which the locals look down with polite amusement at obvious visitors in their inadequately sized hire car. Medicine Hat,…

MARGARET KEELAN’S CLAY SCULPTURES PRESENT us with a marvellous visual contradiction. These figures are the texture of desiccated old wood, coated with cracked and peeling paint, yet their poses are natural and their gestures are evocative. Examining them closely, we infer a long history and a lifetime of experience. Getting inside the studio with Keelan is a rare chance to get inside the mind of the artist. I discovered that the childish figures the dolls embody actually begin as beautifully modelled sculptures, which another artist might present as finished. On her studio worktable a solemn little girl, balanced on sturdy legs, reaches up to hold an enormous blue butterfly, her facial features soft and delicate. The clay is just past wet, the piece just completed. Keelan uses classic ecorche´ techniques,…

THE US IS A COUNTRY BORN OF IMMIGRANTS. BEFORE the first European settlers, who immigrated to this (now) country, Native Americans inhabited these lands. Today there is much discussion about immigration, legality and the rights of those who have immigrated here recently. A topic that is less discussed is the personal relationships and reactions of those who have immigrated here. In Haejung Lee’s exhibition entitled Interpersonal Relationships, which was on display at Missouri State University in the fall of 2014, she laboured to tell this personal story. Lee is originally from Seoul, Republic of Korea. Ten years ago she moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to complete her second MFA in ceramics at Louisiana State University. Before and after this move to Louisiana, Lee spent time working throughout Europe, Canada, Asia…

Published by University Press of Mississippi Jackson, Mississippi, US ISBN: 978-1-61703-901-0 240 b&w/colour photos | Hard cover | $40 USD |http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1593 JUST FROM LOOKING AT GEORGE OHR’S IMAGE ON THE jacket cover you know this is an interesting fellow. By any definition Ohr was odd looking and acting but with a well thought out strategy for selling pottery. It covers a spectacular gamble that art dealer James Carpenter takes to bring Ohr’s work to the current public, and I will leave that up to the reader to discover. Several books have been written about Ohr, and each has revealed another interesting aspect of his calculating entrepreneurial personality. Long before Donald Trump’s constant self promotion and exaggeration there was Ohr stating he was the greatest amongst potters. In Biloxi Mississippi, his…

To me, the architecture of houses is inspiring and, in my eyes, the best houses are also sculptures. The house can be seen as a metaphoric reference to one’s own body, in fact one’s own ego, and that is what I am exploring in my work. ~ Nina Hole, 2015 IF YOU TRAVELLED TO Guldagergaard, The International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, Denmark, then journeyed a bit farther out to the Danish countryside to Ørslev and turned left at the local church, you would come to a little yellow farmhouse. There was an old wooden gate, and you went through, passing flowers, berries, apple trees. Nina Hole was likely there to greet you, as she expected your coming, and you were invited inside the home that she and her husband…

LIKE MOST IF NOT ALL POTTERS, THE V&A HOLDS A special place in my affections; especially the ceramics collection. On my first visit, a long time ago now, I remember actually seeing pots by Bernard Leach for the first time, and also by Alison Britton, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and so many others. A favourite remains to this day this wonderful little teapot, large creamer and sugar pot with a shell motif and a little swan on the teapot lid, by Coalport. It made a deep impression on a novice potter, barely starting. A while later (1978–1979), I spent an academic year at the North Staffordshire Polytechnic in Stoke-on-Trent and, since the studios were closed on weekends, I would often find myself in London and I never missed an opportunity…

BEFORE IT BECAME A DESTINATION FOR THE rich and famous, Montauk, New York, US was a remote fishing village on the eastern most edge of Long Island. Its weather beaten clapboard houses, wind swept sparsely populated beaches, expansive vistas of the Atlantic Ocean and fishing boats, both the commercial and sporting kind, dominated the visual world that eventually shaped Lynn Duryea’s artistic sensibility. Coming of age in Montauk during the 1950s and early 1960s, Duryea fondly remembers the indelible impressions made on her by this coastal landscape and modest fishing community. Yet the path to her sculptural work of the last 16 years has taken a meandering, circuitous route from those early days on the docks of Montauk alongside her father, a wholesale seafood distributor, aeroplane pilot and, at one…

Concentric circular plates juxtaposed in a hue of psychedelic glossy colours creates an illusion of rhythmic chakras or a medley of constellations or a more industrialised application of grinding wheels creating energy in motion – the installation aptly called Circle Uncircled. The inspiration: the functional humble platter. The installation of 101 plates (auspicious Indian number) in basically four colours, the central piece is in a different colour, spans an awe inspiring 27 feet wide. The smallest plate measures six inches and the largest one three feet. Each plate is different yet is connected together by design, which in itself lends it a strange drama. In its abstractness, it opens itself to a multitude of interpretation and nomenclature. The limited colour palette is not apparent, so overpowering is the individual design…

IMMEDIATELY upon entering the main gallery space at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, the seven impossibly large, thrown, wall-mounted altered discs fashioned by the hand of American ceramics artist, Neil Tetkowski, signal a conviction of character evocative of the great Abstract Expressionists. One cannot help but conjure the greats – Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning. Tetkowski makes art in an effort to provoke society to change, or to move us out of complacency about our place within the world and our hand in shaping its destiny. In some ways the nails, spikes, cell phones and computer fragments that riddle many of the iconicsized pieces personify the sculptures, shifting them into the realm of the corporeal. Rethinking Mythose: A Mid-Career Retrospective of Tetkowski’s work at the Canadian…