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Feature | Hybrid Vessels: Nicki Green’s Transmutations

CFile — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 19:03:48 GMT

By Jenni Sorkin

Nicki Green (b. Boston, 1986) uses ceramics to make space for the trans body. She utilizes its properties of plasticity and transmutation, or the action of changing into another form, as raw clay itself is a material with alchemical properties, becoming something spectacularly other, once fired and glazed. Her mixed-media sculptural works render the body metaphorically, thematizing sexuality, religion and identity. An emerging artist who is currently in the first decade of her career, Green has already garnered high wattage visibility through her inclusion in the prominent triennial, “Bay Area Now” (2018), held at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and Craft Contemporary’s second Clay Biennial, titled “The Body, The Object, The Other,” (2020), in Los Angeles.

From NICKI GREEN Between Washing And Unwithering, October 8 – November 7, 2020, at LaiSun Keane Gallery

Metamorphosis and Jewish identity as the primary drivers of Green’s content. Clay is key to rendering the body metaphorically, but also create a morphology of form itself, that, is revising and re-shaping form. To this end, Green reworks ritual objects, inventing them anew, for an expanded, multigenerational, non-binary audience that might partake of them, or find meaning in the sanctity of inclusion itself. Not exclusive to Judaism, religious traditions worldwide enforce traditional male-female gender binaries, which become a barrier to non-binary participation, access, and belonging. Green’s significant and original work functions as a series of challenges to traditions and conventions in three simultaneous arenas: the social rigidity of gender presentation, Judaism, and functional ceramics. Transformation is the subtext of Green’s work, in particular, her use of form itself as a material means of enabling a poetic response to the transgendered body.

From the late 1960s forward, gay and lesbian artists embraced the figure the centerpiece of their practice, mining the construction of identity through the direct representation of the queer body. Photography, video, and film were the dominant modes of exploration, across a wide range of practices, including documentarians like Joan E. Biren (JEB) (b. 1944) and avant-gardists alike, filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger (b. 1927) and Barbara Hammer (1939-2019). In photography, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) and Catherine Opie (b. 1961) utilized portraiture as a way to affirm the social visibility of queer people, photographing their own homosocial, underground communities. For Mapplethorpe, this consisted of representations of mixed race couples, BDSM sexual practices, sculptural nudes, and self-portraiture. Influenced by Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre, throughout the 1990s, Opie produced portraits of non-binary couples, the BDSM lesbian scene of San Francisco, provocative self-portraits, and lesbian domesticity nationwide. Both photographers oscillated between testing a viewer’s tolerance and subsequent sense of empathy, or, conversely, utter dis-identification. Collectively, this grouping of progenitors was extremely influential to future generations of queer artists, including Green. As she underscores, “Seeing representations of gender variance in such a direct way was what allowed me and allowed [other] trans folks to understand themselves in the world.”[1]

From NICKI GREEN Between Washing And Unwithering, October 8 – November 7, 2020, at LaiSun Keane Gallery

Subsequently, these pioneering queer artists made it possible for Green to pursue a more haptically-driven, or touch-centered, practice, keenly focused on object-making rather than image-producing. For instance, Green’s stoneware Kiddush (2016), the Hebrew word for “sanctification,” remakes the ceremonial wine chalice with layer-upon-layer of purple imagery that pays homage to the sacred actions and sacrifices of previous generations of LGBT Jewish activists and martyrs. The color purple alludes to the LGBT embrace of the terminology “lavender menace,” an epithet aimed at radical lesbians fighting for visibility within the American feminist movement of the 1970s. The phrase itself was coined in 1969 by the renowned feminist writer and activist Betty Freidan, who was herself heterosexual and Jewish. Green utilizes open palms framing an embellished upside down triangle, another reclaimed symbol, forced upon Jewish homosexuals by the Nazis throughout their reign of terror. The open hands are themselves a reference to the Hamsa, a palm-shaped amulet often hung in Jewish homes or worn as jewelry, as a means of deflecting or warding off the evil eye. The actual referent she utilized was the priestly “lifting of the hands,” initially a Jewish tradition early on appropriated by Christianity (and long associated with it). This verbal benediction is denoted through the split fingers (here, inverted to signify the queer triangle), which are sometimes referred to as a lattice through which G-D can look upon a congregation. Such a pattern, what Green calls the “hexagram lattice” is rendered and retained throughout her recent object making.

Left & Center: Chanterelle Brick, 2016, Glaze on found brick, 8 × 4 × 3 in; Right: Hexagram Lattice Brick, 2020, Glaze on found brick, 8 × 4 × 3 in

From NICKI GREEN Between Washing And Unwithering, October 8 – November 7, 2020, at LaiSun Keane Gallery

In 2019, Green was a Resident Artist at the highly selective Arts/Industry program, hosted by Kohler Center for the Arts in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where the Kohler factory setting offers artists the tantalizing potential to grow the scale and scope of their artistic production. Kohler itself is a company renowned for its kitchen and bathroom fixtures, producing sinks, toilets, and faucets for commercial and residential clientele. Influenced by the setting itself, Green fused the dynamism of gender politics with domestic plumbing and its penchant for hybridity, making double urinals and bidets with decorative flourishes such finnials, faucets, and miniature toilets, such as the highly charged work, A Discrete History of Intimacy and Violence (double urinal basin with faucets) (2019), in which she partially sketches the partitioning of two occupied toilet stalls, in which gender is only potentially revealed through the size and style of shoes. In this scenario, each viewer of the work becomes a voyeur, peeking in the gap under the door so as to discern habitation. This presence on either side of the door causes an automatic tension in dialogue with the sculpture’s evocative title: restrooms are intimate spaces in which our own plumbing is unmasked: the forced reveal of genitalia due to the history of what French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan called, “urinary segregation,” women and men divided by their anatomy. The Canadian queer theorist Sheila Cavanaugh, whose work has been influential to Green, revises this binary, calling the bathroom a “gendered architecture of exclusion,” that defaults to whiteness, associating its aesthetics with a symbolic purity, or, as Green points out, also defaults to acts of violence and aggression toward trans people who are misunderstood as attempting to “pass” as an alternate gender identity, or are rejected for the lack of clear male/female delineation in their gender presentation.[2]

From NICKI GREEN Between Washing And Unwithering, October 8 – November 7, 2020, at LaiSun Keane Gallery

Green’s sculpture, then, provides a direct critique of the recent transphobic, exclusionary policies regarding bathroom discrimination in which trans people were not initially permitted to utilize the facilities which matched their gender identity in state buildings (a hot-button legislative issue in the state of North Carolina, for instance, known as the “Bathroom Bill”). Again, there are many layers at work here: the frilly decorative shapes and doodles taking up space, a way to nod at the prim conventions associated with 18^th century European porcelain objects, a long ago, but fraught moment when porcelain carried aesthetic and political efficacy simultaneously. The miniature toilets reference bidets, French washbasins invented to clean and freshen up the genital area, and long associated with prostitution, or another marginalized population, the sex worker (often today, one of the mainstay occupations of trans folks). And finally, a reverent kind of reference or kinship to the queer artist Robert Gober, who produced abject sinks and drains throughout the 1990s, though his were minimalist and industrially produced, rather than treated as a drawing surface. Green articulates her process and careful thinking, which reifies the idea of the toilet as a repository for waste. As she writes: “While making these pieces, I thought of them as Frankensteined Kohler product; I used mostly waste materials (like literally digging through the “cull” or waste bins for wet, failed product to cut up and reassemble) to make washing/ablution ritual objects that affirm the queer body.”

During this same span of time, Green activated the mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath in which observant women habitually dip as a form of ritual immersion, arriving at purity after menstruation. There are also other uses of the mikveh: it is a bath utilized prior to conversion and marriage ceremonies, and before the Jewish High Holidays.

In 1977, at the New York alternative space Franklin Furnace, the performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles made the first known avant-garde performances around mikveh, exploring its entwined spiritual and religious significance as both a feminist and an observant Jew.[3] Unlike Ukeles, however, Green decided not to use her own body in the creation of her work. Instead, given its utilitarian materiality— made entirely from white porcelain—she treated the mikveh as an architectonic space. One of the staunch requirements of functional vessels is that they perform as “water tight,” that is, they don’t leach water through dripping or leaking. Green’s mikveh pieces are the opposite of this ceramic ethos.

Nicki Greene, Morel Figure, 2016, Glazed earthenware with felt, 41 x 30 x 21 inches, LaiSun Keane Gallery

Mikveh for Mychotheology (2018), a mixed media earthenware sculpture is one such piece, approximating a wash basin or ewer that is split in half, lined with decorative white tiles in which androgynous figures ring the interior. They are depicted in a vaguely ancient schema, all in profile and without individual features, as though part of an archeological mural program inscribed upon temple walls. A single androgyne stands, a flat disk encircling their head, doubling as a head covering or medieval halo. All the others squat in what seems initially to be a repose of prayer, but in actuality, is a harvesting of mushrooms.

Mycology is the study of fungi, and mushrooms are themselves a fungus, and one of Green’s key, early symbols. She created a number of mushroom pieces, such as Morel Figure (2016), referencing the porosity and replication practices of mushrooms themselves, which, as spores, emerge all at once, an entire being, rather than a seedling that sprouts over time. This idea of full emergence, rather than piecemeal growth, becomes an important metaphorical rendering of the trans body, a means of establishing wholeness and radiance all at once—total acceptance, so to speak, rather than a careful and quiet unfurling of reveal: a single stem, the underside of a leaf. Green’s mushrooms are carefully androgynous: rendered as sensuous, multipartite organisms, wholly reflective of the simultaneous means of sexual and asexual reproduction possible in spores, which have web-like networks below the surface, their root systems akin to the idea of a communal support system that often goes unseen in the lives of queer people.

Pillar of Earth 1, ca. 2020, Glazed earthenware with bucket and bungees., 32 × 18 × 17 1/2 inches, LaiSun Keane Gallery

Addressing the gender complexities of Jewish death rituals, Pillar of Earth (all 2020) is Green’s most recent body of work. A series of ten bucket stands, Green extends the timeline of ritual cleansing to the moments beyond life, including the washing of the recently deceased. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, this has strong resonance. Each work bucket is itself a found object, emblazoned with a contemporary logo, adapted to a wide variety of functions, from carrying tools to storing kosher pickles. Each rests on a handmade ceramic pedestal, embellished with a textured honeycomb patterning and her signature hexagram latticework with purple “grout.” These works are based upon the tradition known as “Shemira,” the washing and watching over the body from death until burial, a liminal, transcendent time in which certain rites are performed in order to guard the spirit, still considered present in the body. These guardians are gendered positions: a shomeret for women, and a shomer for men. With these works, Green provides a pathos for the disparity—and despair—of how a Jewish non-gender conforming person such as herself would be attended, and perceived. These works highlight the elegiac mysticism and transcendent beauty of Jewish ritual. Anything less is considered a humiliation of the dead.

Pillar of Earth 2, 2020, Glazed earthenware with bucket and bungees., 36 × 15 × 15 inches, LaiSun Keane Gallery

Pillar of Earth 4, 2020, Glazed earthenware with bucket and bungees., 23 × 17 × 18 inches, LaiSun Keane Gallery

Green’s sculptural objects amplify a deeper spiritual significance while honoring the history of otherness and marginalization, threefold: in the materiality of craft, in Judaism as a minority religion, and trans identity as a sexual minority, bringing them to center of conversation through her deeply conversant knowledge of Judaism, and the histories of functional and ritual objecthood.

Vivified Brick (Brown), 2020. Glazed earthenware, 8 x 4.5 x 3.5 inches, LaiSun Keane Gallery

[1] Zoom conversation with the author, August 5, 2020.

[2] Sheila Cavanaugh, “Gender, Sexuality and Race in the Lacanian Mirror: Urinary Segregation and the Bodily Ego,” in Psychoanalytic Geographies, Paul Kingsbury and Steve Pile, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 323.

[3] See David Sperber, “Mikva Dreams: Judaism, Feminism, and Maintenance in the Art of Mierle Laderman Ukeles.” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 5.2 (Fall 2019), online. https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/tag/david-sperber/. Accessed August 20, 2020.

The post Feature | Hybrid Vessels: Nicki Green’s Transmutations appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Two Quick Ways to Start Sculpting A Bust

Ceramic Arts Network — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 15:48:25 GMT

FotoFile | Kathy Butterly: Yellow Haze

CFile — Mon, 24 May 2021 15:08:34 GMT

Featured image: Trying to Keep My Shit Together (While the World is Burning), 2020, Clay, glaze, 7 1/8 x 6 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches

LOS ANGELES––Kathy Butterly‘s Yellow Haze exhibition at Shoshana Wayne Gallery (22 January – 15 May 2021) features new works characterized by Butterly’s restrictive scale and painterly glaze experimentations. This latest body of work, made over the past 12 months of lockdown in her New York studio, pushes her practice in a new direction— slightly larger clay forms are in evidence, to give herself, Butterly says, “a bigger canvas with which to work.”

“I find a strength in the intimate,” she explains, “I find power in scale shifts within the works, I enjoy making works that are not rushed and demand a lot of skill and knowledge. The small scale is very demanding. I have a deep understanding and relationship with my materials and this skill allows me to work with passion and allow humor to flow. Beauty, humor, awkwardness are all important to me. Humor is a gateway to provoking deeper thoughts, tough thoughts.
I choose not to take up a lot of space with my artwork, to impose, but rather to engage the time and thinking of viewers. The works sort of demand you look at them and you take time to look at them —smaller forms pull you in and you spend a lot of time looking at them, they keep unraveling information. Environmentally I also do not want to create a large footprint, that is important to me as a world citizen.”

Supreme, 2020, Clay, glaze, 6 x 7 1/4 x 6 inches

Crossroads, 2020, Clay, glaze, fire brick, 6 1/4 x 6 x 6 inches

Yellow Haze, 2020, Clay, glaze, wood with paint and nail polish, 9 1/2 x 6 x 6 inches

Crossed Lines, 2020, Clay, glaze, 13 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches

Pink Remedy, 2020, Clay, glaze, 6 3/8 x 7 x 6 1/2 inches

#10, 2020, Nail polish on catalogue paper, 9 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches

Exhibition View

Explore more of Butterly’s works on Cfile.

The post FotoFile | Kathy Butterly: Yellow Haze appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Exhibition | Stiina Saaristo: Kinderszenen, Scenes from Childhood

Whitney Jones — Wed, 19 May 2021 13:36:42 GMT

HELSINKI—Finnish visual artist Stiina Saaristo has taken her intricate pencil drawings, often depicting a cherubic young, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl surrounded by the nostalgic minutiae of childhood and adolescence, has traversed to the z-plane in her latest exhibition Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) at Galleria Heino (16 April –16 May, 2021). As Artforum writes, Saaristo imbues her figurative ceramic sculptures “with attributes typical of her drawings, mingling female sexuality with kitsch and angst.” The artist even goes so far as to ensure the skin of her characters carries with it the weight of each’s experience.

Saaristo says she’s always built her themes around around narratives which usually play out as she works through her process often taking months to reach a finalized project.

“Kinderszenen is a collection of ceramic sculptures and drawings related to childhood, childhood fairy tales and stories, and the difficult nature of being human. The title refers to Robert Schumann’s set of pieces for piano of the same name, which look at childhood from the nostalgic perspective of an adult.” — Saarista

Stiina Saaristo, Kiss, 2020, glazed ceramics, 25 x 120 cm

Saaristo explains her work in clay was born from attempts to draw three-dimensional shapes. The artist has just under two years of experience working in the medium. Even so, her vision and execution is exquisite, and grounded in her two-dimensional work.

“I hand sculpt my clay works as if I were drawing. I make approximate figures; cut out their limbs and details; reshape, engrave and hollow them and then reattach them to create an entity. When I draw I use a mirror, and I do the same when I work with clay, but the biggest difference between the two techniques is that my sculptures are mainly based on visions and I’m no longer limited to referencing a real model. I avoid using photographs in my drawing, which is why it’s a very time-consuming process for me; when I sculpt my visions, my method allows for mistakes and brings joy and pure creativity to my art-making.” — Saaristo

Stiina Saaristo, In My Secret Garden, 2021, glazed ceramics, 110 x 90 cm

Stiina Saaristo, Young Assigned Female, 2021, glazed ceramics, 85 x 70 x 70 cm

Stiina Saaristo (b. 1976) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2005. She is one of the most original visual artists of her generation. Saaristo paints and makes charcoal and pencil drawings and has also started making sculptures from porcelain paper clay. She makes her works alone at her studio. Creating a sculpture involves several phases, first shaping it without moulds, followed by several rounds of firing with surface stains and glazing. Saaristo’s drawings and sculptures manifest the meticulous method that is so characteristic of her. One might say that her sculptures are a continuation of her drawings. She has used herself as a caricature model in works of both types and addressed themes related to womanhood.

Stiina Saaristo, Hybrid with French Braids, 2020, glazed ceramics, 28 x 18 x 26 cm

Stiina Saaristo, Girl Who Thinks Her Feet Are Big, 2020, glazed ceramics, 40 x 55 x 40 cm

Stiina Saaristo, Marilyn Fighting, 2021, glazed ceramics, 43 x 63 x 50 cm

Stiina Saaristo, Gossamers, 2021, glazed ceramics, 36 x 50 x 50 cm

Stiina Saaristo, Girl and Dog, 2021, glazed ceramics, 50 x 70 x 50 cm

The post Exhibition | Stiina Saaristo: Kinderszenen, Scenes from Childhood appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

FotoFile | Theaster Gates: China Cabinet

CFile Editor — Wed, 19 May 2021 13:32:13 GMT

SHANGHAI––Theaster Gates: China Cabinet was on display at Prada Rong Zhai (11 March to 7 May 2021), a 1918 historic residence in Shanghai restored by Prada and reopened in October 2017, and explored the links that exist between Gates’s activity as a ceramist and his work as a visual artist, performer, professor, urban planner, and community activist. Conceived as a narrative in three chapters, the exhibition unfolded across multiple staged settings in which the artist’s role evolved from guest to ghost to host.

In the first chapter, the artist as a guest presents the themes underlying his work in six showcases wherein visitors can trace the elements that characterize his practice: the reuse of materials and architectural construction techniques, his references to craftsmanship and spirituality, his employment of the stereotypical imagery imposed on the African-American community, the use of symbols from the civil rights movement, and the presence of archival material such as magazines, books, music, and films that constitute Gates’ universe.
The second phase of the show invokes the artist as an interlocutor. Here, Gates reveals the complexity of his relationship to ceramics —which comprises both intellectual and tactile aspects— in a site-specific installation divided into two parts. The first is a precise and clean presentation of his works distributed throughout the space as if they were in an antique Chinese porcelain boutique. The second part is a reconstruction of his potter’s workshop presenting many plates, cups, bowls, vases, and other utilitarian ceramics alongside artworks made using similar techniques.

The flowing tableaux culminated with the artist’s complete occupation of the space with artworks displayed as they would be in a private home.

Text (edited) from Gallery

Prada Rong Zhai

View Gate’s works in beautiful installation at Prada Rong Zhai.

About the Artist: Theaster Gates lives and works in Chicago, US. He creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates creates work that focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.” Gates smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise – one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist.

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Exhibition Digest | April 2021. Objects of Identity, Earthly Wonders, Building Blocks + More!

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 15:01:21 GMT

Welcome back to cfile’s Exhibition Digest, where we’ve assembled a smorgasbord of ceramics exhibits from all over the world. Feast your eyes on this stunning array of exquisite ceramic art over the last year and a few even earlier.

Raven Halfmoon, Bold and Brilliant.

Miami—Bill Brady presented Caddo Girl in a Material World (November 7 – December 5, 2020) an exhibition of new sculptures by Raven Halfmoon focused on ideas of traditionalism vs materialism.

Raven Halfmoon creates powerful, often large-scale ceramic sculptures that speak to the artist’s identity as both a citizen of the Caddo Nation and a contemporary woman. She channels her ancestral legacy while being true to the present time. Halfmoon’s works reflect ideas of her tribal identity and traits of her millennial peers. Frequently in her sculptures the application of glazes resemble makeup, jewelry and tattoos as well as facets of herself, family and ancestors. She references themes in pop culture that are then carved from the past and embellished in timeless stoneware clay. Many of the designs on the sculptures are culled from traditional Caddo iconography. In “She’s Something Else” stripes run from the lips to the neck in red—a color that signifies wounds, war, blood and earth.

Furthermore, each work has her name scrawled on them, glaze dripping in all caps. Each a fierce beauty demanding attention with the same intensity as the quiet profound gaze of each face. Clay is layered with rounded forms; the thumbprints form a pattern which is made using an ancient Caddo technique of “punctating.” The result is a distinctively textured surface. Halfmoon seeks to create a dialogue between how she represents herself and her culture and the limited way society chooses to characterize the outsider.

Qwist Joseph Explores Home and Chance Encounter.

Denver— Qwist Joseph’s exhibition Filling Station at the Vicki Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, is impressive both for the tri-part exhibition itself but also for the journey it represents elevating this young artist in the pantheon of the top sculptors working with ceramics. There is now a maturity to his art that has struggled in the past to find voice. He effortlessly brings materials and styles from a comic face to three ladies in a Barbara Hepworth kind of abstraction and full length figurative realism and yet the eclecticism is a kind of connective tissue that links and feeds the central premise of the show.

The exhibition title, Filling Station, references the Conoco station on Downing Street, located less than a mile from campus where this show took place:

This is where my mom met the biological father of my older brother and sister. During my residency, I have been reflecting on the idea that without that chance encounter, and the abuse that ensued thereafter, my younger sister and I would never have come to be. Put simply, my family wouldn’t be what it is, and that’s a fact I’ve historically taken for granted.
To explore this complex story, I broke it down into the most fundamental narrative arc: birth, life, and death. With three distinct rooms, the architecture of the gallery lent itself to this triptych telling. The viewer is invited to peer into strange and intimate personal moments, both real and imagined. There’s a retelling of my birth story with an adult me present, an interrogation of manhood and my own sexual awakening, and finally an exploration of loss, which took on new meaning with the dawning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Through this making, I’ve discovered that I still don’t know exactly what home means. It seems at once, space, a place, and a feeling. Something people yearn for, and something others flee. I am, however, certain of one thing. The reason I didn’t think about home for so long is because, as a white man, I didn’t have to. For my family, that safety and security was a given. By examining the ways privilege, trauma, and mobility operated in my own domestic history, I want to erode my ignorance and challenge this unjust reality. In August, my partner and I will move back to Southern California, where we will continue the search for our own home.

See more of Qwist’s work on cfile.

Shecket’s First at Pace

New York— Pace Gallery presented Skirts (February 28 – August 14, 2020), it’s first solo exhibition of works by Arlene Shechet, concurrent with the Whitney Museum’s exhibition Making Knowing, which also features works by Shechet. Skirts brings together more than a dozen of the artist’s most recent sculptures, including large-scale works.

Utilizing a title that is both a noun and a verb, Skirts is a testament to the artist’s fluid and unformulaic process. Though her works appear effortless and forgiving of imperfections, they are the belabored products of an intuitive and technically fastidious approach, involving casting, painting, firing, carving, stacking, undoing and redoing with no predetermined endpoint. Her expansive approach to sculpture and materials is reminiscent of artists Shechet admires, such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Sonia Delaunay, whose work transcends the divisions of painting and sculpture and encompassed innovative multimedia practices, distinguishing their work from that of their male peers. Shechet’s title, Skirts, also reclaims misogynist slang. As if to counter this term’s reduction of women to passive things, Shechet’s unruly, polymorphous sculptures suggest that objects themselves are active and subversive.

**Rose B. Simpson’s Duo: Loyal alter-egos, Potent Allies, Twins Separated at Birth.**

SAN FRANCISCO—Looking back in our pending file we found this exhibition that missed being published first time round. So we resurrected it. Jessica Silverman Gallery presented Duo, (October 29-December 20, 2019) a solo show by Rose B. Simpson, featuring sculptures that are made at the same time in pairs. Their titles are suffixed 1 and A (rather than #1 and #2) as they are equal originals, loyal alter-egos, potent allies, twins separated at birth.

Made from clay with wood, metal and leather adornments, the figures are meant to help us ground ourselves in reality. They bear witness; seeking to dispel delusion and deceit, totems that guide us back to our deeper selves, our common human ancestry.

Simpson comes from a Pueblo famous for the ceramics its women have produced since the 6^thcentury AD. An apprentice to her mother, an acclaimed native artist, Simpson grew up expressing herself in three-dimensions, mastering a wide range of ceramic, textile and metalwork practices. After three university degrees, including an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Simpson is also well versed in contemporary art, inspired by artists as diverse as Lee Bontecou and Alberto Giacometti. A bold innovator, Simpson combines tribal belief systems with high art concepts and apocalyptic science-fiction forms.

The Pairing of Linda Sormin and Gail Wight is Simply Natural.

SAN FRANCISCO—Patricia Sweetow Gallery presented Deep Dazzle (February 29 – April 11, 2020), a synergistic duo with Bay Area artist Gail Wight with Hexapodarium, digital archival prints; and the ceramic/paper sculpture of New York artist Linda Sormin.

Gail Wight has created two distinct species of flora and fauna using organic material least suited to her goal. Linda Sormin is upending traditions and materials in her media-exploding mix of ceramic/paper sculpture.

Linda Sormin’s sculpture is a cinematic stride through storytelling, a “non-linear assemblage of fact and fiction.” She describes her process as “unbuilding,” as she “rolls and pinches clay into forms that melt, lean, lurch and dare you to approach.” Shards, souvenirs, test tiles and trash are collected into ceramic structures, an archeological mash, disgorging place, affiliation, gender and culture. This brew of delicate intersections collides with dislocated memorabilia – form and content are subjected to the hazards of making and firing. Sormin’s sculptural process inquires, “What is worth risking? What might be discovered?”

Trained In traditional methods of clay forming, Sormin strives to decolonize ceramics by subverting correctness. In this light, a recent addition to her sculpture is watercolor paintings on paper. She cuts, following the forms in the brushwork, then soaks the paper in resin which seamlessly folds into the evolution of the work.

Born in Thailand, raised and educated in Canada and the U.S., Sormin attributes the intricate work and diverse media in her sculptures to traditional craft practices learned in Thailand and Laos. In her 20s, she created floral floats and wreaths with groups of women, in preparation for rituals and festivals. “Mounds of fragrant material – orchids, marigolds, jasmine blossoms, bamboo leaves, string and gold leaf – surrounded us as we pieced together objects that offered meaning and function beyond the everyday.” Those influences shaped her approach to sculpture, culminating a process that reflects the precarious complexity and chaos in life.

Nathalie Du Pasquier Builds Beauty, Brick by Brick.

FIORANA, Italy—Artist and designer Nathalie Du Pasquier has translated her fascination with bricks into a site-specific exhibition, Bric, comprising seven totem-like sculptures made from stacked bricks glazed in bright colors for Italian ceramics brand Mutina, which operates the MUT exhibition space at its headquarters in Fiorano. It was briefly reviewed in Dezeen:

The exhibition, which was curated by Sarah Cosulich, features seven sculptural structures that rise from the sand-covered floor of the building designed by Angelo Mangiarotti in the 1970s. The starting point for each sculpture was the humble brick, which has been a recurring element in Du Pasquier’s work – particularly her paintings.

“I know nothing about bricks,” she said in an interview with Cosulich for the exhibition’s catalogue. “For me they are strange, anonymous objects I have inserted sometimes in the still lifes I paint.”

Different types of brick are glazed in bright colours and layered to produce geometric shapes that are reminiscent of Du Pasquier’s paintings, as well as some of the Memphis Group’s sculptural furniture. In several of the sculptures, the bricks are turned to display their inner structure. In this way their structural value is compromised but they take on a more decorative quality as patterned units.

A Doyle Lane Weed Pot is Some Kind of Magic.

Los Angeles— David Kordansky Gallery presented Weed Pots (July 22 – August 29, 2020), an exhibition of ceramic vessels by Doyle Lane. Curated by artist Ricky Swallow, featuring over five dozen examples of Lane’s iconic, small-scale weed pots made between the late 1950s and late 1970s, on loan from collections throughout California, including the California African American Museum.

Doyle Lane (1923-2002, Los Angeles) is a significant, if underknown, voice in West Coast ceramic sculpture. His delicate vases and rigorous wall murals are expressions of a masterful command of traditional techniques; an innovative, tactile approach to glazing; and a quietly visionary understanding of geometry and three-dimensional form.

He worked from a home studio in the El Sereno district of Los Angeles for the majority of his career, producing highly focused, exquisitely proportioned objects sought after by many architects and designers throughout the region. Very much a mid-century “production potter,” Lane would sell his pots directly to loyal collectors while also pursuing large-scale architectural commissions.

One of these, commissioned by architect Welton Becket in 1964 for Mutual Savings and Loan offices in Pasadena, Calif., has been installed in the courtyard of the June and Merle Banta Education Center at The Huntington. Measuring roughly 17 by 8 feet, the work consists of hand-formed tiles, each glazed a warm red and tinged with black edges. To learn about its restoration, click here.

As a Black artist, he exhibited at notable Los Angeles galleries founded during the Civil Rights and Black Arts movements, including Ankrum Gallery and Brockman Gallery. In a review of this exhibition in the New York Times the writer describes that while his work did not express black activism he certainly did suffer from racism’s random humiliations.

The weed pots—so named because they were designed to hold individual sprigs and dried flowers—were among his most consistent sites of experimentation. In a 2014 essay on Lane’s work, Swallow describes them as “jewels of California modernism [that] are most credibly understood and appreciated when viewed in groupings, which is how Doyle conceived and marketed them in both gallery presentations and architectural commissions. In this context, one can see the subtle shifts in scale and form of the pots, some plump and spherical with tiny collared throats, some wider—more UFO-like (think Nelson lamp) with flattened openings just large enough to support a single twig. This combined with the matte-satin glazed surfaces, varying in color and activity, creates a real rhythm in the groupings and gives one an abridged glimpse into the working nature and diversity of Lane’s talents.”

In an interview with artist Stanley Wilson, published as part of a feature entitled “Black Artists of Los Angeles” that appeared in a 1981 issue of Studio Potter magazine and was introduced by artist John Outterbridge, Lane observed: “When you’re seeking fame, you force yourself to try and become clever and to be better than somebody else, which can be a very unhealthy situation there. I think the best way to seek fame is not to seek it, and to do just what you have to do—or can do—and let it go at that. To be spiritual is to be balanced.”

Kay Whitney Explores Mark Del Vecchio’s Shadow

Santa Fe—Cary Esser, Del Harrow, Ben Jackel, Jami Porter Lara and Matthew McConnell are five artists selected by curator, Mark Del Vecchio for an exhibition at Peters Contemporary that Kay Whitney writes, “use black’s spectrum of meanings in their work to expand it past the abstract boundaries. Their works express a personal shadow as well as a societal one. Dark clays tend to be the exception rather than the rule, although black can’t escape its entrapment in the reverse side of a binary”.

In her excellent review for Ceramics Monthly she explains further:

A shadow is something cut off from light, possibly ambiguous. In a more interesting territory it’s a phantom, a follower or constant companion, a shelter, an obscurity, a trace. Because it’s part of a binary, it also represents alternative possibilities. It is in this last sense that the five artists in the exhibition Shadow situate their work.
It’s no oversight that Mark Del Vecchio, the exhibition’s curator, has entitled it Shadow—it’s both as singular noun and a phenomenon that concerns him. His choice of these five artists encompasses Jung’s notion of the shadow as the seat of the creative unconscious. Del Vecchio has placed disparate dark objects next to each other and without didactic prodding asks the viewer to decide the relationship between them.

Learn more in Cfile about Cary Esser, Ben Jackel, Del Harrow, Jami Porter Lara, and Matthew McConnell.

The post Exhibition Digest | April 2021. Objects of Identity, Earthly Wonders, Building Blocks + More! appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

New Webinar with Amy Sanders

Ceramic Arts Network — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 16:13:18 GMT

Flair with Dinnerware

Ceramic Arts Network — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 15:20:12 GMT

Past Meets Future. New Work from Olivier van Herpt

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:37:10 GMT

Spiralling together in the form of a vase is the latest outcome of Olivier van Herpt’s exploration into the future of digital manufacturing. The ancient raw material of porcelain has been sculpted by the industrial designer’s innovative 3D printing techniques to seamlessly weave the digital and physical worlds together.

The biscuit porcelain vase was based on a digital sketch by van Herpt and realized into a physical object using tools and machines he has crafted and developed over the years. The translation retains the nature of the material while overcoming typical limitations, including collapsing during printing and shrinking when fired in the high-temperature kiln. The additive printing process simultaneously generates the vase’s exterior and interior, resulting in an incredibly thin and intricate shell. Its mesmerizing design flows as a singular and precise expression of its construction.

Since 2013, van Herpt has continuously created various objects and projects to push the limits of 3D printing and redefine its visual language. Many have been showcased in exhibitions and museums, and the porcelain vase is his first large edition and entry into the world of mass production. Both an object of beauty and a marvel of engineering, it offers a glimpse into the uncharted possibilities of ceramic design and production.

Learn more here.

The post Past Meets Future. New Work from Olivier van Herpt appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

FotoFile | Brian Rochefort’s Winning March Across Europe arrives in Greece

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:36:17 GMT

MILAN + ATHENS—Brian Rochefort is having an amazing run. His exhibition at Perhaps An Asteroid Hit, Massimo De Carlo, Milan, is his seventh in a row to totally sell out, unsurprisingly given the seductive old-world crystal chandelier decadence of the show’s venue. And now in his march across Europe, with having had shows in Brussels, Venice, London and Milan, he is poised for his eighth triumph in Greece, Stellar Games, (April 3 – May 20, 2021) at The Bernier/Eliades Gallery with a body of work that is arguably his best ever.

Massimo De Carlo gallery installation view

Bernier/Eliades Gallery installation view

Rochefort, the Gallery notes, uses ceramic and glazes to create arresting ceramic sculptures that suggest forms or phenomena in the natural world. Each work is built up of layers of mud and slip clay, which the artist repeatedly breaks and builds back meticulously over a period of time, and then fires, airbrushes, and glazes – over multiple firings, or as the artist enthuses, “as many glazes as possible until I can’t fire anymore.”

“Hummingbird Nest”, 2020
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
48 x 48 x 50 cm

“Bolivian Grape”, 2021
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
48 x 45 x 50 cm

“Oort Cloud”, 2020
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
53 x 48 x 50 cm

“Lobster Claw”, 2021
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments,
56 x 56 x 56 cm

All of Brian Rochefort’s works and their titles, are based on traveling to remote areas around the world, such as the Bolivian Amazon, the Serengeti in Tanzania, and the Choco Cloud Forest in Ecuador among so many other places. Also protected barrier reefs in Africa and the Galapagos Islands.

The title to most of his shows is a product of doomsday scenarios.

His new show “Stellar Gems”, at Bernier / Eliades Gallery, follows the Milan theme in describing in chaotic debris that is the aftermath of a fictitious comet or asteroid that hits the planet.

“Gemstone”, 2021
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
48 x 50 x 56 cm

“Pachycaul”, 2020
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
50 x 56 x 58 cm

“The Andes”, 2021
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
50 x 53 x 58 cm

“Round Vase”, 2021
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments.
43 x 43 x 40,5 cm

“Pink Stripes XL”
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
33 x 33 x 30,5 cm

“Blue and Blue Checker”, 2020
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
25,5 x 25,5 x 25,5 cm

“Green Blue Checker”, 2021
Ceramic, glaze, glass fragments
38 x 33 x 25,5 cm

“My sculptures look alien, exotic, from outer space or from the depths of the ocean.
I want the viewer to sense these objects are extraordinary, from the future or from the past. My goal is to make sculptures that look chaotic and broken yet controlled and beautiful with vibrant colors and textures that nod to Ab-Ex artists like Franz West and Wilhelm DeKooning.”

The post FotoFile | Brian Rochefort’s Winning March Across Europe arrives in Greece appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Feature | Process as Prologue, Johannes Nagel’s ‘No Fake’

Whitney Jones — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:35:28 GMT

BERLIN––Form and utilitarian function engage in German ceramist Johannes Nagel’s exhibition No Fake at Brutto Gusto (June 12 – September 6, 2020)—not in battle for cogency—but rather in a nuanced dialogue as Nagel’s hypotheses of form are woven, contoured, sprayed, twisted, thumbed and even scored into their vascular surface.

“In No Fake, Johannes Nagel reverences his ultimate expression, which is a place of truth and tangible, tactile presence. Pure gesture is frozen precisely at the interface between mental design and practical realization on the material itself – where consciousness meets the world. His works can at times be perceived as provocatively disharmonious, with a fragile equilibrium and bursting with flaws and cracks which he purposely assumes and accentuates.
Aldonso Palacio

Lacy Traces I, 2020, Porcelain, 28 3/10 × 22 4/5 × 18 1/2 in

Untitled 4, 2019, Porcelain, 29 × 24 × 18 in

Orange Blue, 2017, Porcelain, 19 7/10 × 15 7/10 in

B & W turns, 2020, Porcelain, 26 2/5 × 22 4/5 × 21 3/10 in

Committed to exploring the myriad ways of producing a vessel, Nagel invites pure kinetic impulse and improvisation throughout his process. The vessel forms themselves are merely the surviving outcomes of Nagels’ variable investigations wherein each new stage and factor, like slip-casting porcelain in sand, is able to produce infinite possibilities.

“He performs a transformation of the ceramic vessel into free plasticity and deconstructs both the historic and contemporary meanings of the term “vase“. They are too disparate for flowers – they draw all attention to themselves with their breaks, irregularities and fragile equilibrium…He shatters conventions with innovative methods and deconstructionist techniques.”

Far Left: small colors, 2020, Porcelain, 12 3/5 × 8 7/10 × 8 7/10 in

Nagel goes so far as to deconstruct and reinterpret the vessel form to the point where the ‘vase’ identifier becomes obsolete as “these containers full of holes, the interior competes with and complements the exterior; together they resists the very idea of ‘containing.'” And yet, through Nagel’s experimentation and taxonomic obliteration, the visual language which transduce the archetypal vessel form is made even more apparent.

“They are all original, genuine, no copies, no fake. Ever aiming for more singularity, now he flirts at some level with the graffiti sub tone. The new work has a number of variations of spraying of colour that quests for a fresh aesthetic combined with the glazes. Shape-wise he aims for a distorted rotational symmetry and a vague vase outline in new constructions that revolution around their axis, as if they were spinning off a DJ turntable.”

Pattern Cluster, 2019, Porcelain, 24 41/100 × 19 69/100 × 21 13/50 in

detail

Untitled 5, 2019, Porcelain, 24 × 23 × 19 in

Meander, 2019, Porcelain, 16 1/2 × 13 × 13 in

About the Artist: Born in 1979 in Jena. Lives and works in Halle (Saale), Germany, Johannes Nagel studied at University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein, where he was also an assistant professor. He began his career as a potter as an apprentice to Japanese-born Canadian ceramist, Kinya Ishikawa in Val-David, Quebec. He has since developed an international dossier of shows, awards, and residencies. Nagel’s work is shown and collected internationally, and may be glimpsed in a diverse set of museum collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Ariana, and the Keramion. Most recently, Nagel has been awarded the Keramikmuseum’s 2019 Westerwald Prize, one of the highest awards for ceramics in Europe.

Read more at Jason Jacques Gallery here
Read more at Cfile.org.

Left: Colours I, 2019, Porcelain, 21 × 16 × 16 in; Right: White Cluster, 2019, Porcelain, 25 3/5 × 19 7/10 × 23 3/5 in

The post Feature | Process as Prologue, Johannes Nagel’s ‘No Fake’ appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Feature | Sparks Fly at Intergenerational Pairing: Lois Dodd + Sharif Farrag

CFile — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 14:00:33 GMT

PORTLAND––Adams and Ollman presented an intergenerational pairing of two solo exhibitions: a selection of paintings from 1986 to 2017 by Lois Dodd (b. 1927), presented in collaboration with Alexandre Gallery, New York, alongside new ceramic works by Sharif Farrag (b. 1993). The exhibition marked Farrag’s first exhibition at the gallery as well as the first significant presentation of Dodd’s work on the West Coast.

Installation view

Lois Dodd’s paintings depict landscapes and locations— the Lower East Side in New York City, rural Mid-Coast Maine and the Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey— where the artist has lived and worked for over seventy years. Often completed in one session, Dodd’s intimate, small-scaled works feature the plants, trees, buildings, laundry, and moonlit sky that she has observed and recorded across seasons and over years. Dodd’s flat, distilled imagery is rendered with thin paint in luscious colors—ochres, pinks, greens and blues—and quick strokes that exist on their own as pure abstraction freed from descriptive responsibility. Her sensitive and emotive surfaces capture both the immediacy of direct experience of each place—the motion, light and feeling —as well as the spiritual aspects of the landscape.

Lois Dodd, Tree + Flowers, 2009, oil on masonite, 12h x 19 1/2w in

Lois Dodd, Japanese Red Maple in October, 1986, oil on masonite, 20 x 13 inches

Lois Dodd, Apple Tree through Barn Window, September, 2015, oil on masonite, 16 1/8 x 19 7/8 inches

A work from 2008 contains the image of an apple tree dappled with spring light in a foggy field; a work created seven years later shows what could be the same tree, now mature and full with fruit, framed through Dodd’s barn window. Dodd’s prolonged engagement with her subjects makes meaning— close attention to details, rhythms and changes across days and seasons adds up to a lifetime of wonder and a lasting record of place and experience.

Sharif Farrag, Camel Heart Jug, 2020, glazed stoneware, 14 x 8 x 9 inches

Sharif Farrag, Watermelon Warthog Jug, 2020, glazed porcelain, 13 x 10 x 11 inches

California artist Sharif Farrag’s sculptural ceramic vessels contain a clash of references and values, offering cacophonies of thorny vines, skulls, comic book figures, dollar store trinkets, muscle cars, mosquitos and mythical creatures fashioned from a riot of colors and glazes. The artist’s objects and installations pull from his experience growing up as the child of immigrants in California’s San Fernando Valley. As a first generation Muslim American coming of age in the years immediately following 9/11, Farrag found refuge and community in the punk, graffiti and skateboard subcultures of the Los Angeles suburbs.

Sharif Farrag, Spotlight Jug, 2020, glazed stoneware, 9h x 7 1/2w x 7d in

Sharif Farrag, Blu Angel Jug, 2020, glazed stoneware, 13 x 13 x 13 inches

These early experiences helped to shape a personal iconography that is also deeply influenced by the visual, cultural and social traditions brought by his parents from their native countries of Egypt and Syria. Indebted to California’s funk art movement, Farrag’s vessels and figurative ceramics incorporate humor, autobiographical and surrealist elements, as well as unconventional forms and media, filtered through the perspective of his own generation.

Sharif Farrag, Sunset Cycle, 2020, glazed stoneware with white gold lustre, 15 1/2h x 16w x 22 1/2d in

About the Artists: Lois Dodd (b. 1927) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions throughout the United States, including shows at Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME (2018); Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, M (2014); Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME (2004); Montclair Art Museum, NJ (1996); and Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1990). A retrospective organized in 2012 by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, travelled to Portland Museum of Art, ME, the following year. From 1971 to 1992, Dodd taught at Brooklyn College, NY. She has also held positions at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work can be found in numerous public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago; Hall Art Foundation, Holle; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. Dodd lives and works between Maine, the Delaware Water Gap, and New York, NY. Sharif Farrag (b. 1993) lives and works in Los Angeles. He has been an artist in residence at the Ceramics Department of California State University Long Beach since 2018, and in 2019 he was awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He holds a BFA from the University of Southern Californ

The post Feature | Sparks Fly at Intergenerational Pairing: Lois Dodd + Sharif Farrag appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Travel to Ireland with ICAN!

Ceramic Arts Network — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 13:43:46 GMT

A Quick and Easy Way to Make a Plate - CAROLE EPP

Ceramic Arts Network — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 13:06:46 GMT

Feature | The Light of Lustre, Johannes Nagel’s Radical Vessels

CFile — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 02:32:52 GMT

Modern ceramics has a holy trinity: three traditions that have dominated the discipline for over a century. The first is Japanese ceramics, particularly wares associated with the tea ceremony, which possess a sort of perfect imperfection, easy to appreciate but difficult to master. Second, the rationalism of the Bauhaus, oriented toward clarity, geometry, and directness of form. And finally, Abstract Expressionism, with its individualism, gesture, and dramatic intensity.

Cluster/ Still Life, 2020, Porcelain and Pewter, 26 2/5 × 20 1/10 × 11 4/5 in

Left: Stegreif #114, 2020, Porcelain, 18 9/10 × 15 × 13 4/5 in; Right: Cluster/Still Life

Imagine these three streams coursing into the just-arriving present, then joining into a single mighty flow, and you will begin to understand the work of Johannes Nagel. He has been influenced by them all, via a curious geographical and professional itinerary.

Though born in Jena, he received his initial training in Quebec, under the Japanese potter Kinya Ishikawa. It was a fortunate first connection, for his teacher gently steered him away from narrow perfectionism. (‘I’m the one who criticizes your work,’ he remembers Ishikawa saying. ‘You should just be enthusiastic.’)

At this early stage, Nagel was sufficiently entranced by Japanese aesthetics that he even considered apprenticing with Warren McKenzie, the leading exponent of Japanese-derived aesthetics in America. Instead, he ended up returning to Germany, studying at the University of Art and Design in Halle, where he has been based since. It was at this point that Nagel began learning about Bauhaus precedent – the crisply delineated forms of Otto Lindig and Marguerite Wildenhain, often conceived with an eye toward serial production.

Armoured Vase #2, 2020, Porcelain, 14 3/5 × 19 7/10 × 13 4/5 in

In the postwar era, this formalist strand had been carried forward by figures like Beate Kuhn in West Germany, while in the East (where Halle is located), there was a pronounced tendency toward figuration, under the leadership of Gertraud Möhwald. (Most of the older ceramists that Nagel encountered in Halle were students of Möhwald.)

At a time when explicitly political art was verboten, ceramics could fly under the radar of official Communist censorship, expressing a haunting existentialism with tacitly political implication. To this already dynamic mix of influences, Nagel soon added the ideas of the California clay revolution of the 1950s and ‘60s, as exemplified by Peter Voulkos and Jun Kaneko. Inclined even in his early career toward loose and experimental work, Nagel gravitated to this precedent, taking on its muscular abstraction and improvisatory composition.

Left: Gold Planes, 2020, Porcelain, 24 × 12 1/5 × 12 3/5 in; Right: Lust for Lustre #3, 2020, Porcelain, 19 7/10 × 13 2/5 × 13 4/5 in

He came to understand how ‘energy could be stored in the clay,’ and how familiar forms – handles, rims, spouts – could be transformed through sculptural intelligence. Speaking of transformation – it is one thing to be exposed to multiple precedents; another to try to merge them; a third still to build something new, making one’s influences more than the sum of their parts.

Far Left: Stegreif #115/ Luster, 2020, Porcelain, 14 1/5 × 12 1/5 × 11 4/5 in; Left: Stegreif #116, 2020, Porcelain and Pewter, 19 7/10 × 12 1/5 × 12 1/5 in; Right: Stegreif #117, 2020, Porcelain, 23 3/5 × 11 2/5 × 10 3/5 in; Far Right: Armoured Vase #2

This has been Nagel’s achievement, as this exhibition at Taste Contemporary (March 18 – April 25, 2021) makes abundantly evident. His crucial breakthrough came when he began experimenting with sand-casting. Well known to metalsmiths, this technique is not commonly used in ceramics (who typically use plaster molds).

Nagel had briefly flirted with the process more than a decade ago, but it was only relatively recently that he began a deeper exploration of its possibilities. At a certain level, his technique is simple: he digs a hole in a box of sand, fills it with liquid slip, and then, after allowing some drying time, allows the extra slip to run out of the bottom.

Stegreif #116

Enough clay clings to the interior of the mold that he is left with a thin-walled object, which traces the interior volume of the shape he has excavated. Typically, Nagel uses this unorthodox means to fashion volumes within the familiar typology of the vase. But as he works, he follows his instincts, departing from predictable pot-shapes that could be envisioned in the mind. Unlike wheel-throwing, the more traditional means of rapidly forming clay, his works of course need not be symmetrical.

He has been able to find forms that are novel, lopsided, strange. Seamless and complete, they have the quality of things born, not made. Nagel chose the fitting name Stegreif – ‘improvisation’ – for one series of these sand-cast pieces, underlining the importance of instinct in their creation. Yet he acknowledges that ‘the hands learn very quickly, and the innocence is soon gone.’

Tangled Construction/ White, 2020, Porcelain and Pewter, 26 × 23 3/5 × 15 in

So, he has pushed himself to expand his vocabulary. He has, for example, placed flat plaster bats at the end of some of his tunnels, so that the amorphous shape is intersected by a rigid plane. And – in a particularly generative move – he has dug interconnected channels into the sand, like a network of animal burrows. Once cast into positive, the hollow spaces become complex openwork compositions. One of these latter sculptures, Tangled Construction/White, calls to mind a group of dancers, hands joined. The same work exemplifies the subtlety of Nagel’s surfaces, which are extensively worked after the casting is complete.

Left: Stegreif #118/ Blue Circles, 2020, Porcelain, 24 4/5 × 14 3/5 × 14 3/5 in; Center: Stegreif #119/ Flow, 2020, Porcelain, 20 1/2 × 12 3/5 × 12 3/5 in; Right: Stegreif #120/ BlueBlue, 2020, Porcelain, 15 7/10 × 10 1/5 × 10 1/5 in

While essentially monochrome, Tangled, features a range of mark-making and textural variation: attenuated strokes of yellow and red tracing the object’s contours; drifts of cobalt blue glaze; and a slim gray pedestal, on which the work rests. Other works included in the present exhibition feature a diversity of different surface effects.

detail

Nagel often scores the whole exterior of a pot in whorled patterns, somewhat like finger prints; glazing brings the topology into visual relief. A piece called Coloured Construction is painted in a patchwork of hazy polychrome; it would seem to answer in the affirmative a question that Nagel has asked himself: ‘can a sculpture be blurry?’ And in the series, Lust for Lustre, he combines celadon – the blue-green glaze hallowed in the Chinese tradition – with metallic lustre glazes, more readily associated with European Art Nouveau. It’s a good example of the way that Nagel re-mixes ceramic history, acknowledging its vastness while also making it his own.

As he digs deeper, both literally and figuratively, he is finding new ways to explore his medium’s history: an archaeological aesthetic, in which the hole is itself the key finding. This observation takes us back where we began, to Nagel’s handling of his primary influences. Looking at his assembled work, you will catch sight of the wonky asymmetries seen in the Japanese tradition; the strong silhouettes of the Bauhaus; the painterly vigor of Voulkos and Kaneko.

These signals only come through fitfully, like radio transmissions tuned in during a storm, emerging into legibility, then receding again into an overall impression of energetic flux. The metaphor of a dance again seems appropriate, here: a triadic ballet, to borrow the title of a famous Bauhaus collaboration, in which previously antithetical tendencies make discordant yet beautiful music together.

Nagel’s work is anything but still, then. Even so, it can profitably be viewed in relation to the genre of still life, which is always just around the corner where ceramics are concerned. Think, when looking at his groupings of objects, of the paintings of Giorgio Morandi; or, when examining his atypically aggressive Armoured Vase, of early Cubism. Like all the most accomplished contemporary artists working in clay – Andrew Lord, Rebecca Warren, and Arlene Shechet come to mind – Nagel makes objects that assert themselves in space, yet are also pictorial, sitting at the junction between fact and fiction. At this upper echelon of achievement, the conventional lines between disciplines fall away, established idioms yielding to the force of creation itself. ‘If I had to place myself,’ Nagel says, ‘I would be somewhere in between’.

View the exhibition catalogue here.

Essay by Glenn Adamson
Images by Tom Dachs

The post Feature | The Light of Lustre, Johannes Nagel’s Radical Vessels appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Youtube Ballek WFH Webinar!

Ceramic Arts Network — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 14:16:42 GMT

Seth Rogen’s Smoking Pots, a 3,000-Year-old Potter and a 5,000-Year-old Brewery.

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 23:13:46 GMT

Nzambi Matee Paving Affordable Building in Africa

Nairobi–Nzambi Matee’s small workshop may seem chaotic to outsiders but the 29-year-old Matee, an inventor and entrepreneur, is at home here. This is where she developed the prototype for a machine that turns discarded plastic into paving stones – an invention that underpins her company, Gjenke Makers. Her success is our Not-Clay-But story this issue.

Each day, her business churns out 1,500 plastic pavers, prized by schools and homeowners because they are both durable and affordable. Gjenge Makers is also giving a second life to plastic bottles and other containers which would otherwise end up in landfills or, worse, on Nairobi’s streets.

Prior to launching her company, Matee worked as a data analyst and oil-industry engineer. After encountering plastic waste along Nairobi’s streets, she decided to quit her job and created a small lab in her mother’s backyard, testing sand and plastic combinations. Matee eventually received a scholarship to study in the materials lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she ultimately developed a prototype for the machine that now produces the textured bricks.

“It is absurd that we still have this problem of providing decent shelter – a basic human need,” said Matee. “Plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. The potential is enormous, but its after life can be disastrous.”

Gjenge pavers are fully certified by the Kenyan Bureau of Standards. They have a melting point over 350°C, and they are much stronger than their concrete or ceramic equivalents.

For her work, Matee was recently named a Young Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The award provides seed funding and mentorship to promising environmentalists as they tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.

“We must rethink how we manufacture industrial products and deal with them at the end of their useful life,” said Soraya Smaoun, who specializes in industrial production techniques with UNEP. “Nzambi Matee’s innovation in the construction sector highlights the economic and environmental opportunities when we move from a linear economy, where products, once used, are discarded, to a circular one, where products and materials continue in the system for as long as possible.”

At 26 years of age, Nzambi Matee found she could no longer stare at the plastic bags that littered Nairobi’s streets, the local government never sent anyone to clean them up, and she resolved to do something about them herself, telling Reuters that “I was tired of being on the sidelines.”

Bone Damage Identifies 3,000 Woman as a Potter

Science Mag reveals that while pottery was a male-dominated profession in ancient Greece, some 3000 years ago, at least one woman from the island of Crete broke the mold to become what they claim to be “the only known female master ceramicist in antiquity”. That claim may be a little sweeping, to say nothing of spurious, but archeologists, after lengthy biomechanical analysis of skeletal remains, found the 3,000-year-old skeleton of a woman potter who lived to be about 45 or 50, in Eleutherna. Ornate pottery in nearby graves suggests she lived between 900 B.C.E. and 650 B.C.E. As Michael Price writes:

On closer examination of her bones, archaeologists noticed some intriguing details: Compared with other women at the Orthi Petra burial site, she was unusually muscular, especially on the right side of her body. She had also worn out the cartilage in her knee and hip joints, which would have made moving a painful, bone-scraping affair.

Curious as to what repetitive, lifelong motions would have led to that kind of wear, the researchers began to analyze the biomechanics behind the different professions of ancient women, pantomiming the motions with a human skeletal model and observing which muscles were involved. They tried clothes washing, bread baking, harvesting, and loom weaving—nothing panned out. Expanding their search beyond traditional female roles, they tried throwing pottery.

The daughter of a modern-day master ceramicist—and a potter in her own right—just minutes from Eleutherna agreed to model for the scientists. Analyzing her muscles as she worked, they were convinced that her profession was a match for their ancient artisan. Constantly flexing her leg to turn the kick wheel would have worn out her joints; repeatedly leaning to one side of the spinning clay to shape and sculpt it would have developed the muscles on that side of her body, the researchers reported at a May conference on Crete.

Ceramics Champion Ronald Kuchta Passes at 85

A former director of the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY, Ronald Kuchta, has passed away at 85. Kuchta arrived at the Everson in 1974 after serving as the curator of the Chrysler Museum, and as director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Shortly after his arrival, Kuchta hired Syracuse University professor, Margie Hughto, as the Museum’s first dedicated Curator of Ceramics.

Kuchta by Karsh

Kuchta and Hughto conspired for the Everson to continue its work with ceramics in the wake of the 1972 cancellation of the Ceramic National exhibitions by his predecessor. They invited nationally-recognized painters and sculptors to Syracuse to produce ceramic works with Syracuse University. Hughto converted a disused can factory into a modern studio, staffed with a small army of students and volunteers who assisted such artists as Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Poons, Billy Al Bengston, and Anthony Caro. Their efforts were showcased in the 1976 exhibition New Works in Clay, which spawned follow-up exhibitions in 1978 and 1981.

Kuchta and Hughto partnered with a young Garth Clark to launch A Century of Ceramics in the United States 1878-1978, still the USA’s modern ceramics’ only true blockbuster touring exhibition, which spawned a successful book, as well as a documentary on American ceramics narrated by Orson Welles. Century toured extensively and brought much-needed critical and scholarly attention to the field. In reviewing the exhibition for Art in America, critic Donald Kuspit wrote that “an exhibition devoted to the history of American pottery debunks the notion that ceramics is a populist craft with no high-art aspirations. It also suggests that, because ceramic art emphasizes both sight and touch, it may in fact be the quintessentially modernist art form.”

After retiring and moving to New York City in 1995, Kuchta’s commitment to ceramics continued. He joined Harry Dennis as the co-publisher of American Ceramics Magazine, which combined stunning photography and graphic design with critical reviews, essays, and interviews with leading figures in the field. He served on the board of the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine, the Longhouse Reserve in East Hampton, and many other nonprofits throughout his storied career.

Read the full obituary on the Everson Museum of Art blog.

Officine Saffi announces the 45 finalists from over 600 candidates

Officine Saffi has announced the 45 finalists of the fourth edition of the Officine Saffi award, selected from over 600 candidates in 53 countries. The competition, founded in 2013, is a biennial event that aims to discover, support and promote artists who choose to express themselves through the medium of ceramics.

The panel of experts has selected a very heterogeneous shortlist. Its members include Glenn Adamson, curator, Garth Clark, editor-in-chief of Cfile, Annalisa Rosso, co-founder of Mr. Lawrence, Matt Wedel, artist, Elisa Ossino, architect and interior designer, Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov, Editors-in-chief of Sight Unseen, Isabelle Naef Galuba, director of the Musée Ariana and Laura Borghi, founder of Officine Saffi. Installations, objects, sculptures and research projects will be exhibited together in an open display.

Gunilla Maria Åkesson (1963, Sweden), Anton Alvarez (1980, Sweden), Eyvind Solli Andreassen (1986, Norway), Salvatore Arancio (1974, Italy), Francesco Ardini (1986, Italy), Audrey Ballacchino (1986, France), Chiara Camoni (1974, Italy), David Casini (1973, Italy), Rino Claessens (1994, The Netherlands), Phoebe Cummings (1981, UK), Formabesta (1965-68, Spain), Jennifer Forsberg (1970, Sweden), Elly Glossop (1982, Scotland), Annelie Grimwade Olofsson (1991, Sweden), Michele Guido (1976, Italy), Jessica Harrison (1982, UK), Marianne Huotari (1986, Finland), Julia Huteau (1982, France), Qwist Joseph (1987, USA), Jonathan Keep (1958, UK), Maria Kristofersson (1956, Sweden), Jeongwon Lee (1985, South Korea), Virginia Leonard (1965, New Zealand), Claire Lindner (1982, France), Carlo Lorenzetti (1990, USA), Icaro Maiterena (1978, Spain), Ian McDonald (1975, USA), Domenico Mangano & Marieke Van Rooy (1974-76, IT-NL), Caterina Morigi (1991, Italy), Monika Patuszyńska (1973, Poland), Gregorio Peño Velasco (1983, Spain), Héloïse Piraud (1988, France), Andrea Sala (1976, Italy), Catherine Sanke (1990, Germany), Francesco Simeti (1968, Italy), John Souter (1989, USA), Akiko Taniguchi (1978, Japan), Tellurico (1985, Italy), Iren Tete (1990, USA), Liya Wan (1963, China).

Seth Rogen Favors Pot and Pots

Seth Rogen claims that his kiln products have a “a sort of Ken Price-ish effect.” It may be presumptuous for the superstar and hobbyist potter to evoke the name of America’s great modern master of the medium, Ken Price, but he is now the poster boy for both pot and pots. He does both through his commercial marijuana venture, Houseplant, and his ceramic vessels the company sells.

In a recent New York Times article, the arrival of his first commercial foray into ceramics was announced, marketing a pair of objects; a bud vase (yes, we get the pun) and an ashtray for doobie fans. Made in China from his designs, they are presented in a lavish box. As a design project the set is modestly handsome and unpretentious, putting forth a 1950’s Mid-Century-Modern, Scandinavian stoneware aesthetic in line with the midcentury designer furniture by Hans Wegner and others that he collects to furnish his home.

In an interview with Annie Armstrong, “Seth Rogen Has a New Pot Habit”, in the The Cut, Rogen explains why ceramics got his attention:

There’s something about how you’re literally trying to center something. [Laughs.] The metaphors abound. But there’s inherently something meditative about it. I do like tactile things; I like to produce tangible work. With movies, we spend years on them and then they’re very intangible. They don’t have weight, they don’t occupy a physical space. You used to at least get a DVD or a Blu-Ray, and you don’t even really get that anymore. I don’t like to keep my own movie posters around because those are just advertising for the product, not the product itself. I do really like being able to create an artistic expression that is a thing that I can pick up, hold, show to people. It is just so different from what I normally do which has no mass to it.

Unlike his muted but richly mottled palette for the ashtray and vase, Rogen clearly enjoys glazing and with his unique pieces his surfaces have energy which his form has yet to match (but he is getting there). He employs a variant of Price’s work:

His process is honestly somewhat mysterious, and I don’t think there’s documentation of him achieving the effects. But from my understanding, he used up to 75 layers of what I think was car paint. Then he somehow stripped away layers of it in a method that is truly bewildering. Especially if you yourself have tried to strip away layers of paint from a ceramic piece. The way that effect is achieved is truly beyond my understanding.

Too much fuss about too little art? Again, it’s about him being a hobbyist albeit with a giant audience. He does not sell his handmade works, nor hold shows, just gifts and swaps work. When the New York Times article appeared, it was linked to a photograph of some pots on his Instagram account. Within a few days there were 778,000 views. That is beneficial in raising clay awareness and the work is simply unapologetic fun.

Speak Pottery to the World, Bray seeks a Communications Director

The Archie Bray Foundation seeks a full‐time Communications Director to manage and strengthen the organization’s ongoing communications efforts. Reporting to the Resident Artist Director, this professional should have an established background in directing and managing a multi‐channel communications strategy. Nonprofit work experience is preferred. The Bray is an equal opportunity employer and celebrates diversity. Women, LGBTQ+ and persons of color are encouraged to apply.

The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (Bray) is an internationally recognized arts organization located in Helena, Montana. Founded in 1951, the Bray is a public, nonprofit organization dedicated to the enrichment of the ceramic arts offering artist residencies, public exhibitions, ceramic supplies, and educational workshops and community classes for adults and children. The Bray’s facilities include year round and seasonal artist studios, education and research facility, sales gallery, rotating exhibition spaces, kiln facilities, administrative offices and a retail ceramic supply operation. The Bray recently completed a $6 million capital campaign for a new education center (2017), renovated administrative offices (2018) and new sales, exhibition and history galleries (2021).

The Archie Bray Foundation is actively committed to promoting, celebrating, and sustaining the ceramic arts through the residency program, education, gallery, ceramic materials and technology, and community engagement on a local, national, and international scale. In the words of Archie himself, the Bray makes available, “for all who are seriously and sincerely interested in any of the branches of the ceramic arts, a fine place to work”.

Salary range is $47,000 to $52,000 per year. Awarded salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Early submissions are encouraged. Applications will be reviewed beginning March 5, 2021. This position will remain open until filled. Interested candidates should follow this link to our application portal on Slideroom.com. General questions may be addressed to brad@archiebray.org or Archie Bray Foundation, 2915 Country Club Ave., Helena, MT, 59602. No phone calls, please.

3150 B.C. Egyptian Brewery with 320 Earthenware Vats

Archaeologists from Egypt and the United States have found a 5,000-year-old high production brewery at a funerary site in North Abydos from the time of King Narmer, who ruled ancient Egypt around 3150 B.C. It houses eight large areas for beer production, each containing about 40 earthenware pots arranged in rows. Workers would have heated grains and water in the vats, which were held in place by clay levers. That’s enough to give every person in a 40,000-seat sports stadium a pint. Perhaps the world’s earliest example of truly industrial-scale beer production.”

Evidence found at the archaeological site—located in the southern Egyptian city of Sohag—suggests that the beer was used in sacrificial rites. The brewery “may have been built specifically to supply the royal rituals that were taking place inside the funeral facilities of the kings of Egypt,” says joint expedition leader Matthew Adams.

But ritual may not be the purpose. A 5,000-year-old tablet found in the city of Uruk in modern-day Iraq could help to explain what kept its inhabitants happily living together for so long – they were paid in beer. In what is thought to be one of the oldest pay slips discovered, the cuneiform depicted a human head eating from a bowl, meaning ‘ration’ also noting how many bowls were consumed. The final image of dusty beer bottles is not period in case you are confused, and added for your amusement.

Nir Hod Peddles Loneliness in a Set of Four Porcelain Dessert Plates

At Artware Nir Hod offers a set of four seven-inch-diameter dessert plates that are priced at $120, stunning graphically and exquisitely packaged. For the right recipient this could make a radical chic gift served with a dose of desertion and desperation. The approved list of those who would appreciate the set is defined more by exclusion, those who are not right, with those recovering from substance abuse being at the top of that list. But we like them, a lot, and renaming them Addicted to White Gold could give the platters a whole new market of those who are porcelain addicted.

The plates are inspired by Nor’s famous series of oil-on-mirror paintings, The Night You Left, that for the artist captures a heightened and ephemeral emotional state, a meditation on love and love lost, on pain and catharsis. “There is a certain magic in loneliness,” Hod explains, “you have to be alone to create,” adding, “It’s not about drugs or glamour—it’s about the inside world, where you can dream and love and seek a greater truth—it’s about a feeling of being connected to something so human.”

You will be pleased to know that they dishwasher safe. And one can obtain a matching set of coasters reclining on black velvet, packaged with the same dark elegance, for $95

Brooklyn’s Vessel Closes after Third Suicide

New York–Curbed reports that on January 11, a young man ended his life by jumping off the Vessel, the freestanding observation structure in the middle of Manhattan’s Hudson Yards. It’s the site’s third suicide in less than a year. The Vessel is currently closed to visitors pending a safety review. The writer explains:

A shuttered Vessel is not an outcome I could have envisioned at the extravagant multimedia design unveiling I attended five years ago. On that day, Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards, played a video of Alvin Ailey dancers performing for hundreds of spectators on a mock-up of the Vessel’s signature staircases. In an address to the crowd, Mayor Bill de Blasio jokingly warned Vessel designer Thomas Heatherwick, a Londoner, that 100 New Yorkers would have 100 different opinions on the project.

If and when the Vessel reopens it will be facing a barrage of disability claims and has already. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York entered into an agreement with Related that required the developer to install a lift that stops on more floors. The question is whether anything can be built in New York in the future that does not give equal access to the disabled. It’s an exceptional structure, as one climbs an Escher effect that keeps expanding but between wheelchair issues (for a giant staircase, elevators might satisfy that) and the unfortunate magnet it is for those considering suicide, its days as a working space my be numbered.

However, I am betting money on the developer Related and Stephen Ross (he is Related’s chairman and this venture is his pet project) and British designer, Thomas Heatherwick’s genius. They can reach an imaginative solution for all to enjoy the Vessel in some way, this elaborate honeycomb-like structure that rises 16 stories and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings for visitors to climb, adding more viewpoints for the disabled and making design changes to render suicides near impossible to enact. Learn more about Vessel in Cfile.

The post Seth Rogen’s Smoking Pots, a 3,000-Year-old Potter and a 5,000-Year-old Brewery. appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Pots, Puppies and Kitties: A Short Story about Rago Auctions

CFile Editor — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 19:12:47 GMT

Lambertville, NJ. The two most intriguing lots on Rago’s Modern Design auction (January 22, 2021) were 573 and 576, respectively, Lizbeth Stewart’s Dog with Bones and Standing Cat. Our editor’s playful title suggests a degree of skepticism. And I have left that stand. That has always been the case with Stewarts work, it was seen by the field as too precious.

Their appearance in this auction causes a moment to reconsider her standing. Her art has been off the scene for long enough that her two animals here have the shock of the almost-new. And the experience, for this writer at least, is surprisingly positive.

They have a Koonsian quality (think of his porcelain Banality series that was launched in 1988 just after Stewart’s works were made). Now their obsessive craft has a newly revealed laconic, ironic and iconic edge. They look back at the viewer with a cockiness, daring one to question their exquisite silky handling of materials and a deft perfection in painting.

I have come away from this encounter greatly impressed. Alas, a great opportunity to acquire the works, with reasonable estimates and rare appearance in the market, was lost when both lots were passed.

Lot 576
Lizbeth Stewart
Standing Cat
USA, 1983-84
glazed, fired, and hand-painted earthenware
38 h × 12 w × 41¼ d in97 × 30 × 105 cm
estimate: $8,000–12,000

In the essay on Stewart by Helen Drutt for the exhibition catalog, she rightly locates it as having “few parallels within contemporary American ceramics. Her sculptural tableaus are episodic, enigmatic, and elusive, and they are executed with meticulous precision endowed with haunting elegance”.

A possible exception is the work of Jack Earl but his ceramic dogs, despite their obvious sophistication, remain leashed to a folk art proposition. Stewart on the other hand tells us that her pets are to the manor born. They reveal a level of manual perfection that is innately costly in time to achieve.

Drutt adds further insights into these two works:

Standing Cat (1983-84) and Dog with Bones (1986) are exemplary of Stewart’s protracted exploration of these domesticated animals set in different familiar yet decontextualized poses or situations. Their patinas are intentionally rendered to look like linoleum, emphasizing a domesticated realism set apart from her earlier practice of fantastic realism.
Standing Cat is among the rare examples that have no additional elements, such as a reptile or bird, to drive the work’s narrative. Instead, the animal is shown with its gaze fixated on something we can’t see, leaving the viewer to imagine the rest of the composition. Dog with Bones shows the creature not with a cliché chew toy or meat shank; rather, the bones are splintered and belong to an animal larger than the dog, suggesting an act of predatory violence.

Lot 573
Lizbeth Stewart
Dog with Bones
USA, 1986
glazed, fired, and hand-painted earthenware
38½ h × 21 w × 31 d in98 × 53 × 79 cm
estimate: $9,000–14,000

The work on this auction by Voulkos was strangely pale (compared to the striking group offered a year ago) and lacked his usual forcefulness. The real excitement came from Betty Woodman and Toshiko Takaezu and their powerful and exceptional pieces that fetched respectable prices and proves their resilience.

As before Michael Lucero’s prices were embarrassing. He is a good artist and his visual wit has rarely been more pronounced than with Untitled for the Afro-Italian Series, a 2011 play on African antiquities, made in Postmodernism’s most promiscuous period of appropriation, dangerous ground to play with today. But Lucero neutralizes outrage. Instead of traditional grass and animal, the skirt is made up of knotted ties that suggest the closet of a white businessman. While not quite Gordian this work’s reverse gaze has a delicious complexity and deserved to fetch more than the paltry hammer price of $2,600 for this five-foot-tall work.

Lastly, the ‘small is beautiful’ trend (scroll to the bottom) with Lucie Rie continues in Phillips Online Design Auction (February 10, 2021) otherwise this was a lackluster sale for ceramics. These tiny pieces now get much more per centimeter than larger more imposing works. This began with a surging prices for her chawan and yunomi tea bowl sized forms and have continued down into Lilliput-land.

Lot 596
Toshiko Takaezu
Ocean Edge Closed Form
USA, c. 1990
glazed porcelain
14¾ h × 6¼ dia in37 × 16 cm
estimate: $9,000–12,000
result: $20,000

Lot 603
Toshiko Takaezu
Momo Form
USA, c. 1985
glazed stoneware
17¾ h × 10¾ dia in45 × 27 cm
estimate: $7,000–9,000
result: $30,000

Lot 425
Betty Woodman
Pillow Pitcher
USA, c. 1985
glazed earthenware
21 h × 24 w × 20 d in53 × 61 × 51 cm
estimate: $15,000–20,000
result: $52,500

Lot 427
Betty Woodman
Pansy Shelf Vase
USA, c. 1990
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint
28 h × 15½ w × 7½ d in71 × 39 × 19 cm
estimate: $15,000–20,000
result: $21,250

In case you are confused with the use of the Japanese terms for the tea drinking vessel definitions.net offers an answer: a yunomi is a form of teacup, typically made from a ceramic material, being taller than wide, with a trimmed or turned foot. Unlike the more formal chawan tea bowl, which is used during the Japanese tea ceremony, the yunomi is made for daily tea drinking.

Overall, auctions are now sorting out the resale market for modern and contemporary ceramics. There is more predictability in hammer price and the market is also deciding which of the past ceramic stars will have a secondary market. As this process works, that list becomes ever smaller, and, on a positive note, more demanding aesthetically.

Lot 509
Lucie Rie
Bottle
United Kingdom, c. 1972
glazed porcelain with sgraffito decoration
11 h × 4 dia in28 × 10 cm
estimate: $5,000–7,000
result: $8,125

Lot 642
Harrison McIntosh
Covered vessel
USA, 1981
glazed stoneware
10¼ h × 6¼ dia in26 × 16 cm
estimate: $2,000–3,000
result: $4,375

Lot 629
Beatrice Wood
Folded vessel
USA
volcanic glazed earthenware
3¼ h × 6½ w × 3¾ d in8 × 17 × 10 cm
estimate: $1,500–2,000
result: $2,750

Lot 630
Edwin and Mary Scheier
Large vessel
USA, 1992
carved and glazed stoneware
12½ h × 12½ dia in32 × 32 cm
estimate: $2,000–3,000
result: $1,875

Lot 649
Michael Lucero
Untitled from the Afro-Italian series
Italy, 2011
glazed and bisque ceramic, mixed media, enameled steel
60½ h × 12¾ w × 12¾ d in154 × 32 × 32 cm
estimate: $2,500–3,500
result: $2,600

Lot 13
Lucie Rie
Sugar bowl
circa 1952
Porcelain, white glaze and manganese glaze with sgrafitto design.
2 3/4 in. (7 cm) high
Underside impressed with artist’s seal.
Estimate
$1,000 – 1,500
SOLD FOR $5,292

Lot 11
Lucie Rie
Conical bowl
circa 1960
Porcelain, manganese glaze with sgraffito on exterior, yellow glaze with inlaid design on the interior, horizontal blue band repeated inside and outside.
2 in. (5.1 cm) high, 4 1/4 in. (10.8 cm) diameter
Underside impressed with artist’s seal.
Estimate: $6,000 – 8,000
SOLD FOR $10,080

Lot 12
Lucie Rie
Small vase with flaring lip
circa 1976
Stoneware, flowing white glaze.
5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm) high
Underside impressed with artist’s seal.
Estimate: $3,000 – 5,000
SOLD FOR $5,292

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Groundbreaking Navajo Artist Christine Nofchissey McHorse Passes at 72.

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 19:12:05 GMT

International ceramics has lost an important artist and Cfile has lost an exceptional friend and supporter; first-generation Navajo ceramist, Christine Nofchissey McHorse passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from complications due to the Coronavirus on February 17, 2021. She was 72 years old.

McHorse was born in 1948 in the mining town, Morenci, Arizona. She never lived in the Navajo Nation and because her parents were the last generation to be forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools, essentially re-education camps to remove Indian culture, she learned more about Zen and Rosicrucians than Navajo lore and language.

She received her formal education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she studied art between 1963 and 1968.

There she met and married Joel McHorse, a Taos Pueblo Indian, and his grandmother, Lena Archuleta taught her to make pots with micaceous clay, a rare, but naturally occurring clay that is high in mica content found on the Taos mountainsides.

She excelled and soon developed a reputation for thin-walled finely coiled vessels, sometimes with relief carving but always without surface painting. She began to work in a sculpture mode as well and had the unique distinction of winning Best in Show for both pottery and sculpture at the annual SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market.

It was this pairing of two disciplines that began to inform new work, rooted in the vessel but liberated by sculpture’s broader free-form horizons.

McHorse gives each piece its own unique skin by pushing the boundaries of her raw material. The micaceous clay she used permitted McHorse to build thin-walled structures that withstood high temperatures, and if denied oxygen at the end of a firing yieled a black satiny finish.

The darkness of the fired clay provides a dramatic contrast to the tiny bits of reflective mica, glistening as light dances across each piece. Using light gradation as her palette, McHorse controls the presence of light by creating differently textured surfaces that either absorb or reflect the light. When combined with the elegance of each sculpture’s form, McHorse’s works offer a captivating glittering light show.

The forms were largely without precedent in traditional Indian pottery. Each vessel had a singular architecture that was not repeated. McHorse would make an exact drawing of what she wanted the artwork to become, sometimes with interior “plumbing” or tubes that supported the shape and “then I would decide where to begin the coiling, the bottom, the middle or the top.”

McHorse’s sketches were transformed into voluminous shapes that swell upwards like a natural spring. Dismissing the rudimentary forms that have come to define Native American ethnic identity in craft, she turned to primordial shapes, akin to the modern aesthetic of Henri Moore and Constantin Brancusi serving the spiritual power and movement of water, air, and earth.

This new work was poorly received by the Native pottery collectors. It did not carry the high dosage of nostalgia that most Native pottery offered. After the work failed to find support McHorse left Indian Market. “I need an arena in which my new voice could be heard”, she said. And that venue was just about to arrive.

In 2002, New York art dealers, Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio attended the opening of the exhibition in New York, Changing Hands: Art without Reservation at the then American Craft Museum (later the Museum of Arts and Design) and they saw a work by McHorse that sent them flying to Santa Fe to meet the artist.

It was love at first sight, not just for Christine but her husband Joel, their family and of course, her art. One can add Santa Fe to that list, through frequent visits and the McHorse family hospitality, the dealers eventually decided to move to this town after they closed their gallery in 2008.

Clark and Del Vecchio organized exhibitions of her work in New York and Europe, and museums and private collectors of contemporary art on several continents snapped up her pieces.

Once in Santa Fe, Clark and Del Vecchio organized a two-year traveling exhibition, Black Light: The Micaceous Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse(2013-2015), comprising the finest of the black works. The book that accompanied the show, received a major book award, the IPPY Bronze Medal for Fine Art from the Independent Publishers Association, not for craft as one might have expected. The fact that the Silver Medal was shared by Whitney Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gives an idea of the competition! The IPPY welcomed McHorse to a high art club that few ceramists and almost no Native makers are ever invited into.

McHorse’s death is personal for Cfile. A dedicated supporter, she was a friend to every member of the Cfile team over its eight years. With her husband, Joel, she attended all local Cfile events and assisted in fundraising, we all feel her loss, and intensely so.

McHorse’s passing leaves a powerful legacy, both her large early body of traditional wares and her smaller later group, the Black Series, her true contemporary art. But she also threw down a challenge for others to follow in her path.

The success tells us many things are possible. One can escape strictures of traditional pottery and totally reinvent. One can do it when one is ready when becoming an innovative force may seem unlikely. Christine was 50 years old when she began the black work. One can escape the limits of ethnic stereotyping. One can escape ceramic’s low stature though that is now, happily changing dramatically. McHorse did all of this with elegance and was working on further breakthroughs when she left, innovating to the end.

Learn more about Christine McHorse in Cfile.

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Podcast | Tales of a Red Clay Rambler: A Tribute to Christine McHorse

CFile — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:23:43 GMT

We periodically feature the work of studio potter and fellow ceramics journalist Ben Carter, who hosts the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler podcast, which includes interviews with artists and culture makers from around the world.

In this episode, Carter honors the life and legacy of Navajo ceramist and sculptor Christine McHorse who passed away on February 18, 2021.

Noted Navajo sculptor and ceramic artist Christine McHorse died earlier this week. She was born in 1948 in Morenci, Arizona and started working full-time in the arts after attending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe in the 1960’s. At the school she met her husband Joel and learned to make ceramics in the Pueblo style from his family. After more than two decades selling at the Santa Fe Indian Market, she transitioned into a style of sculptural vessels that drew national and international acclaim. In our interview we talk about shifting her work into the fine art world and developing her forms in micaceous clay and bronze. This interview was originally recorded in 2016.

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From the Vault | Christine Nofchissey McHorse: A Studio Visit with Dylan McLaughlin

CFile — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:17:33 GMT

We have over 3,000 posts in our vault. We occasionally repost from this cache of top features on art, design and architecture, but especially so in the case when the world of ceramic art and contemporary ceramics has lost a kindred such as noted Navajo artist Christine McHorse, who passed away on February 18, 2021.

A studio visit with Christine Nofchissey McHorse in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

View the original post here.

The post From the Vault | Christine Nofchissey McHorse: A Studio Visit with Dylan McLaughlin appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

From the Vault | ‘Dark Light: The Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse’

CFile — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:12:40 GMT

We have over 3,000 posts in our vault. We occasionally repost from this cache of top features on art, design and architecture, but especially so in the case when the world of ceramic art and contemporary ceramics has lost a kindred such as renowned Navajo artist Christine McHorse, who passed away on February 18, 2021.

The traveling exhibition, managed by CFile Foundation, Dark Light: The Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse has finally reached the artist’s hometown after a three-year tour that took it to Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman OK; Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston; and The Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock. The stunning installation will be on view at the Museum of the Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, NM until July 21, 2015. The museum is open Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon until 5 p.m. It is closed on Tuesdays.

In 2016 CFile will reassemble the show and it will travel first to the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ, and then in 2017 will spend a full year at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC.

Dark Light is the first traveling exhibition of this groundbreaking Navajo (Diné) artist. McHorse, a first-generation potter, is considered among the most innovative artists working today creating vessel-based art that is undecorated and abstract, with formal qualities indebted more to modern sculpture than to Southwestern culture.

With the urge to transgress and blur the boundaries between pottery and sculpture, in 1996 McHorse decided to leave utility and tradition behind and pursue shapes that had been haunting her for some time. A year later she made a pot that marked a breakthrough in her practice; instead of leaving it the natural tan color of the clay she placed it in a garbage can filled with burning leaves and closed the lid.

By reducing the oxygen, the pot’s surface turned black. The flecks of mica from her locally sourced clay glittered dramatically against the black ground, creating an advancing and receding surface of dark and light. Her work is a revelation form-wise and represents a new and compelling direction in Native American ceramics. This survey exhibition includes works from McHorse’s Dark Light series from 1997 to the present.

Garth Clark of CFile and Mark Del Vecchio curated the exhibition. They are the authors of an accompanying book, a fully illustrated 100-page monographic catalogue from Fresco with photographs by Addison Doty. This book was awarded the bronze metal for fine art books by the Independent Publishers Association in the Fine Art category-competing against more than two thousand other publications.

McHorse was born in 1948 in Morenci, Arizona and lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her formal education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she studied between 1963 and 1968. McHorse has received numerous awards from the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market, and the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, Gallup, as well as the Museum of Northern Arizona. Her work is included in the public collections of the Denver Museum of Natural History; Museum of New Mexico; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; Navajo Nation Museum; and the Rockwell Museum of Western Art. A first generation Navajo ceramic artist, she married Joel McHorse, a Taos Pueblo Indian, and learned to make pots through his grandmother, Lena Archuleta. Archuleta taught her to work with micaceous clay, a rare, but naturally occurring clay high in mica content found in the Taos area. McHorse is one of the most admired and successful Native potters, working with traditional techniques but making the kind of reductive, sculptural pots that one would have expected Brancusi to make, were he alive today. McHorse has the unique distinction of winning Best in Show for both pottery and sculpture at the annual SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market.

The powerful, dramatic images of the installation are the work of Jason Ordaz.

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The post From the Vault | ‘Dark Light: The Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse’ appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

From the Vault | Exhibition Catalogue: Christine McHorse’s ‘Dark Light’

CFile — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:07:13 GMT

We have over 3,000 posts in our vault. We occasionally repost from this cache of top features on art, design and architecture, but especially so in the case when the world of ceramic art and contemporary ceramics has lost a kindred such as noted Navajo ceramist and sculptor Christine McHorse, who passed away on February 18, 2021.

View the online exhibition catalogue of Dark Light: The Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse here.

McHorse (1948 – 2021) was born in Morenci, Arizona and lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her formal education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she studied between 1963 and 1968. McHorse has received numerous awards from the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market, and the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, Gallup, as well as the Museum of Northern Arizona. Her work is included in the public collections of the Denver Museum of Natural History; Museum of New Mexico; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; Navajo Nation Museum; and the Rockwell Museum of Western Art. A first generation Navajo ceramic artist, she married Joel McHorse, of Taos Pueblo, and learned to make pots through his grandmother, Lena Archuleta. Archuleta taught McHorse to work with micaceous clay, a rare, but naturally occurring clay high in shimmery mica content found in the Taos area.

McHorse is one of the most admired and successful Native potters, working with traditional techniques but making the kind of reductive, sculptural pots that one would have expected Brancusi to make, were he alive today. McHorse has the unique distinction of winning Best in Show for both pottery and sculpture at the annual SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market.

The post From the Vault | Exhibition Catalogue: Christine McHorse’s ‘Dark Light’ appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Pioneering Women: Celebrating Those who Have Shaped the Ceramic Form

CFile — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 22:51:24 GMT

OXFORD––Pioneering Women, on view at Oxford Ceramics Gallery (14 February – 27 March 2021), features 40 works by 10 pioneering female artists. The exhibition celebrates the significant contribution this group of artists has made to the development of contemporary ceramics, with a focus on the vessel form. The exhibition will now open at the gallery from April 12 until May 1, 2021 and it is possible to see the show by appointment.

From trailblazing figures such as Lucie Rie and Ladi Kwali to Bodil Manz, Magdalene Odundo and Jennifer Lee, the exhibition reflects a broad interpretation of formal ceramic traditions. Vessels on display range from Japanese clay work and the domestic pottery forms of Denmark, Korea and Nigeria, to works influenced by European movements such as Bauhaus and Postmodernism. Even so, as Florence Hallet writes:

Domestic function, and the potential for vessels to serve as womb metaphors, have created an association with female experience, but the examples here warn against comfortable categorization. Akiko Hirai (b1970) specializes in Korean moon jars, but in her hands this traditional vessel slips the constraints of domesticity, with organic forms that look as if they might have emerged direct from the ground.
Florence Hallett for inews.com

Lucie Rie, Photo: Ben Boswell

Lucie Rie, Sgraffito Bowl, porcelain (10 x 20.5 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Lucie Rie, Bronze Vase with sgraffito, porcelain with manganese glaze (23 x 10.5 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Lucie Rie, Bottle vase with Flared Neck, stoneware with mottled grey glaze (1972, 26 x 13.5 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Lucie Rie, Vase with sgraffito, porcelain (15.5 x 8.5 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Magdalene Odundo, Early Vessel, hand built, terra sigillata, polished and carbonised terracotta clay (23 x 18 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Magdalene Odundo, Photo: Ben Boswell

The artists span three generations, from Viennese-born Lucie Rie (1902–1995) to Japanese-born Akiko Hirai (b. 1970). Rie, with her refined thrown and glazed domestic vessel forms, brought the unmistakable aesthetic of European modernism to the UK when she fled Vienna in 1938.

It is hard to put into words what I so love and admire in her work. It might include the way that her sgraffito drawing opens up the space inside and around bowls or the drips of bronze manganese sliding down the surface of a white glaze. Her mastery of glazes allows her to use beautiful, unexpected colour combinations which draw me into her world and (particularly with the yellow works) seem to reflect the whole history of refined but intimate ceramic objects.
James Fordham, 2021

Hirai, who is now based in London, re-interprets the traditional Korean Moon Jar form (originally an everyday storage jar) through combined coiling and throwing. This technique offers a contemporary take on the Korean tradition which is influential within the modernist school of studio ceramics.

You sometimes find a connection between two or more things that appear to be completely irrelevant. We do not usually try to find these puzzles because they are hidden beyond our consciousness. We do/can not see them as they do not exist, yet occasionally there are events that trigger that sense of connection. It is almost shocking when this sensation is awoken.
When it happens, we call it “coincidence”. I believe these coincidences are led by the incompleteness of the events. In the world of physics, everything moves towards a balanced form and completion, as does our state of mind. When you see something that is not “quite right”, your eyes automatically try to adjust it, to almost make it look right. How do we know the balance? But we do.
I try to put similar thoughts of mine into my ceramic pieces. They should not have a clear message as they are supposed to fit somewhere into the users’ mind.
Akiko Hirai

Another development of European modernist form can be seen in the work of Danish designer Bodil Manz (b. 1943). Manz’s precisely constructed cylinder vessels make use of industrial ceramic techniques such as slipcasting, mouldmaking and transfer printing to create simple translucent forms.

A ceramic artist once said, “We are romantics of material” –the materials seduce us.
In recent years I have been working on a very simple cylinder in porcelain where the transparency of the body allows the light to show the compositions made up by decorations both on the inside and on the outside of the cylinder.
To me the cylinder is like a sheet of paper on which I can do different things depending on where I am in life. That is why I do not get fed up with them.
Bodil Manz

Left: Bodil Manz, Shadow, slip cast porcelain (2019, 14.5 x 14.5 cms); Right: Bodil Manz, For Dessau, slip cast porcelain (2019, 14.5 x 14.5 cms)

Left: Bodil Manz, Shadow, slip cast porcelain (2019, 14.5 x 14.5 cms); Middle: Bodil Manz, For Dessau, slip cast porcelain (2019, 14.5 x 14.5 cms); and Right: Bodil Manz, Scandinavia, slip cast porcelain (2019, 18 x 23 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Bodil Manz, Photo: Michael Harris

Deirdre McLoughlin, Roll Sister, high fired ceramic, diamond polished (2019, 25 x 22 x 20 cms) Image: Michael Harvey

Deirdre McLoughlin, Photo: Henk Brouwer

The hand-built hollow clay forms of Dutch artist Deirdre McLoughlin (b. 1949) reflect her time spent working with the experimental Sodeisha group of Japanese artists near Kyoto, in the early 1980s.

I began my journey with abstract, open forms. In 1978, closing over a sculpture for the first time, I recall my trepidation in the act. The forms stayed closed for 20 years. While living in Kyoto I came on the anecdotal story that it took Yagi Kazuo four years to close the vessel form so that his works could escape into pure expression and be free.
In 1999 I was ready to explore the idea of the inner space in my works and to this end I opened up a small ovoid giving it some attitude with a forward foot. I hoped that if I made this form over and over it would allow me an understanding of the space within – I saw it as a koan. Eventually I found the key in an essay by the art critic Peter Schjeldahl and understood that I must build around space. Up to this point I had been building into space.
Deirdre McLoughlin

Similarly, the winner of the 2017 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize Jennifer Lee (b. 1956) studied Japanese traditions and techniques during residencies in Shigaraki, a period which deeply influenced her subtle earth-toned works.

However, my making methods have changed little over the years and my work continues to be concerned with a relationship of materials in the studio…I have developed a method of colouring the clay by mixing in metal oxides before making. I use no glaze or surface decoration although one of the early pots on show, from 1987, is burnished using rusty metal. In almost all my work colour runs through the pot rather than on its surface so form and colour are integrated.
I am fascinated by the way oxides react with each other: in certain circumstances they migrate from one band to another producing halos. Through testing and re-testing, I’ve discovered that some specific mixes alter and change over time. The speckled clay, in the most recent pale stoneware pot exhibited, was mixed over thirty years ago.
Jennifer Lee, London, February 2020

Jennifer Lee, White Bowl, stoneware (2015, 11 x 18 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

Jennifer Lee, Photo: Jake Tilson

Japanese influences can also be seen in works by Danish artist, Inger Rokkjaer (1934– 2008) whose vessels meld a subtle use of raku with homage to the earthenware domestic pottery of her native Jutland, Denmark.

At Aarhus, studying with senior Danish potter Gutte Eriksen, who had visited Bernard Leach in England and studied in Japan, Rokkjaer absorbed the contemporary fascination with Japanese aesthetics in ceramics. It was here that her life-long exploration of the Japanese-originated technique of raku firing was born even if, as many have commented, the robust lidded jar forms for which she is most known owe more to the red earthenware traditions of Jutland pottery.

Carol McNicoll pictured in the National Craft Gallery. Photo: Dylan Vaughan

The unusual aesthetic of British artist Carol McNicoll (b. 1943), who originally trained in fine art, makes inventive use of industrial ceramic techniques. Combining her artistic knowledge of collage and textiles with slipcasting she creates patterned surfaces and coloured, constructed, domestic forms intended for everyday use.

I use the process partly because of its mimetic capacity, but mainly because the work both operates within and comments on the ceramic tradition as expressed within the domestic context. All my work is functional. I make things that I want people to use, it seems to me that for most of the second half of the twentieth century artists have abandoned the home as suitable context for art, I am interested in reversing that trend.
Carol McNicoll

Together with fellow British artist Alison Britton (b. 1948), McNicoll came to prominence as part of a group of female RCA graduates in 1970s London. Also known as ‘The London Ladies’, they were commonly identified with Postmodernism due to their free juxtaposition of formal traditions. Britton’s square, asymmetric vessels embody her characteristic fusion of painting and sculpture. These hand-built, large-scale forms explicitly reject the dominant, circular form beloved of modernist potters such as Rie.

I realised the value in showing pots from different working phases together. In this spirit I decided, for ‘Pioneering Women’, to include a piece from 1991 and one from 2015 with new works made for this show. The language of the existing pieces, especially the oldest one, furthest from the way I work now, has steered my approach to the new pieces.
In a long conversation with art and craft, and histories that are both cultural and domestic; the pleasures of slow making, loose glazing, and re-firing, hold my hope for sparks of the unpredictable.
Alison Britton

Alison Britton, Photo: Michael Harris

Alison Britton, Outridge, hand built, high-fired earthenware, painted with slip, poured and painted glazes (2015, 46 x 39 x 30 cms), Image: Philip Sayer

Ladi Kwali

Ladi Kwali, Water Jar, hand coiled, glazed stoneware with incised decoration through slip, wood fired (c. 1960s, 35 x 33 cms), Image: James Fordham

detail

Works by Nigerian artist, Ladi Kwali (1925–1984) combine throwing and hand- building, revealing her immersion in both African and European traditions. The latter was honed at the Abuja Pottery School, Nigeria, under English studio potter Michael Cardew in the 1950s.

Kwali learnt to make pottery as a child with her aunt, who worked in the Gwari region of Northern Nigeria, an area that is home to a highly valued and important female ceramic tradition of handbuilt low fired earthenwares. Kwali was recognized early on as a skillful and imaginative potter, becoming the favoured court artist-potter for the Emir of Abuja. It was in the Emir’s palace that English potter Michael Cardew first saw her work prompting him to invite Kwali in 1954 to become the first female trainee at his Abuja Pottery Training School (est. 1952 ). He taught her to throw on a wheel, and to explore the potential of glossy high temperature stoneware vessels. Despite becoming a highly skilled thrower, Kwali preferred her traditional method of handbuilding works positioning a pot on a stool or low table and walking around it, coiling the clay and thinning it as she went. However she combined this approach with striking glazed surfaces, incised with her own abstract/naturalistic drawings, assimilating the Abuja training with her own highly versatile traditional practice finding a strong, individual voice in the process.

In 1974, Cardew introduced Kwali to Magdalene Odundo (b. 1950). Working with Kwali, Odundo studied the traditionally female art of making utilitarian pots in Africa, as well as practical techniques like hand-building.

What is astonishing about Ladi Kwali, is that, she was able to maintain her individual style by remaining faithful to her unique fable like, story telling narratives with symbols drawn from the natural world that were the hallmark of her decoration.
Magdalene Odundo

Odundo used her experience with Kwali in Nigeria to develop her independent approach to ceramics, originally fostered as a student at Farnham School of Art. Her powerful, red and black clay vessel forms reveal keen understanding of the hybrid nature of ceramic art forms.

I am deeply interested in the human body and its symbolic associations to various ideas of beauty and spirituality. My vessels often have tactile qualities that emulate the sensuous landscape of the body in particular the female body.
Pottery is associated, in many world views, with woman’s role as a container of life. In African myths of genesis, for example, the creation of human life by a supreme being, is directly linked to the work of the potter, who moulds a vessel from earth, water, fire and air into a beautiful, lively form. Clay vessels therefore serve as sacred containers during rituals that link to the spirit world.
So, in some sense, my vessels simultaneously embody the image of woman, the womb, the creation of life, and the link between the spirit and human worlds.
Magdalene Odundo

Inger Rokkjaer, Lidded Jar, stoneware (13 x 14.5 cms), Image: Michael Harvey

The above is merely a teaser. Oxford Ceramics Gallery has produced an excellent catlaog that fully surveys this sprawling show. View the catalogue here.

Text (edited) and images courtesy of the Gallery.

The post Pioneering Women: Celebrating Those who Have Shaped the Ceramic Form appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Richard Slee’s ‘Mantlepiece Observations’

Whitney Jones — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:19:22 GMT

“We shall collaborate in building up museums of sound, smell, foods, clothes, domestic objects, advertisements, newspapers, etc.”

Mass Observation

BOLTON–Mass Observation was founded in 1937 by two socialist graduates of Cambridge University, poet Charles Madge and the so-called barefoot anthropologist Tom Harrisson, as a radical anthropological and social research experiment. The group sought to study and record the idiosyncrasies and minutiae of everyday people in Britain. Their first project The Mantlepiece Directives sent out stringers far and wide to document and collect what everyday people had on their mantelpieces.

“Its founders aimed to create a new kind of realism in response to the economic and political conditions leading up to World War II, aiming to create an ‘anthropology of ourselves’ through artistic means and by collecting anecdotal evidence from people’s everyday lives and experiences. The Archive, currently held at the University of Sussex, consists of extensive written accounts of daily life, ephemera and photographs, while other works now form part of national museum collections.”
Photographers Gallery

Mass Observation’s Mantelpiece Project

Unimpressed, a critic wrote that the project was “scientifically, about as valuable as a chimpanzee tea party at a zoo” with core debate considering the group’s research methodologies specifically the demographic representativeness of the sample group. Even so, as argued in this 2013 History Workshop Journal article, others posited the group’s approach provides unique insight and access to the complexities of the messy everyday life of the times.

Mass Observation

Block Woolly Cat, 2020. Glazed ceramic with altered balaclava

Richard Slee’s exhibition at Bolton Museum echoes Mass Observation’s mantlepiece project. It was a match made in tchotchke heaven. The new and never-before-seen body of work, Mantelpiece Observations (12 September 2020 – 3 January 2021), comprises ceramic renderings inspired by the anthropological objects first documented by Mass Observation in the 1930’s.

Richard Slee’s work has long been concerned with the unusual significance of certain domestic objects. Often, he will begin with something ordinary – a mantel clock, a pair of pottery dogs, a Toby jug – and by changing it in some way will invest it with new interest. Sometimes the objects he creates look familiar, though often altered in scale, while others look distinctly peculiar. For this exhibition, he has taken words and phrases that appear in the 1937 mantelpiece reports and transformed them into new ceramic pieces.
Bolton Museum

Richard Slee, Mantelpiece Observations at Bolton Museum (September 12, 2020 – January 3, 2021)

Reversed Time, 2020. Glazed ceramic with metal, wood, and reversed clock movements

Tower Ash Tray, 2020. Glazed ceramic and acrylic
Match Box, 2020. Glazed ceramic with latex, ink, sandpaper, and wax crayon
Blue Ashtray, 2020. Glazed ceramic and acrylic

TWO FACED. Installation view, Bolton Museum

JUNK. Installation view, Bolton Museum

TOBY. Installation view, Bolton Museum

In the undertaking, Slee–one of Britain’s most important contemporary ceramic artists–explores the concept of “meaningful objects” and questions personal and national identity, history and taste, through his surreal transformations of ordinary domestic objects, the museum writes.

Children playing with chicken feet, Bolton, 1937 by Humphrey Spender

Promenade Attraction, Blackpool, 1937 by Humphrey Spender

Slee’s works are presented alongside 18 photographs by Humphrey Spender (1910 – 2005), former lead photographer on Mass Observation’s study of Bolton and Blackpool. Spender was dispatched to record the locals going about their business with his Leica–skills Spender unknowingly developed while serving as a war photographer in the Royal Army Service Corp during World War II. There, he often captured the lives of soldiers in their down time yielding candid and even tender moments. Spender eventually abandoned photography for painting and textile design teaching at the Royal College of Art until his retirement. The 900 images Spender took for the Mass Observation project are held in the collections of Bolton Museum. Slee’s selection highlights the surreal side of Spender’s northern photographs.

Humphrey Spender

GHOST. Installation view, Bolton Museum

Elephants, 2020. Glazed ceramic in three parts
Installation view, Bolton Museum

Video Tour of the Exhibition:

Richard Slee in conversation with Sonia Solicari:

In the studio: working on the Mantlepiece ceramics

The show along with its public programs is brought to the public in collaboration by Bolton Museum, the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, and the Museum of the Home, London, and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

The post Richard Slee’s ‘Mantlepiece Observations’ appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Talking Clay Field Trip to Lisa Orr's Studio

Ceramic Arts Network — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 13:20:08 GMT

How to Make an Ornamental Yet Functional Handle - MARTHA GROVER

Ceramic Arts Network — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 18:27:51 GMT

Exhibition Digest | January 2021: The Britton Edition

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 02:50:26 GMT

In this week’s digest we are thrilled to doff our caps to some friends from across the pond. In particular we honor Alison Britton’s long role as a mentor, who provides us with a fitting pun to headline this post. All the artists featured here have been influenced and advanced, one way or another, by Britton as curator, critic, writer, educator and maker. And, we might add, our editor was also a beneficiary, who met her in 1974 at Royal College of Art, London where both were students.

Ken Eastman’s ‘Wanton Chase’

Boston-Glenn Adamson, in his essay that accompanies the solo show by Ken Eastman at the Lucy Lacoste Gallery, (January 16 – February 6, 2021), quotes the artist’s explanation of the exhibition title, The Border Country, “[this] is where I live, and the border is something I’m aware of and often cross.” Adamson continues:

“Back in 1989, Allison Britton wrote of an Eastman pot: “It’s pleasures are abstract, it provides a place for the eye to wander in.” That reminds me in turn of another British artist, William Hogarth, writing in his Analysis of Beauty (1753) of compositions that “lead the eye a wanton kind of chase.” Other connections come to mind, too: the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, the architecture of Frank Gehry, the choreography of Martha Graham, the tailoring of Cristobal Balenciaga. All these figures share Eastman’s particular form of genius, to pitch a curve in space just so, and meet it with another, and another, and another, each shape compounding the intelligence of the whole. Yet Eastman has something going for him that none of these others do (Britton excepted, of course): the affordances of pottery. Uniquely among art forms, it allows for a dialogue between inside and out. The relationship between a vessel’s interior and its exterior topologies has no exact parallel: it is not simply a repetition, nor a mirroring, nor a molding, but its own special kind of counterpoint”.

We might add that Eastman, an incrementalist, who has for years followed a closely defined vocabulary in form and surface, has recently, without many obvious changes, brought a new sensibility. Surface and form is seamlessly integrated and the borders between colors are blended so subtly that they drift into each another like mist. This is maturity at its best.

The Thing Allison Britton is Seeing

London—Tommaso Corvi-Mora presented a relaxed, elegant solo exhibition (September 17-October 31, 2020) of work by Alison Britton, her first at this gallery. Britton is one of the most important and influential ceramic artists in the UK, a career that began in the mid-70’s. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, she belonged to a group of artists who were identified as “The New Ceramics” movement, bringing the medium into the Postmodern era.

Her vessels questioned Bernard Leach’s “standard” in favor of a more complex and nuanced approach. Alison Britton’s practice has remained focused on the vessel, exploring its features both formal and conceptual. She has taught at the RCA for decades and has a distinguished career as both a critic and theorist. “Seeing Things”, a collection of her writings on art, craft and design, was published by Occasional Papers in 2013. Her work has been exhibited widely in the UK and abroad.

Learn more about Britton in Cfile

Jennifer Lee‘s Geological Elegance

Cambridge, UK—Jennifer Lee: the potter’s space, at Kettle’s Yard, is Lee’s first public solo show in the UK since 1994. It includes 40 pots that date back to her Royal College of Art degree show in 1983, and up to 2019, with the inclusion of three new pieces made in the run-up to the show.

Wallpaper writes that “Jennifer Lee is reticent about her latest exhibition being referred to as a retrospective. The pots represent just a handful of key moments in Lee’s prolific career, and in this sense, a synopsis might be a better fit”.Collected over a 20-year period, the pots date as far back as 1990 as Lee’s explorations are a patient and deepening art, and “in turn, each pot grows slowly, hand built from the base up, only finally expressing its entire beauty when it emerges from the kiln.”

Part of the exhibition has been designed by architect Jamie Fobert. It is masterful, an egalitarian exposition of vessels on large platforms, where the pots have equal stature, buzz, hum and slowly rotate:

“The pieces are loosely arranged chronologically across a low table that has been covered in a delicate layer of fine plaster. The table’s height is based on the level of the workbench in Lee’s south London studio, and a band of putty coloured paintwork, that runs around the walls to represent the height of the studio while also lowering the eye to the work, also echoes her workspace.

Eschewing a vitrine, which Lee sees as a kind of retrofitted glazing, the vessels are presented open-air. ‘Because there’s no glaze on the work, to actually put a piece of glass between you and the work is almost like giving it another dimension, another texture and it’s taking away from what I want the work to look like,’ says Lee. ‘It’s almost glazing it.’“

View the catalog here.

The Embodied Architecture of Sara Flynn

London-In her recent solo show at Erskine, Hall & Coe, (October 6-9, 2020), Sara Flynn builds upon her 2018 works, each vessel characterized by sensual convexity, which when grouped pour into one another in an ebb and flow of negative space. Dame Magdalene Odundo, OBE, writes of these forms:

“Sara Flynn has been introducing us to forms and vessels that are made on a wheel. They are then deconstructed and reconstructed as if they were conceived as dwellings for a neighbourhood in which the vessels might be inhabited by individuals, couples or families. The forms are not simply altered to create niches and corners that make you hone in on the detail of the vessel: they relate to each other like dwellings or architecture that spontaneously grows outwards and spreads instantaneously like the favelas, sheltered adobe clusters in deserts or hillside granaries of Mali.”

Professor Simon Oldin views them in a slightly different context:

“The vessels in this exhibition take forward Sara’s interest in the quiet radical nudge of the unanticipated line. On the face of it, a vessel ought to pay homage to order and symmetry and usefulness, but her vessels resound with the offbeat curve, the rim that dips, the foot that flattens.The slender surface of an elongated form is pushed in on the side; deep scars rundown. Sinuous curves are embedded into the walls of some works, enhancing the vessel’s sculptural potencies. Pairs of pots nod urbanely to each other, lean in as if in conversation. Her lines are sharp and soft, carved and dimpled, the volumes squeezed and fulsome, sometimes both in the same work. These are works of order, contradiction and peerless poise. They seem to be both totemic and some how introvert, always self-contained.“

Explore the exhibition catalogue and essays here.
Learn more about the artist in Cfile.

A Gareth Mason Archeological Dig

New York—Jason Jacques Gallery presented its first retrospective exhibition of the works of Gareth Mason in 33 Pots: A Decade in Cahoots (October 2020). Known for his unconventional approach—often irreverent to the discipline itself––Mason’s works capture a cosmic presence. As art historian and curator Glenn Adamson argued, just one pot “may contain as many ideas as a whole archaeological pit.” It is in this pit where Mason continues to find capacious landscapes:

“Mud and Fire harbour such bewitchment—so deep is their reach, so tight is their bond—that their under-currents and potentialities are set to agitate my inner workings for the rest of my days.”

From the Gallery:

“Mason, who in recent years has declared himself a sensualist, takes the world in stride and embodies the yearning, in every human person, to experience Awe with a capital A. More poignantly, his work rewards observation, thought, and understanding. It encapsulates the human ability to feel awe in every experience, from the totally mundane to the absolutely sublime.”

Explore the exhibition catalogue here.

Learn more about the artist in Cfile.

Edmund de Waal, Begging to be Held

London. Gagosian Gallery presents some winter pots by Edmund de Waal. The exhibition is a first in sixteen years, in which de Waal presented individual works not created alongside a larger installation. During a time of physical and social isolation, and where touch is taboo, de Waal’s works in some winter pots invite an intimate, tactile experience; each form is unique and yet familiar: bowl, dish, and jar. De Waal explains:

“I made these pots in lockdown during the spring and early summer. I was alone in my studio and silent and I needed to make vessels to touch and hold, to pass on. I needed to return to what I know—the bowl, the open dish, the lidded jar. When you pick them up you will find the places where I have marked and moved the soft clay. Some of these pots are broken and patched on their rims with folded lead and gold; others are mended with gold lacquer. Some hold shards of porcelain.

In the studio I had two old Chinese bowls from the Song dynasty. One was patched on the rim with iron. The other had a beautiful thin golden thread running from the rim, repaired using the Japanese art of kintsugi. Kintsugi is not an art of erasure—the invisible mend, the erasing of a mistake—but rather a way of marking loss. Both these bowls were central to the making of this work.”

While we’ve all experienced some level of loss during this time, de Waal’s winter pots encourage us to deepen our ability to return to and revel in what we hold dear. The exhibition has been installed so that it can also be seen from the street. This adds the outdoor chill of the season to viewing the art.

Enjoy the discussion between Gallery artists, Edmund de Waal and Theaster Gates.

Lean more about the artist in Cfile.

Bouke de Vries’ Smashing Dinner

Hartford, CT–After several years of touring European venues, we caught up with Bouke de Vries’ much traveled epic. War and Pieces on its American tour at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and it approaches the zenith of Tolstoy’s masterpiece via an vast 26-foot installation “inspired by the sophisticated figural centerpieces that decorated 18th-century European banqueting tables.” The museum writes:

“Displayed during the dessert course on special occasions, these figures, first made of sugar and later made increasingly of porcelain, told stories or conveyed political messages to the diners.“

Bouke de Vries draws on such traditions in the modern centerpiece, arranged around the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion whose force appears to have turned the entire table into a wasteland. Battle rages across a heap of porcelain shards, old and new, fought by myriad miniature figures with conventional arms. Jesus on the cross and the Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion, Guanyin, watch over the death and destruction. Brightly-colored contemporary plastic toys—indestructible symbols of our own toxic times—contrast vividly with the pure white of the porcelain and sugar.”

Learn more about the artist in Cfile.

The post Exhibition Digest | January 2021: The Britton Edition appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

How to Make 3 Simple Bisque Molds - Kari Radasch

Ceramic Arts Network — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 16:56:58 GMT

FotoFile | The Refined Minimalism of Martin Smith

CFile — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 01:01:49 GMT

Featured Foto: Martin Smith, detail of Surface and Depth – Red/Yellow (2009), installation view at the artist’s Camden studio

The refined minimalist Martin Smith is a central figure in British ceramics. He trained at Bristol Polytechnic Faculty of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art, and sees himself as an artist while designing his work with the mindset of an architect and meticulously planning each piece.

Since the start of his career in the late 1970s, Smith has exhibited internationally and examples of his work can be found in many public collections worldwide. A major retrospective was held at the Museum Bojimans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 1996 and in 2001 he made Wavelength, a site-specific work for Tate St. Ives. He is also known for his multi-disciplinary approach to design and site-specific furniture.

Previously Professor of Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, a position he held for 16 years, Smith has recently taken on a new role as Senior Research Fellow at the RCA, where he is researching the ‘Potential of the Digitally Printed Ceramic Surface’. He has recently designed the domestic-style gallery space for the Anthony Shaw Collection in York Art Gallery as well as continuing to explore his work in the field of ceramics.

Smith has achieved international recognition as one of the UK’s leading ceramic artists. This impressive selection of work spans his remarkable career from the 1970s to present day. The earliest raku pieces from 1977 were originally exhibited in Smith’s Royal College of Art Graduation Show as he started to define his core areas of investigation and visual language. The collection continues through to his most recent series of sculptures created in 2019 which demonstrate a culmination of precise execution and sensuous form. Many of his major bodies of work produced over this 43 year period are represented, some never previously exhibited in the UK. Although appearance, material and technique may change radically, it is possible to discern a continuous thread linking all works.

Across two venues:
Marsden Woo Showroom
The artist’s Camden studio
July 1 – August 31, 2020

Text from Marsden Woo
All Works by Martin Smith
Object photos © the artist / Installation photos © Philip Sayer

(1999) Martin Smith, Line & Orbit No.1

(1977) Martin Smith, Bowl on Plinth

(1978) Martin Smith, Bowl

(1990) Martin Smith, 3 Cups, editions of 5

(2007) Martin Smith, Cord and Discord No.7

(2013) Martin Smtih, 2 Corners Diptych No. 1

Installation view. Marsden Woo

(2011) Martin Smith, Orthographic Shift

(2015) Martin Smith, from Red and Black with Blue and Yellow at Marsden Woo

(2019) Martin Smith, Double Ellipse No.6

detail

(2013) Martin Smith, 2 Corners – Doubled

(2017) Martin Smith, Place and Space 3

Installation view at Martin Smith’s Camden studio

Martin Smith, Wall works – Dish 3 and Wall works – Dish 2 (both 2007), installation view at the artist’s Camden studio

Martin on Cfile:
Martin Smith Talks Plates
Minimalist Master Martin Smith

The post FotoFile | The Refined Minimalism of Martin Smith appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Live Demonstration Webinar with Liz Pechacek!

Ceramic Arts Network — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:50:19 GMT

Public Art | Mariana Castillo Deball at the High Line, New York

Garth Clark — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 19:51:47 GMT

We covered Mariana Castillo Deball’s most recent show at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca last week. She’s back with a series of works which are now adorning New York’s High Line park. Deball is among 11 artists who are participating in the public exhibition Panorama (April 23, 2015 – March 2016). Friends of the High Line states the following regarding the exhibition:

Panorama is an open-air exhibition that takes inspiration from the High Line as an urban park cutting straight through the city, creating new vistas and vantage points onto the surrounding natural and man-made landscapes. The High Line is the ideal stage for this series of sculptures and installations, all of which explore the act of seeing and understanding the spectacle of nature.

The exhibition challenges historical notions of the sublime, quasi-religious experiences of “untouched” nature, and the debate on the manicured versus the ostensibly natural garden, opening up the possibility for experiencing nature in its necessarily human-impacted state.

Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975, Mexico) examines how objects’ cultural and functional significance changes over time. For Panorama, the artist presents three stacked ceramic columns. The works grew out of a dialogue with Atzompa potters in Oaxaca, Mexico about their archaeological heritage and how it is expressed, contaminated, or dissolved in the present. Each column tells a story inspired by fictional tales composed around everyday objects and archaeological artifacts.

Any thoughts about this post? Share yours in the comment box below.

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Exhibition | Mariana Castillo Deball: Measuring Space And Telling Time

Garth Clark — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 17:21:11 GMT

OACAXA––Mariana Castillo Deball’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, titled Who Will Measure the Space, Who Will Tell the Time?, (Oaxaca, Mexico, January 24 – April 20, 2015) was another extraordinary installation from one of Mexico’s leading and most widely-exhibited contemporary artists. This year she had an acclaimed show in Berlin (Mariana Castillo Deball: Parergon) at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart Bruns) that projected the history of this City.

Her interest in ceramics dates back a few years. Her work for Uncomfortable Objects, 2012 for Documenta in 2013 was a mix of clay, shards, plaster, pigments, stones, shells, masks, fabric, glass, wood, clay and diverse objects mounted on a steel frame.

Mariana Castillo Deball, Uncomfortable Objects, 2012. Shown at Documenta 13, Kassel

Click to see a larger image.

Her Oaxaca exhibition is another triumph of this spatially ambitious artist and her quest is well described in the essay that follows by Curator Oliver Martínez Kandt. The works were produced with the assistance of Kythzia Barrera from Innovando la Tradición and the family Martínez Alarzón from Atzompa:

Mariana Castillo Deball, Parergon. Exhibition view. Photograph by Thomas Brunsmariana. Click to see a larger image.

The exhibition begins with a question about the line between time and objects, and how memory is filled with the present. How to tell the story of the Universe in a hundred years? How to tell the story of the Universe in one day?

Snake, kapok tree, gear, whipping top, horned warrior, Mother Earth, potter, pot, bat, screw, dog, corn, frog with a cell phone, root, lizard, pumpkin, elder, turkey, ceiba, infinite column.

This repertoire of objects, some archaeological, other mechanical, recreational or synthetic, were selected in the present, along with the Coatlicue pottery workshop based in Atzompa, Oaxaca. This selection was the foundation for imagining a series of stories, which were then used as a starting point for the sculptures, which stand in the exhibition space.

Click to see a larger image.

Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time? is situated on the thin line that divides our relationship with objects, with the stories we make about them. Perhaps, the language is not slippery, but the objects are. The use, or handling of an object is its reason for being and simultaneously its exhaustion, their complete disappearance.

The working process of Castillo Deball begins with a question that is gradually inhabited by different characters. Some are fictitious, others, historical figures; together they begin to weave an intricate network. With a language often inconsistent, discursive, formal or poetic, Deball Castillo uses these characters to display her interest in the specificity of forms and voices.

In the project Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?, Deball Castillo investigates the relationship Atzompa potters have with their archaeological heritage and how it is expressed, contaminated or dissolved in the present. Far from taking a purist stance, this work began with a series of discussions on the copies, forgeries, style changes and influences in the history of Mexican archeology.

Together with Kythzia Barrera from Innovando la tradición and the family Martínez Alarzón from Atzompa, we visited the archaeological museum Rufino Tamayo and selected our favorite pieces. To this set of pieces, we added a lot of nuts and gears found in Ramiro´s workshop, also a whipping top, a ball, and other belongings, to form a repertoire, a vocabulary to tell our stories.

Maybe you can tell a story from anything, maybe the objects define the kind of story to be told.

The procedure was similar to the surrealist exquisite corpse, Chinese whispers or any other assembly or gossip that adds fragments gradually.

The group split in two. The main exercise was to develop a story which spans one hundred years, and one that happened in one day. This resulted in a story of the origin of the Universe in one hundred years, and another about the origin of the Universe in one day. The two stories are almost the same. Then came the story of the journey of a potter, since he wakes up at dawn to prepare the clay until he finish the pieces, burn them, and then leaves to sell them in order to buy corn to eat.

Every character became clay, and at the gallery, we ordered them in columns which reach the ceiling, so visitors can surround the stories of top-down and bottom-up.

Click to see a larger image.

This project challenges the idea of a static tradition that should not be changed in order to exist, broadening the debate of what archeology is in the present and how it can be constantly updated to resignify visual identity panoramas. Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time? is a project in collaboration with the Coatlicue ceramics workshop (family Martínez Alarzón) and Innovando la tradición. Produced by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca.

The exhibition Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time? is accompanied by the publication ‘Ixiptla Vol. 3.’ This edition of Ixiptla is focused on the trajectory of objects collected and produced by archeologists – plaster molds, facsimiles, drawings, photographs, and scale models – in an attempt to capture and replicate material evidences left by time; these objects emerge from a specific moment in time, producing a doppelgänger of the original milieu, which then takes its own course.

Click to see a larger image.

Ixiptla derives from xip, meaning: skin, cover, shell; is the container, the recognizable presence, the update of a force embedded in an object: a being there, removing the distinction between essence and matter, original and copy. Therefore, the ixiptla and the image take different paths. Ixiptla is the overwhelming manifestation of a presence.

Any thoughts about this post? Share yours in the comment box below.

Click to see a larger image.

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Exhibition | Mariana Castillo Deball’s ‘Making and Knowing Something’

Garth Clark — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 15:59:42 GMT

OXFORD––This major new commission, at Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, by Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975 in Mexico City, lives and works in Berlin) fundamentally questions methods of knowledge formation in Western museum collections. Featuring an expansive aerial installation, archival photographs and repurposed museum display cases, the exhibition uncovers hidden stories and individuals, with a particular focus on artefacts and archives held in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Smithsonian Museum National Collections in Washington D.C.

For the exhibition Deball has created a dynamic suspended installation of ceramics and textiles. These hand-made objects are a demonstration of the artist’s observations on the early stages of ethnographic work when, as Deball states, “there was no difference between making and knowing something”. The ceramic pieces are made out of red stoneware and painted using techniques and designs common to the Zuni, a Native American Pueblo people native to the Zuni River valley.

Installation view

The vessels are perforated with a ‘kill hole’, a gesture that was used by different cultures to eliminate the utilitarian value of an object. The artist uses these ‘kill hole’ perforations to connect the ceramics with ropes looping across the large gallery. These share the space with swathes of handmade textiles reaching eight meters in length. The fabric was produced in the state of Michoacan in Mexico by the collective Ukata, and are woven with a backstrap loom, and dyed with an ikat pattern.

Through the exhibition Deball traces the lives of three researchers and makers: Zuni lhamana We’wha (1849–1896), her anthropological collaborator Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849 -1915), and Elsie Colsell McDougall (1879–1961). We’wha had a particular position in society as an lhamana: male-bodied people who take on the social and ceremonial roles usually performed by women in their culture. We’wha had exceptional skills in weaving and pottery, and in 1886 she was part of the Zuni delegation to Washington D.C. hosted by Matilda Coxe Stevenson. We’wha produced objects on site, the process of fabrication on the ambiguous threshold of being both original artefacts and reproductions, which are part of the Smithsonian collection.

We’wha and Matilda Coxe Stevenson

Matilda Coxe Stevenson travelled to the U.S. Southwest in the 1880s. She was interested in rituals and ceremonies, but also in the activities of daily life such as manufacturing adobe bricks, playing games, and collecting water. She documents these actions with her camera assembling series. She is a controversial figure among the Zuni people because the documentation of their rituals is forbidden. Stevenson’s early publications on the Zuni people were later eclipsed by contemporary anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, who also blurred the lines “between knowing and making” as he made replicas of Zuni artifacts, which he described as re-enactments of indigenous technology or experimental reproductions.

The smaller galleries at Modern Art Oxford feature reproduced photographs documenting the fieldwork of explorer Elsie Colsell McDougall (1879–1961), who spent her life studying Mayan textile culture in Guatemala and Mexico, and Makereti (1873-1930), who was a highly successful tour guide in New Zealand, escorting visitors through the geyser valley of Whakerewarewa near Rotorua. She became a widely known ambassador and interpreter for Maori culture in the late Victorian period. These materials are displayed in 19th century museum cases loaned from the Natural History Museum in Oxford. One of the cases is empty and, through an audio piece, Deball reflects on the responsibilities and challenges of material culture as a contemporary artist.

Installation view

Between making and knowing something is Deball’s first UK solo exhibition since 2013. For her, extensive research is essential to creating new ideas for an exhibition as her practice mediates between science, archaeology, and the visual arts, exploring the way these disciplines describe the world. Her work highlights collaborations and the exchange of knowledge as a transformative process for everyone involved, which she realises by experimenting with modes of reproduction. As she explains “recreating an object makes one understand and read the object in a different way”. Deball’s exhibition at Modern Art Oxford acknowledges how stories are performed and retained in museums, and makes visible lesser-known practitioners and makers, whose histories have remained too long obscured.

Mariana Castillo Deball, Photo: David von Becker.

This exhibition is supported by the Mexican Embassy and Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID).

Learn more about Deball in Cfile.

Text and Images courtesy of Modern Art Oxford, Oxford. Photos by Ben Westoby.

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Live Demonstration Webinar with Carole Epp!

Ceramic Arts Network — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 16:44:49 GMT

FEATURE | Babs Haenen: Waves Crashing Against Porcelain Rocks

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:45:40 GMT

Foundation Van Achterbergh-Domhof, Netherlands, in awarding the Van Achterbergh Prize to Babs Haenen, described her as, “solid as a rock’, both in her art and personality. But it is only half the story. She is also as wild as the sea, waves crashing relentlessly against those rocks.

Babs Haenen, Three Graces from ‘Turbulent Vessel’ series, 2019
Porcelain with Yingqing glaze

Installation View, Eye of the Collector, London

The Foundation writes that Babs Haenen’s work is technically virtuoso, sophisticated in finishing and color, monumental and poetic at the same time:

“At the basis of that work is a small but very strong woman, who, for almost half a century, has been working extremely hard on a consistent oeuvre with which she is at the top of international ceramic art, to this day. That commands respect and admiration. We award this prize to her as a tribute to her work, but also as a stimulus, because we still expect a lot of her”.

Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, is presenting a selection from Haenen’s oeuvre that range from historical work to recent pieces, created in her studio in Amsterdam. Below are installation views of this exhibition with permission of the Museum.

Installation View, Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, Netherlands
5 September 2020 to 3 January 2021

Receiving the prize was an emotional moment for Haenen. Jacob van Achterbergh, a collector, followed and supported her throughout her career and they had both a professional and a personal bond. As she commented: ‘It is as if, even now, after all those years, he is still taking care of me.’

In honor of this award, her work was on show at the Eye of the Collector Viewing Room, organized by Ting Ying Gallery in London, through to May 31, 2020. She is also one of the artists in their exhibition, Time Suspended – Group Show of Women Artists (29 October – 23 December).

Part of her qualifications for the prize was as an ambassador for ceramics. Peripatetic, Haenen is a fearless, sometimes shockingly blunt speaker (“it saves time” she says) and Haenen has driven the medium forward in Europe, the UK, US and China.

In full disclosure, we are friends and Mark Del Vecchio and I represented her in LA and NYC from 1984-2008. We remain close friends. I remember meeting Babs in the mid-1980’s when she invited me speak at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam. Through her I met the uber-minimalist, Geert Lap, (with whom she was very close) and she opened up a pivotal door into European Culture, linking us to the famous design and art couple, Friso Broeksma and Benno Premsela. For us, meeting them, was a life changing moment.

Every summer for fourteen years (sometimes with our young sons) we lived in their guest apartment in an old canal house on Kaisersgracht (we renamed it ”our” apartment). Haenen and Broeksma were our anchors in Amsterdam when we organized the huge Ceramic Millennium Conference in 1999, attended by over 3,500 international delegates. We owe so much to her. So does the field.

In an interview, Haenen singled out a comment from an essay I wrote about her work, “Garth wrote ‘the inside is trying to become the outside’, and that specific sentence captures my Turbulent Vessels work perfectly.” I am flattered.

Garth Clark

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Alleghany Meadows: Ceramics Gains One, Loses One.

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 19:09:09 GMT

Mention Alleghany Meadows’ name in ceramic circles and the response is almost always a big smile. He is unquestionably one of the field’s best known and most beloved figures, not just because of his personal warmth and generosity but for his various selfless roles he plays in advancing ceramics.

The most public face is the Artstream Nomadic Gallery that has been taking contemporary ceramic art on the road since 2002. It is an exhibition space housed in a restored 1967 Airstream trailer, based in Carbondale, CO. Over the past 20 years it has pulled up at 400 locations and shown and sold work by 150 artists, from Los Angeles to New York, Houston to Minneapolis. NCECA is not NCECA without the Nomads parked close-by.

Future plans? Meadows is hoping that he can get the Airstream to Europe.

Fifteen years ago, he added two more projects while remaining a practicing potter with no time to practice. Studio for Arts + Works, Carbondale CO, is a for-profit project that anchors the Carbondale Creative Center where 25 individual artists rent spaces and work collectively on open studio events and collaborative projects. Co-founded by Alleghany, he became the sole owner in 2011 and expanded to the current location, tripling the size and scope of the project.

In 2005 he and his gallery business partner Sam Harvey (both Alfred University graduates) appeared to have lost their minds and opened Harvey/Meadows Gallery in Aspen CO. A high-end mainly-ceramics gallery in the small town of Aspen, an oligarch magnet, seemed to be wishful thinking even given the available wealth. Both Alleghany and Sam thought selling ceramics would take a modest amount of time allowing them to work in their own studios.

However, galleries are jealous mistresses and as the success of their space grew, studio time shrank even more for both ceramists. In turn, the Gallery offered an ambitious program of exhibitions showing emerging artists such as Boo + Fini, and some of the field’s top makers; Del Harrow, Tony Marsh, Betty Woodman and others. What they have achieved is heroic and it has widened the market for ceramics.

Alleghany Meadows had ended his role as dealer to focus on his studio. That means we have lost an effective gallerist and gained the return of one of America’s most revered, inventive and gifted functional potters. Denying any aura of preciousness in his work Alleghany embraces mortality as he explains:

I imagine a cup remaining in use and active for centuries; yet, I am acutely aware that the intended context carries risk, is transitory, where the cup can in one breath caress someone’s lips and in the next become shattered in the sink

The gallery is now the Harvey Preston Gallery. There was a lot of speculation among the chattering classes about who Preston might be until it became known that it is Sam Harvey’s middle name. Happily, this vital gallery continues to function.

The images in this post are mostly from his exhibition last year at Harvey Preston (along with Lucy Fradkin and Trey Hill, who are not featured) and reproduced with the permission of the Gallery and Alleghany Meadows.

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Fotofile | Tasca’s Traces: The Archeology of an Artist

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 01:16:59 GMT

I first came across Alessio Tasca’s work in 2007 in an exhibition near Florence titled ‘Concreta’ (curated by an Italian Ceramic Center called La Meridiana), a wordplay that holds together ‘concreto’, (Italian for concrete: existing in a physical form) and ‘creta’ one of the words we use for clay in Italy.

The work exhibited consisted of large pieces of clay forced through an extruder. I later learned that Tasca engineered those massive extruders after observing industrial brick production. His stoneware sculptures were big and heavy. The clay body was rough and groggy, shapes distorted and sometimes cracked by high temperature firings.

Although there’s a lot of conceptual and engineering work behind them, their presence evokes a natural phenomenon. Tasca formulated an equation of handless claywork so some of his pieces, those I like the most, look happened more than made and present a form of levity and grace in spite of their gravity.

His career spans many decades moving between functional work, sculpture and design and shouldn’t be only defined by his extruded sculptures. The first person to take an interest was Gio Ponti, who was fascinated with his glazes and folk figuration.

One important factor in Tasca’s varied production and his choice of clay as a main medium was Nove, a small town in the region of Veneto, that used to be (and partly still is) extremely rich in ceramic manufacturing.

Its history starts around 1700-1750, when Nove established and became the main provider of Rococo ceramics, having developed a porcelain recipe, for the Republic of Venice.

I understood more about that territorial connection through a young Italian Ceramic Artist called Paolo Polloniato, also from Nove, that I met in Faenza’s MIC when we both exhibited in Ceramics Now in 2018.

Polloniato comes from the Maestri Artigiani family, working with Ceramics for over two centuries. He manipulates antique techniques and historical molds juxtaposing Nove’s past glory days and commenting on the decay that followed the market boom of the 1950’s and 60’s, when Nove catered for the newly opened American Market.

Polloniato was friends with Tasca and saw him as a mentor, so after visiting Paolo’s studio in Nove I asked him to take me to Tasca’s old home and studio, a Cascina (farmhouse) that he shared for the most part with his wife, Lee Babel, a very talented artist herself,. They collaborated on many works.

Visiting Nove offered insights into Tasca’s connection to labor, farming and industry, features of his land. He developed ideas of medium specificity and relinquished artistic control over a piece, a form of reverence to clay as a material. In fact he was proudly defining himself as a ‘Ceramista’.

Some sculptures like the white glazed spheres are more controlled and designed, while others are preserved and presented as they came out of the extruder and then fired at high temperatures. He mixed theories originated in post war ‘Arte Informale’ tradition, championed in clay by Leoncillo Leonardi and Fontana, with self-reflecting conceptual currents in the late 60s and 70s, putting ‘materia’ (matter) as the main subject of his work.

‘Materia’ comes from Latin ‘mater’, mother, and it was his goal to let Clay speak by itself, adopting minimal forms where the author recedes to allow its purest sound to emerge, without external meanings.

These photos are memories from that afternoon and hopefully the fragments will give you a sense of Alessio Tasca’s wide range of work and no frills approach, echoing a connection with industry, farming, so typical of his region, a tradition of hard work and conceptual rigor.

Tasca died this winter and I’m thankful to Cfile for letting me remember that day and his work in this collection of photos.

Text and Photographs by Alessandro Gallo

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Exhibition Digest | December 2020: McCollum, Michikawa, Leoni + More!

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 01:16:31 GMT

We’ve decided to offer up one last serving of our Exhibition Digest to cap off the year. These stories of ceramics exhibitions from around the globe were just too tasty for us to keep to ourselves. Enjoy!

Allan McCollum | Why Pots without Clay?

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA Miami) first U.S. museum retrospective for legendary American artist Allan McCollum (b. 1944) that opened on March 26, 2020, Allan McCollum: Works Since 1969 traces the artist’s iconoclastic philosophy on the originality, value, and context of art. This falls into our “Not Clay But…” stream.

It has always stuck us that McCollum with his Perfect Vehicle series since 1985, a stylized Chinese ginger jar, and plaster works that look exactly like either unfired or bisque wares, has never worked with clay even though he did ceramics at school. Actually, there was some ceramic work early on but the absence thereafter had to do with family.

In his interview for Archives of American Art McCollum notes that, “My mother, my father, my aunt, all worked at a ceramics factory called Metlox Pottery in Redondo Beach—Manhattan Beach—Southern California, making mass-produced objects”. That explained everything. His way to accept his family’s influence and yet distance himself, was to change material.

“By rethinking modes of artistic production and distribution as parts of larger economies of value, McCollum is one of the most influential American artists working today,” said Associate Curator Stephanie Seidel. “Over more than five decades his work has remained timely and effective at challenging aesthetic and material concerns, while critically reflecting on the museum context.”

Alfonso Leoni’s Innovation honoured by MIC

Alfonso Leoni was born in 1941 in the ceramic town of Faenza, Italy, and died from leukaemia at the age of 39. Like many of Italy’s leading post-War ceramists, his life was closely linked to his hometown, where he studied at the Art Institute Ballardini, and taught sculpture from 1961. This dynamic artist is celebrated in a large exhibition, curated by Claudia Casali, director of the MIC, the Museum of International Ceramics, Faenza (October 1, 2020 – June 13, 2021).

As Marta Leoni writes:

He had a love and hate relationship with Faenza. He tapped a great amount of energy from this town, but at the same time it limited his possibilities. He relentlessly continued his research into new experiences and different art languages. This led him away from Faenza, while inextricably linked to the ceramic tradition. He started using different materials (paper, wood, bronze, plastic, marble, iron and precious metals, glass), cutting, ripping, assembling, destroying them, he involved his body, looked for impossible and unthinkable solutions, often stumbled upon by chance.
In the last ten years of his life he came into contact with design. He was fascinated by the possibility of spreading his projects and provocative ideas to a wide audience. German manufacturers Villeroy & Boch and Rosenthal, immediately recognized his talent, providing him with ateliers and assistants to realize his innovative ideas.

Leoni’s exhibition is a reminder that Western ceramics has undervalued, even ignored, the innovative role that Italy modern ceramics has played, work that is often much more liberated, sophisticated and closely aligned with the fine arts than most of Europe, which was somewhat bogged down in tradition. Time to update text books.

Photographs courtesy of MIC.

Shozo Michikawa | Totemic Ceramics Paired with Lush Photographs

London–Erskine Hall & Coe presents its fifth exhibition of the productive ceramist Shozo Michikawa, born in Hokkaido, the most northern area of Japan, in 1953. He showed with the photography of Yoshinori Seguchi. He has shown internationally but perhaps the most meaningful was when he was invited to launch an exhibition in the forbidden City Beijing.

He does not come from a pottery legacy going back generations, indeed he first learned ceramics from evening classes. However, he was fortunate to find a muse; “Tozaburo Kato who is a 34th-generation potter – her family have been making pots in Seto for nearly 1,000 years”. Since then, he has become one of the most respected ceramists, known now for his powerful architectonic totems assembled with vigor and intuition. In the catalogue for the Forbidden City exhibition, he comments:

The energy of nature is truly immense. No matter how much our sciences and civilisation might evolve, the power of human beings is inconsequential in the face of natural threats such as typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, and erupting volcanoes. [– that environment was a big influence on my pottery. I lived by a lake in a beautiful national park beside Mount Usu. Nature there is full of power. When I was in my mid-20s there was a big volcanic eruption, which I witnessed. I think I gained something from that energy.
I think this is why the works created by the natural world, for example, the patterns formed by the winds on the desert sands, or a majestic cliff overlooking the ocean, contain a power that can never be imitated by human hands. My own creative activities have been inspired by various phenomena in the natural world; even those that can be seen in everyday life.
Shozo Michikawa

Daisuke Iguchi Delivers Structured Bliss

The Pierre-Marie Giraud Gallery in Brussels has hosted a handsome show of ceramics by Daisuke Iguchi. Born in 1975 in Tochigi, he studied ceramics at the Tohoku University of Arts and Design in Yamagata and at the Mashiko Pottery Institute in Tochigithen. Then he entered five years of apprenticeship in the atelier of artist Masayuki Uraguchi. In 2004 Iguchi set up his own studio. Drawing inspiration from his respect and admiration for his predecessors, the Yayoi Japanese potters, and from the landscape surrounding him, Iguchi exclusively sources his clay locally. As Giraud explains:

From a childhood spent in the countryside, Iguchi retained a fascination for moss covered stones, rusted metal and patinated objects. To encapsulate these properties in his artistic practice, Iguchi undertook a lengthy empirical research to find a balance in combining soil, water, rice ashes, metal, fire and time.
The artworks of Iguchi have a skin. Rich and textured, sometimes looking like carved stones, sometimes like chiseled metal, the works are rarely identifiable, in the first-time place, as ceramic, vessels made of smooth curves and interlocking volumes, that are both technically challenging and visually unsettling. His elegant and ample shapes have a regular nature, yet are not symmetrical, suggesting no preferable angle from which to look at them. These artworks grow and take form between the hands of the artist with no preliminary drawing.

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Feature | Theaster Gates: Artist Uses Pots to Unite Ancient Traditions with Modernist Aesthetics.

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 01:15:59 GMT

I always find myself returning to the vessel. It is part of the intellectual life force of my practice and it precedes all other forms of making.
Theaster Gates

Theaster Gate’s first New York exhibition, Black Vessel, recently launched at Gagosian (he already has been listed as #9 in the 100 most influential figures in contemporary art today so, yes, you can become a major art world star without the Big Apple). The Gallery rightly describes Gates’s oeuvre as being among the most conceptually and materially rich in contemporary art today, “anchored equally in the canons of art history, the racial ideology of the Black diaspora, and the artist’s own personal history. Gates exchanges and recharges objects and ideas, proposing the artwork as a communicating vessel or sacred reliquary of recollected histories, critical vitality, and shared experience”.

“The Brick Reliquaries (2020) are Gates’s latest sculptural experiments. By firing bricks with a strong manganese content to an excessive 2300°F, the known properties of the materials are transformed into the mysteries of heat-based sculpture. In some instances, the material loses its specificity when pushed to such limits; in others, the carbide shelves inside the kiln fuse with the bricks and other sculptural elements that rest on them, becoming host to material transformation.

Gates promotes the vessel as a container of the concrete, the symbolic, and the spiritual—a metaphor for embodied existence or a means by which to gather communities together in time and space. For him, the clay vessel is a universal object of ritual significance. In a diverse group of unique large-scale works in glazed and fired clay, his evident formal virtuosity unites ancient traditions with modernist aesthetics, and draws elective affinities between Eastern, Western, and African techne”.

If you are looking for the Black Vessel, it is not in the cluster of pots, even though one is black and large. The Black Vessel is the huge brick lined space itself which is a container:

“Switching scales from vessel as object to vessel as architecture, Gates has dramatically transformed the vast west gallery into a resonant place for shared contemplation by lining the walls entirely with Roman bricks customized from reconstituted remainders, blackened with manganese dioxide and dye. (A direct precursor to this gesture is the 2017 permanent commission Black Vessel for a Saint at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, a minimalist cylindrical shrine built from black bricks that contains a life-size statue of St. Laurence, the patron saint of librarians and archivists.)”

In 2012 Gates began to formalize his knowledge of roofing techniques into a new territory of experimental painting, working with tar to make the invisible roof legible. In a new suite of paintings completed this year, Gates has intensified his approach, crafting painted torch down into taut cojoined backdrops for the interplay of archaeological tarred fragments.

Using tar, New York Times reviewer Yinka Elujoba explains, Gates imbues the show with earthiness, or as he puts it “the sense of a coordinated blemish, accentuated by smeared surfaces”:

“The smudges bring to mind the story of a Maryland slave owner, Col. Edward Lloyd VI, who, in the mid-1800s, cultivated a large, beautiful garden that attracted visitors from far and wide. Then its fine fruits began to attract other visitors: his hungry slaves. At first Lloyd whipped those caught stealing but he soon realized this was not enough to deter them. In the end, he tarred the garden’s fence, and if a slave was caught with tar marks it became proof that the person had tried or succeeded in stealing. “This plan worked well,” the African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote in his autobiography, adding, “the slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash.”

Some 200 years ago, to survive in America, Black people had to escape defilement. To be smeared with tar was literally to die. Mr. Gates has embraced this stain, turning it into art. America’s past is irredeemable, as difficult to wash off as tar. One hopes that with his gesture, a part of its future might still be salvaged”.

Learn more about Theaster Gates in Cfile.

The post Feature | Theaster Gates: Artist Uses Pots to Unite Ancient Traditions with Modernist Aesthetics. appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

Spotted | January 2021: Electric Fire and Microbes

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 01:15:34 GMT

Kirsten Willders is a 2020 MFA graduate from Alfred University. Her work takes one by surprise because it so mature and focused for a student. Theater dominates in the 2019 series, As Above, So Below, with red neon, glass, ceramic, GTO wire, electrode boots, latex paint and transformers. As she explains, here work sets out to escape fingers and enter the sublime:

My work is concerned with structures, the sacred, the senses, and the sublime. I utilize architectural foundation as an entry point to invisible structures, including social constructs, personal identity, notions of façade, and material hierarchy. The traditional function of the Classical structures in my work is often subverted or manipulated through design, material choice, and/or installation.

I seek to imbue my work with an agency that extends far beyond my own fingertips. Sensory information such as scent and light push the work further forward where I can no longer reach. Like a physical proprioceptive experience within a soaring architectural space, light and scent are encompassing and unavoidable.

Is It a Plate?

Is it a plate, glass or ceramic, enamel, slip or microbes?

Scientists from around the world submitted art grown in petri dishes for the American Society of Microbiology’s annual contest, which has announced the winners in The Guardian. Restricted access to labs broadened the remit, with traditional art on the beauty of microbes accepted for the first time

First place in the traditional general category was awarded to The Gardener by Joanne Dungo, from Northridge Hospital Medical Center in Northridge, California. The winner in the traditional kids category was I Love My Microbiome by Ariana Gestal-Gurr from Shreveport, Louisiana, drawn after putting her fingers up her nose

Adriana Celis Ramirez and Valeri Sáenz Moncaleano from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, took second place in the open general for Lactophenol-Cotton Blue Clay Stain, a clay representing the interconnection between clay and human mycosis

The post Spotted | January 2021: Electric Fire and Microbes appeared first on CFile - Contemporary Ceramic Art + Design.

HISTORY | Jason Jacques: Collection of French Art Nouveau Ceramics at Phillips Auction

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 01:15:06 GMT

New York—Jason Jacques’ eponymous gallery is nonpareil on many levels; from his unconventional space at 29 East 73^rd Street (last time it was lined with sheets of black metal riveted to the walls), the large library of scholarly books published by the gallery, advertisements in the nude, his scholarship, and international renown on the Fair circuit, and the utterly bizarre and hugely ambitious installations that accompanied them.

Ernest Bussière
“Chardon” Vase, circa 1903
Estimate: $6,000 – 8,000
SOLD FOR $6,930

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat
Large Vase, circa 1895
Estimate: $8,000 – 12,000
SOLD FOR $11,340

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat and Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix
Vase with Crab, circa 1893
Estimate: $10,000 – 15,000
SOLD FOR $16,380

This FotoFile focuses on the sale, nearly thirty exceptional Art Nouveau ceramics from his collection presented by Phillips Auction on 9 December, 2020. It showcases superlative examples of fin-de-siècle French ceramics, when undulating vegetal and natural forms along with pioneering new techniques in stoneware and earthenware created a new class of artistic ceramics.

When Jacques decided to show contemporary ceramics, he did something that was visionary as he continued to deal in the French work. The artists he invited all made work that took the language of the French pots and put today into a dynamic, rugged, informal, radical context. A century apart the works informed each other and gave a back-and-forth historical context to both bodies of work.

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat
Gourd Vase, circa 1900
Estimate: $3,000 – 5,000
SOLD FOR $6,930

Edmond Lachenal
Pitcher, circa 1900
Estimate: $4,000 – 6,000
SOLD FOR $4,788

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat
Vase, circa 1900
Estimate: $4,000 – 6,000
SOLD FOR $6,930

Taxile Doat
Plaque, circa 1904
Estimate: $4,000 – 6,000
SOLD FOR $9,450

Ernest Chaplet
Pair of Monumental Vases, circa 1900
Estimate: $20,000 – 30,000

Taxile Doat
“La Musique et la Danse” Bottle and Stopper, 1903
Estimate: $12,000 – 18,000
SOLD FOR $17,640

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat and Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix
Pitcher with Lizards, circa 1893
Estimate: $7,000 – 9,000
SOLD FOR $16,380

To learn more we suggest reading Cfile’s coverage of the gallery, the excellent essay by Glenn Adamson in the auction catalogue and the lush book 30 for 30, documenting three decades on the gallery’s influence. The 30th anniversary publication accompanied their three-decade retrospective show. The full-color, gilded, hardcover catalogue includes critical and historical essays on each of the thirty works in the show by a diverse and multifaceted selection of curators and art historians, along with a look back at some of our most memorable moments, a few of the most distinct and intriguing print ads of days past, and a surprise or two.

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Auction Market | Alive + Dead: Odundo and Voulkos Set New Highs

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 22:36:02 GMT

Two sales, MAAK’s Modern + Contemporary Ceramics (19 November, 2020) and Phillips Design Auction New York (9 December, 2020) have reset the record books for studio pottery. At MAAK Angled Mixed Coloured Piece by Magdalene Odundo reached £200,000 ($268,000), the highest price by a living ceramist. Peter Voulkos’ Black Bulerias (1957), acquired by a Wyoming buyer, set the record for a post-WW2 work.

Magdalene Odundo
‘Angled Mixed Coloured Piece’, 1988
Est: £30,000 – £40,000
SOLD FOR £200,000

Interestingly both artists broke their own records. Odundo’s previous record was £195,000 (Sotheby’s Paris, 2015) and Voulkos’s previous record was for Rondena (1958) which reached $915,000 on Phillips’ Design Evening Sale (12 December, 2017). Learn more in Cfile.

John Ward
Monumental Vessel with Dipped Rim, circa 2003
Est: £5,000 – £6,000
SOLD FOR £18,000

John Ward
Moon Bowl, 2015
Estimate: £4,000
SOLD FOR: £10,000

MAAK, this pocket-Adonis of an auction house, had a strong sale overall. With 83% of lots sold, the average lot price was close to £3,000 with further artist records achieved for Mary Rogers (Lot 107) at £16,800 and Gordon Baldwin (Lot 133) at sold for £14,400. It was a pleasure to see John Ward’s steady growth and appreciation. Monumental Vessel circa 2003 received £21,600 ($28,000) – equaling the world record for his price previously set by Maak. His Moon Bowl brought in the most money (£10,000) $13,500 at the FiredUp4 Charity Auction that MAAK hosted. (November 19, 2020). Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, the anchor of the studio pottery auctions, did well but not exceptionally so.

Peter Voulkos
Black Bulerias, 1958
Estimate: $600,000 – 800,000
SOLD FOR $1,264,200

Watching the Phillips’ auction play out live for Voulkos was nail biting. Cfile was rooting for the price to cross the $1 million line. Towards the end bids were raised at increments of only $10K and $20K, inching up until the hammer slammed down at $1,020,000 ($1,264,200 with commissions).

This price might awaken the market to Voulkos’ potential and that of ceramics of 1950’s and 1960’s. But there is a strange anomaly. There are only about 25 of these monumental works. This represents about 0.83333333333% of his total oeuvre, said to be 3,000 works (pots & sculptures). Most are either in museums or promised museum gifts. It’s estimated that that only three remain in private hands, so collecting these is a short if costly ride.

Peter Voulkos
Untitled Vessel, 1963
Estimate $7,000 – 9,000
SOLD FOR $12,600

These high prices have not floated his vessels (aka pots). Pun intended. A second Voulkos was auctioned, Untitled Vessel (1963). It sold with little fervor for $12,600. Not only was this surprisingly low but much less than works of this quality sold for a more 10-6 years ago. Overall, Voulkos’s pots have been losing value. His Stack pots that once sold for a high of $104K now fetch $45K to $35K.

Untitled Vessel was not inferior. It comes from his most valued period by scholars, the so-called Abstract Expressionist era (1955 to 1964). The form is about as radical as they come; thrown, paddled, punctured, gouged, cracked (good in Pete’s case) with an oversized foot, and creepy witch fingers. It was painted with dark blue, turquoise and black setting a dynamic conflict between surface and form.

The issue may be rarity. But it also may be a tired old trope that pots are less important in art terms than non-vessel sculpture. The fine art world does not support this. If one takes the top 20 fine artists making ceramics today, about 70% are vessel makers in one form or another.

Lucie Rie
Miniature Conical Bowl and Miniature Open Bowl. circa 1952
Estimate: $6,000 – 8,000
SOLD FOR $17,640

George Ohr
Pot with Snakes, circa 1895
Estimate: $20,000 – 30,000
SOLD FOR $32,760

George Ohr
Blistered Vase, 1898-1907
Estimate: $15,000 – 20,000
SOLD FOR $37,800

To give a little context; two miniature Lucie Rie’s (1 ½ and 2 ¼ inches high) sold for $17,400 each. George Ohr’s Pot with Snakes, 5 ¼ inches sold at $32,760. Blistered Vase, 8 ¼ inches high, a much better work, practically a catalog of The Mad Potter’s most theatrical glazes found a home for only $37,800. Could it be that Japanese buyers are now collecting small works by Ohr? Either way height had the historical gravitas of Untitled Vessel.

A wonderfully decadent highlight was Arts du Feu: Work from the Collection of Jason Jaques, supported in the catalogue by an excellent essay, “Romancing the Pot”, by Glenn Adamson. It is an exceptional group of the finest French studio pottery from 1880-1914.

Ernest Bussière
“Chardon” Vase, circa 1903
Estimate: $6,000 – 8,000
SOLD FOR $6,930

I have made no secret that I find the British and American studio pottery to be second rate by comparison. That begins with the fact that both avoided any eroticism in their work (partly because some of the potteries were small factories, and partly because it was English and American). These French pots are powerfully sexual and fecund. We have published them in a separate post that you can reach by clicking here.

Lucie Rie and Hans Coper
Set of Eight Cups and Caucers, circa 1952
Estimate: $8,000 – 12,000
SOLD FOR $21,420

Lucie Rie
Set of Oil and Vinegar Bottles and Saucers, circa 1952
Estimate $6,000 – 8,000
SOLD FOR $6,930

Lucie’s Rie’s prices were solid but not fevered. For me the charm lay in two functional works; Series of Eight Cups and Saucers, c.1952, made with Hans Coper and a quirky Set of Oil and Vinegar Bottles, c. 1952. Rie’s kitchen wares used to be the affordable works but not anymore, the cups sold of $21,420 and bottle $6,930.

Ettore Sottsass, Jr.
‘Clair de Lune’ Totem, circa 1988
Estimate: £14,000 – 18,000
SOLD FOR £42,840

Two works from Phillips’ Design London (12 November, 2020) deserve special mention. They were by Ettore Sottsass and Axel Salto. Sottsass’s totem, Claire de Lune (1988) is, if not the most beautiful work of this series, at least in the top ten, with rectangular platforms extending from the circular column and the lush seafoam glaze, from solid color to a hazy mist. It sold for $42,840.

Axel Johann Salto
Unique and Large Vase in the ‘Budding’ style, circa 1940
Estimate: £30,000 – 50,000
SOLD FOR £138,600

Salto has been the most sought-after Scandinavian mid-century artist for a decade. His selling price, $138,600, did not come as a surprise.

Until the next auction…

Garth Clark

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FEATURE | Ron Nagle: San Franciscan’s Best Exhibition of his Career comes at 80

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 06:31:04 GMT

LONDON—This is Ron Nagle’s second solo exhibition in London at Modern Art, Lincolnshire Squire, a title so subtly droll it is almost Monty Python worthy, comprises eighteen small-scale sculptures and a group of drawings made within the past three years.

Garth Clark writes: “What is significant is not that it’s just another great show by this Abstract Pop master, we have grown used to that, but that this exhibition, at age 80, may well be his best ever. Perfection is not quite the right term, though Ron likes to get as close as he can to this elusive goal, but the refinement of form and line is so tight it could squeak. And he stands toe to toe with another great colorist, his friend, Ken Price. It’s a magical achievement”. The following text and photographs are courtesy Modern Art.

Ron Nagle’s sculptures might measure only the size of a clenched fist, but their intricate, dynamic panoramas evoke planetary domains. Stuccoed façades meet twiggy appendages, while slick, oily layers ooze over the sharp edges of perfect, geometric blocks. Meticulously crafted out of arrangements of texturally and formally contrasting elements, Nagle’s abstractions are both other-worldly and entirely of this one: they evoke a range of influences reaching between mid-century hot-rod cars of the US West Coast, and the composite sensibility of Japanese shibui and wabi-sabi.

Works for Modern Art oscillate between conveying a sense of interior and exterior. They may at once appear loosely like still-life landscapes–conveying a sense of the familiar outdoors–and at the same time describe something as specific as the details of the internal architecture of an unknown place, as though plucked from a dream.

Mixing traditional materials such as ceramic and porcelain with epoxy resin and catalyzed polyurethane, Nagle’s works attain an almost impossible physical quality, their indefinability echoed in the deft wit of their titles, such as ‘Vapor Caper’ or ‘Curly Centurion’. Contained within their making are references to art history, such as the work of Lucio Fontana, Giorgio Morandi, Phillip Guston and George Herriman, but it is perhaps more apt to consider Nagle’s works within the context of his musical mind.

In this sense, each sculptural composition is akin to a finely tuned synthesis of overlapping notes, vibrations, textures, tones and words; the final whole always something entirelystranger andmore affecting than the sum of itsparts.

Ron Nagle’s career spans several decades. After high school, at which time Nagle first began to work with ceramics, he apprenticed with abstract expressionist sculptor Peter Voulkos in Berkeley California in the 1960s. It was during this seminal period that he began to formulate a sculptural practice of ceramics as conceptual rather than decorative objects.

Following this apprenticeship his work began to be shown alongside that of Voulkos, Ken Price and John Mason, whose influence on the redefinition of ceramics as a fine art medium became known as the California Clay Movement. Since then, Nagle’s work has advanced to combine traditional materials with cutting edge techniques, his evolving oeuvre maintaining an important contribution to the discourse of contemporary abstract sculpture.

A new catalogue will be published by Modern Art to accompany the exhibition, featuring an essay by DanFox. His retrospective exhibition, Handsome Drifter, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive remains on view until March 21. Appointment is needed.

For more about Nagle in Cfile.Org click here.

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Spotted | Floating Volumes, Bloody Beasts, Officine Saffi €10,000 Award + More!

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 17:34:28 GMT

Here at Cfile we like to stay up in the crows nest with our telescopes drawn, keeping abreast of new horizons in the ceramics world. We hope you enjoy what we have spotted.

Sanam Emami | Floating bowls determine Function

FORT COLLINS—Sanam Emami’s vessels float in clouds of brushed slip. The depth seems endless. Yet she is not trying to make art, at least not intentionally so. The flowers are not naturalistic but reduced to minimal shapes that dominate the top plane. She states that her “pots and tiles are made with a specific intent – a function. Plates, cups and tiles are ubiquitous, recognizable.

“The vases and their multiple spouts are curious when empty, when filled with flowers their function is revealed. The tile is a background or canvas. The cup provides a counterpoint – the curves and movement of the form interact with the surface pattern and imagery. The parameters of the functional pot simultaneously create boundaries and endless possibilities.

Ideas come from different places; a book, a conversation or a glimpse of something familiar like a favorite historical pot that can seem new, as if seen for the first time. The studio space is where the concepts and inspiration take shape and become tangible and dimensional. The concept of unity with variety is important. For example, combining soft marks and volumes with crisp edges and lines. I am interested in creating contrasting gestures that can coexist within a pot or a tile through mark making, symmetry and repeated patterns”.

Allessandro Gallo: Finding love in the repulsive textures of a Turkey’s head

CHICAGO—The four figures here by Allessandro Gallo were shown by Duane Read gallery at Intersect Chicago (formerly SOFA – The Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design fair). For those looking to see signs of life in the market, all sold.

These works are different to any other works by Gallo to date. Blood is the common theme:

“It kind of sums it up. It’s funny that two albums I listened to a lot this winter were ‘Music to be murdered by’ by Eminem and ‘Murder most foul’ by Bob Dylan. My pieces were already in my project list but there must be something in the air in 2020”.

Blood flows and there is overt violence, anguish, guilt and pain. To give an idea of the figures complex voice we quote the artist discussion of one work, Cold Turkey. In the seventies this title had a very specific meaning connected to quitting heroin. But that was neither his problem not the artist’s focus:

“Lately the expression has been adopted to mean quitting something suddenly, even though you love it, because other people close to you or a part of you know that it is bad. This is what the piece is about. Being split in two, between what you love and what you know is bad for you. It could be about stopping smoking and my relapses. And a lot of other things and some people too. I love the repulsive textures and folds on the turkey’s head and I like how the top of his head looks like an exposed brain. The blanket and its obsessive chain pattern reinforce the idea of being imprisoned, echoed by his inward posture, body hidden, defensive, protecting himself from the outside world”.

Apply before November for the 4^th €10,000 Officine Saffi Award

MILAN–The window is closing now apply for the fourth edition of the Officine Saffi Award. You only have until November 30. Up for grabs is € 10,000 and 8 international residency prizes, awarded by two exceptional juries.This biennial award supports and promotes artists working with ceramics in contemporary art and collectible design.

The competition is open to all contemporary artists and designers of any age, whether emerging or established, individuals or members of collectives, and with no restrictions on theme, gender or nationality, who use ceramics as an artistic medium.

From left to right: Garth Clark, Annalisa Rosso, Glenn Adamson, Matt Wedel, Elisa Ossino, Jill Singer & Monika Khemsurov, Isabelle Naef Galuba, and Laura Borghi.

The finalists of the award – which will be exhibited at Officine Saffi in Milan – are selected by a commission composed of important figures from the world of art and design: Pictured above from left to right: Garth Clark (editor-in-chief Cfile), Annalisa Rosso (editor-in-chief Icon Design), Glenn Adamson (curator), Matt Wedel (artist), Elisa Ossino (architect and interior designer), Jill Singer and Monika Khemsurov (editors-in-chief Sight Unseen), Isabelle Naef Galuba (director Musée Ariana) and Laura Borghi (founder Officine Saffi).

The winner of the € 10,000 cash prize will be selected by an exceptional jury: Alessandro Rabottini (artistic director miart), Livia Peraldo Matton (editor-in-chief Elle Décor), Christian Larsen (Curator at MAD Museum), Alvise Braga Illa (collector), Julian Stair (artist), Carolina Orsini (Conservation at MUDEC), Laura Borghi (founder Officine Saffi).

A Reminder of What Makes Us Human from Kimberly Camp

Collingswood, NJ—This February, Kimberly Camp received the 2020 Art Makes Us Human award from the American Craft Council. Camp’s paintings and dolls have appeared in over a hundred solo and group exhibitions and the three-year traveling exhibition, Uncommon Beauty in Common Objects. She explains a shift in the work:

In 1988 my mother was given septicemia. For months, I watched nurses stab her with IVs. One day, I grabbed an old leather coat, needle, and scissors. As nurses stabbed, I sewed to soothe my anger. That experience opened a world of exploration. I find pure joy in using materials collected over five continents. Dolls play a part in the culture of all people around the world. I’ve explored different clay bodies, combining hard, soft, ornamental, structural, and I’ve used leather, raffia, bones, fabric, gemstones, fur, wood, beads, and bells. Most are a reflection of humor and mischief

Alongside her acclaimed career as an artist, Camp has held a number of key positions in the arts: she was president and CEO of The Barnes Foundation, founding director of the Smithsonian Institution Experimental Gallery, and president and CEO of the Charles Wright Museum in Detroit. From 2005-2011, she led the creation of a science, technology and natural history project, the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center, in Washington state. Her work as an artist and administrator voices her ideas about the role art plays in democracy, social equity and diversity into practice. Currently, Camp serves as a curator for A New View public art project and is on the faculty of Drexel University’s Arts Administration program.

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FEATURE | Guan Xiao: Individual human forms have an abstract collective identity

Edited by Patrick Kingshill — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 17:28:24 GMT

SHANGHAI— Guan Xiao, born in 1983, currently works and lives in Beijing. The art practice of Guan Xiao mainly focuses on sculpture, video and installations. She uses her own identity, history and geographical background as material, to collage world decomposition in the current high-speed arena. She creates contradictions, expressing her understanding of differences through various themes.

Guan Xiao’s solo exhibition entitled 8 Stories held at the Antenna Space, employs characters with undefinable appearances and exhaustive rhetoric. In terms of image references and textual descriptions of the works–movies, paintings, literature, symbols, customs, fairy tales, the everyday–all have provided inspirations to the content of the works. Industrial, handcrafted, readymade and natural objects constitute the final aesthetics in terms of material and form.

All kinds of elements roll towards an abstract metric. None of these elements is more important than the others, and there isn’t a first or a last one. There’s no dualism or separation, nor dominance or subordination. The artist breaks down these elements then pieces them together to occupy one room peacefully.

If something is tender, then harden it with materials; if something is beautiful, then dress it down with kitsch; if something is real, then make it fictive through artificiality; if something is flat, then texture it with craftsmanship; if something is natural, then make it industrial using technology; if something is concrete, give it abstraction by removing it from its original context, achieve a balanced state free of conflicts.

In the exhibition the group of human forms are three-dimensional collages in a post-image age as well as anthropomorphic totems of early modernism. They not only follow the logic of sculpture but also an aura of the readymade; yet presented as concrete individual human forms while being defined as an abstract collective identity.

Text by Luan Xiao and photographs, courtesy Antenna Space

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Bà cô tổ là ai? Văn khấn bà cô tổ cập nhật mới nhất

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 07:12:15 GMT

Bà tổ cô là ai? Văn khấn bà cô tổ thế nào mới đúng? Tất cả sẽ được giải đáp ngay sau đây tại bài viết của Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News, mời các bạn cùng theo dõi. Xem nhanh Tìm hiểu bà cô tổ là ai? Bà cô tổ thường có độ tuổi từ 12-18 tuổi, là người con gái chưa chồng nhưng lại chết trẻ trong gia đình. Tuy nhiên khi chết họ lại quyến luyến gia đình dòng họ mình nên chưa đi đầu thai mà ở lại phù hộ độ trì, giúp con cháu trong nhà. Bà cô tổ rất thiêng nên mọi người trong gia đình thường cầu khấn, xin xỏ cả về làm ăn buôn bán, giải hạn…trong cuộc sống. Văn khấn bà Tổ cô đúng chuẩn mà gia chủ nên biết Nam mô a di Đà Phật! (3 lần) Con lạy chín phương Trời, mười phương Chư Phật, Chư Phật mười phương. – Con kính lạy Đức Dương lai hạ sinh Di lặc Tôn Phật. – Con kính lạy các cụ Tổ Khảo, Tổ Tỷ, Bá Thúc Huynh Đệ, đương thượng Tiên linh và các hương hồn nội tộc ngoại tịch, bà tổ cô dòng họ ………… tại ……………….. Tạ thế ngày ………. phần mộ ký táng tại …………………….. , nay nhân ngày huý nhật chứng minh công đức. Tín chủ (chúng) con là:……………………Ngụ tại …………………….. Nay theo tuế luật, âm dương vận hành, con cháu tưởng nhớ ân đức Tổ Tiên như trời cao biển rộng. Hôm nay ngày …….. tháng …….. năm ………… , tín chủ con cùng toàn thể con cháu trong nhà sửa sang lễ vật, hương hoa nước quả, thắp nén hương thơm, dâng lên trước án. Tín chủ con có lời kính mời các cụ Cao Tằng Tổ Khảo, Cao Tằng Tổ Tỷ, bà tổ cô, Bá Thúc, huynh đệ, Cô Di, Tỷ Muội, nam nữ Tử Tôn nội, ngoại, cúi xin các vị thương xót con cháu, phù hộ độ trì con cháu an khang, mọi bề thuận lợi, sự nghiệp hanh thông....

Đọc nguyên bài viết tại #battrangnews Bà cô tổ là ai? Văn khấn bà cô tổ cập nhật mới nhất

Bài văn khấn cầu duyên tại Chùa Hà cập nhật mới nhất

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 02:46:16 GMT

Văn khấn cầu duyên tại Chùa Hà đang là một trong những mối quan tâm hàng đầu hiện nay khi có quá nhiều người đến Chùa Hà với mục đích mong muốn tìm được một nửa yêu thương của mình. Bài viết sau đây của Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News sẽ giúp bạn hiểu được sơ qua về chùa Hà, cách chuẩn bị lễ cúng và đặc biệt là bài văn khấn đúng chuẩn nhé. Xem nhanh Chuẩn bị đồ lễ khi đến Chùa Hà cầu duyên Đi lễ chùa không phải là đi chơi nên bạn phải cẩn thận sửa soạn sao cho chu đáo, đặc biệt là đồ lễ. Theo như Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News được biết thì mâm lễ cúng tại chùa Hà thì bạn phải chia được đủ làm 3 mâm: Mâm lễ tại ban Tam Bảo: Bạn chuẩn bị 1 thẻ hương, hoa tươi, 1 vỉ nến, bánh kẹo, hoa quả tươi và sớ ban Tam Bảo. Bạn tuyệt đối không cúng mâm mặn và không cúng tiền vàng nhé. Mâm lễ tại ban Đức Ông: Ngược lại với mâm lễ tại ban Tam Bảo thì bạn cần chuẩn bị tiền vàng, rượu, thuốc, chè, đồ mặn tuỳ ý và sớ ban Đức Ông. Mâm lễ tại ban thờ Mẫu: Bạn chuẩn bị tiền vàng, hoa tươi, trầu cau, bánh kẹo, tiền lẻ. Bạn làm sớ và đặt vào mâm lễ này. Đây cũng là nơi bạn sẽ cầu duyên đấy nhé. Bài văn khấn cầu duyên tại Chùa Hà Có khá nhiều bài văn khấn cầu duyên tại Chùa Hà lan tràn trên mạng xã hội khiến bạn băn khoăn không biết đâu là bài văn khấn đúng chuẩn nhất. Nắm bắt được điều đó, Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News xin giới thiệu bạn đọc bài văn khấn mới nhất, phổ biến nhất và thiêng nhất sử dụng cho mục đích cầu duyên tại chùa Hà nhé: Nam mô A di đà Phật (3 lần) Con kính lạy: Đức Ngọc Hoàng Thượng Đế Đức Cửu trùng Thanh Vân lục cung Công chúa Đức Thiên tiên Quỳnh Hoa Mẫu Liễu Hạnh Đức Đệ Nhị Bà Chúa Sơn Lâm Mẫu Thượng Ngàn Đức Đệ Tam Mẫu Thoải Con tên là :………… Sinh...

Tham khảo bài gốc ở #battrangnews Bài văn khấn cầu duyên tại Chùa Hà cập nhật mới nhất

Bài văn khấn Đền Phủ chính xác và đầy đủ nhất

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 05:14:16 GMT

Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News mách bạn bài văn khấn Đền Phủ đang được ưa chuộng nhất hiện nay nếu bạn có dịp ghé thăm các đền phủ để cầu may mắn trong cuộc sống. Xem nhanh Tìm hiểu chung về đền phủ Đền phủ là công trình kiến trúc được xây dựng công phu, cầu kỳ nhằm để nhằm để thờ cúng một ai đó, một vị thần tiên nào đó có sức ảnh hưởng lớn đến con người và hầu như được dựng lên theo truyền thuyết dân gian. Các đền phủ nổi tiếng có thể kể đến ở nước ta như: đền Kiếp Bạc, đền Sóc, đền Trần, đền Bà Chúa Kho… Cách sắm lễ khi đi Đền Phủ Lễ vật khi đi Đền phủ không nhất thiết phải quá to lớn, chỉ cần bạn chọn đồ tuỳ tâm nhưng phải thành kính và sạch sẽ. Tùy theo đặc điểm văn hóa mỗi nơi mà có những cách sắm lễ khác nhau nhưng thường thấy có những đồ sau đây: Chuẩn bị mâm lễ chay bao gồm những lễ vật sau: hương hoa, trà, quả, phẩm oản… Chuẩn bị mâm lễ mặn bao gồm những lễ vật sau: gà, lợn, giò, chả… được làm cẩn thận, nấu chín, tự tay bản thân mình làm là tốt nhất, hạn chế đặt hàng có sẵn bên ngoài. Bài văn khấn Đền Phủ hay nhất Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật (3 lần) Con lạy 9 phương trời con lạy 10 phương đất Con lạy chư Phật 10 phương con lạy 10 phương chư Phật Con tấu lạy Cao Linh tối thượng Vi diệu linh Con vạn lạy thượng đế Con tấu trình cha trời mẹ đất Tín chủ con: Cư trú tại địa chỉ: Mang tâm thành chấp tay. Lạy Đức Vua Cha Ngọc Hoàng Thượng Đế Lạy Đức Mẫu Liễu Hạnh Lạy Đức Mẫu đệ nhất thiên tiên Lạy Đức Mẫu đệ nhị thượng ngàn Lạy Đức Mẫu đệ tam thoải cung Lạy Tam Tòa Thánh Mẫu Lạy hội đồng tam phủ thục mệnh – tứ phủ vạn linh Lạy hồn thiêng nước nhà, lạy hồn thiêng núi sông, anh linh tiên tổ Mời các Ngài ngự gió, xin các Ngài ngự mây Giáng về cảnh này Ngự linh chứng lễ Cung thỉnh Tam Tòa Thánh Mẫu, vua cha Ngọc Hoàng, Tam Phủ công đồng, Tử Phủ vạn linh, Hội...

Đọc nguyên bài viết tại #battrangnews Bài văn khấn Đền Phủ chính xác và đầy đủ nhất

Văn khấn đền Cô Chín đúng chuẩn

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:28:17 GMT

Bạn có đang thắc mắc về Cô Chín, cách thờ cúng Cô Chín, văn khấn đền Cô Chín? Nếu như bạn là một trong những người tìm hiểu về tín ngưỡng dân gian Việt Nam thì chắc chắn sẽ biết đến hình ảnh Cô Chín. Đây là một trong những Tứ phủ thánh cô nổi tiếng ở cõi tiên. Cô Chín được truyền tai nhau là người có tài phép và giáng ngự ở nhiều nơi khác nhau. Cô Chín còn là người có công với người dân, cộng đồng làng xã, dân tộc trong lịch sử đấu tranh gìn giữ nước của người Việt Nam. Hãy theo dõi bài viết sau của Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News để hiểu hơn về cách thờ cúng Cô Chín nhé! Xem nhanh Tìm hiểu sơ qua về thần tích cô Chín Cô Chín Sòng Sơn hay còn có tên gọi khác dân gian hơn đó là cô Chín Giếng, theo hầu Mẫu Sòng. Theo như dân gian truyền miệng, cô Chín được ví như là một vị tiên vô cùng xinh đẹp lại có nhiều tài phép, trong đó đặc biệt là tài xem bói. Có thể nói cứ 1000 quẻ cô bói ra thì ko sai một quẻ nào cả. Cách sắm lễ khấn cô chín Sắm lễ cúng cô Chín không phải ai cũng biết, nhất là những người trẻ hiện nay. Sau đây Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News liệt kê cho bạn đọc những lễ vật gồm có khi đi cúng đền Cô Chín nhé: vàng mã, cây tiền, những cành vàng, cành bạc. Mâm lễ cúng cô Chín tùy theo tâm và điều kiện của mỗi người. Bạn có thể chỉ thắp vài nén thẻ hương, vài bông hoa hoặc vài tập tiền âm phủ là được. Nếu có điều kiện hơn thì bạn có thể có sắp thêm đĩa xôi, con gà, mâm quả cũng được Văn Khấn Cô Chín Con Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật Con Lạy 9 phương trời, mười phương chư Phật, chư Phật mười phương Con Nam Mô thường trụ thập phương Phật Con Nam Mô thường trụ thập phương Pháp Con Nam Mô thường trụ thập phương Tăng — Con sám...

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Tổng hợp bài văn khấn ngoài trời ngày rằm mùng 1 và tết cuối năm

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 03:16:19 GMT

Có rất nhiều bạn thắc mắc văn khấn ngoài trời và văn khấn trong nhà khác nhau như thế nào? Liệu có thể lấy văn khấn trong nhà để sử dụng khi có lễ cúng ngoài trời không? Câu trả lời là hai bài văn khấn này hoàn toàn khác nhau và không thể sử dụng chung một mục đích được. Hôm nay Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News giới thiệu cho bạn đọc văn khấn ngoài trời ngày rằm, mùng một, đêm giao thừa ngày tết đang được phổ biến và ưa chuộng nhất hiện nay. Xem nhanh Bài văn khấn ngoài trời ngày rằm và mùng 1 – Kính lạy Hoàng Thiên Hậu Thổ chư vị Tôn thần. – Con kính lạy ngài Đông Trù Tư mệnh Táo phủ thần quân. – Con kính lạy các ngài Thần linh, Thổ địa cai quan trong xứ này. – Con kính lạy ngài Bản gia Tiền chủ ngụ trong nhà này. Tín chủ con là …………………………….Tuổi…………………. Ngụ tại………………………………………………………………… Hôm nay là ngày………. tháng…………năm…………………(Âm lịch) Tín chủ con thành tâm sắm lễ, hương hoa trà quả, đốt nén tâm hương dâng lên trước án, thành tâm kính mời: Đức Hoàng thiên hậu Thổ Chư vị Tôn Thần, ngài Bản cảnh Thành Hoàng, ngài Bản xứ Thổ Địa, ngài Bản gia Táo Quân cùng Chư vị Tôn thần, ngài Bản gia Tiền Chủ. Cúi xin Chư vị Tôn thần Bản gia Tiền Chủ thương xót tín chủ, giáng lâm trước án, chứng giám lòng thành, thụ hưởng lễ vật, phù trì tín chủ chúng con toàn gia an ninh khang thái, vạn sự tốt lành, gia đạo hưng long thịnh vượng, lộc tài tăng tiến, tâm đạo mở mang, sở cầu tất ứng, sở nguyện tòng tâm. Chúng con lễ bạc tâm thành, trước án kính lễ, cúi xin được phù hộ độ...

Coi thêm ở #battrangnews Tổng hợp bài văn khấn ngoài trời ngày rằm, mùng 1 và tết cuối năm

Bài văn khấn Thanh Minh ngoài mộ và tại nhà

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 09:55:20 GMT

Tiết Thanh Minh là một trong những ngày lễ truyền thống nhưng lại vô cùng quan trọng của dân tộc Việt Nam. Ngày lễ có mục đích giúp cho con người ta có cái tâm, lòng thành hướng về cội nguồn, tổ tiên. Tiết Thanh Minh tại Việt Nam thường rơi vào ngày đầu tháng 3 âm lịch. Trong ngày này, các gia đình thường tiến hành cùng nhau đi tảo mộ, dọn dẹp mồ mả của người thân đã khuất. Trong đó có 2 điều không thể thiếu nhưng lại ít người có nhiều hiểu biết đói là: sắp mâm lễ vật dâng cúng tổ tiên, đọc bài văn khấn Thanh Minh để có thể tưởng nhớ đến những người thân đã về miền cực lạc. Hôm nay Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News xin giới thiệu cho bạn đọc những vấn đề xoay quanh Tiết Thanh Minh và văn khấn tết thanh minh ngoài mộ và tại nhà nhé. Xem nhanh Cách chuẩn bị mâm cúng cho Tiết Thanh Minh Tùy theo sở thích cũng như điều kiện kinh tế của gia chủ mà gia chủ có thể chuẩn bị lễ cúng là lễ chay hoặc lễ mặn. Lễ cúng cũng có thể đơn giản hoặc cầu kỳ tùy theo điều kiện, hoàn cảnh và truyền thống của từng gia đình. Tuy nhiên thì thường thấy những mâm cúng sẽ có một số lễ vật phổ biến như như hoa quả tươi, trầu cau, trà nước, vàng hương… Nếu gia chủ chuẩn bị mâm cúng mặn thì sẽ có thêm bát canh măng, đĩa xào, đĩa thịt gà luộc và một số thứ khác tùy văn hóa vùng miền. Cách làm lễ cúng Tiết Thanh Minh Sau khi sắm đầy đủ mâm lễ (mâm chay hoặc mâm mặn đều giống nhau), gia chủ đại diện của gia đình sẽ đặt mâm lễ lên ban thờ, tiến hành thắp nhang và vái ba vái. Một điều không thể thiếu đó là đọc bài văn khấn theo bài cúng Thanh Minh mà Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News gợi ý dưới đây. Bài văn khấn Thanh Minh mà gia chủ nên biết Bài văn khấn Thanh Minh ngoài mộ Con lạy chín phương Trời, mười phương Chư Phật, Chư Phật mười phương Con Kính lạy Hương...

Coi bài nguyên văn tại #battrangnews Bài văn khấn Thanh Minh ngoài mộ và tại nhà

Bài văn khấn vong linh thai nhi cầu siêu tại nhà

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 03:31:13 GMT

Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News gợi ý bạn bài văn khấn vong linh thai nhi nếu có chuyện không may xảy ra với đứa bé. Có thể nói được mang thai và trong quá trình mang thai chính là một điều hạnh phúc của các bậc cha mẹ. Đây có thể là một điều mà bất cứ ai nấy cũng đều mong muốn được làm một lần trong đời. Thế nhưng cuộc sống có rất nhiều điều không thể lường trước được, có thể do nhiều nguyên nhân họ phải bắt buộc bỏ đi thai nhi. Xem nhanh Tại sao phải khấn vong thai nhi? Trong thế giới tâm linh, những người mới mất đi nói chung hay những thai nhi khi bị chết đi thường trở thành những oan hồn khó siêu thoát, lang thang trên trần gian. Những vong nhi đó mang trong lòng mình sự oán hận, căm thù vì chúng bị chính cha mẹ không cho chào đời, tạo ra nhiều nghịch cảnh. Chính vì vậy, việc cúng vong hồn thai nhi và biết bài văn khấn vong thai nhi là một điều cần thiết, hành động này giúp thai nhi siêu thoát, không còn oán hận cha mẹ. Cách chuẩn bị đồ cúng cho vong thai nhi Tùy theo đặc điểm mỗi nơi thì có những cách chuẩn bị đồ cúng khác nhau, tuy nhiên thường có những lễ vật sau đây: Bố mẹ chuẩn bị sữa ông thọ pha ra ly hoặc sữa hộp nhỏ, nhớ kèm ống hút Một số kẹo ánh loại ngon như Sô cô la càng tốt Chuẩn bị 2 bộ quần áo giấy kèm theo giấy tiền vàng bạc Bài cúng cho vong thai nhi mà bố mẹ nên biết “OM AH HUNG Xin nhờ lửa làm tan chảy không còn sót những món diệu dục đơn giản nhưng quí giá này hóa một đám mây vô tận trong không gian thành một tiệc cúng dường không chấp trước, xin cho con dâng cúng lên chín phương Trời mười Phương Phật chư Phật mười phương. Hôm nay là ngày… tháng… năm… Tín chủ con là… ở tại số nhà… thành kính dâng lên cúng dường Chư Phật mong Chư Phật ban phước cho toàn thể...

Coi thêm tại #battrangnews Bài văn khấn vong linh thai nhi cầu siêu tại nhà

Văn khấn nôm truyền thống cổ truyền của người Việt

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 04:37:13 GMT

Văn khấn nôm truyền thống là một trong những bài văn khấn cổ truyền có tầm phổ biến rộng nhất hiện nay. Hôm nay Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News giới thiệu cho bạn đọc các bài văn khấn nôm truyền thống, xin mời các bạn theo dõi. Xem nhanh Tìm hiểu sơ qua về văn khấn nôm truyền thống Văn khấn nôm là những bài văn khấn được viết chữ Nôm sau đó được dịch sang chữ quốc ngữ cho mọi người dân dễ dàng đọc hơn. Văn khấn nôm truyền thống đều có thể sử dụng trong những dịp lễ cúng bái của người dân. Những bài văn khấn nôm truyền thống mà bạn nên biết Văn khấn nôm gia tiên vào rằm và mùng 1 (Âm lịch) hàng tháng: Nam mô a di Đà Phật! Nam mô a di Đà Phật! Nam mô a di Đà Phật! Con lạy chín phương Trời, mười phương Chư Phật, Chư phật mười phương. Kính lạy ngài Hoàng Thiên Hậu Thổ chư vị Tôn thần. Con kính lạy ngài Đông Trù Tư mệnh Táo phủ Thần quân, Ngũ phương Ngũ thổ, Phúc đức chính Thần. Con kính lạy các ngài Thần linh cai quản trong xứ này. Các cụ Cao Tằng Tổ khảo, Cao Tằng Tổ tỷ Thúc bá đệ huynh và các hương linh nội, ngoại. Hôm nay là ngày ........ tháng ..... năm .............. Tín chủ con là .................................................. .... Ngụ tại ........................................................ cùng toàn gia quyến. Thành tâm sửa biện hương hoa, lễ vật, trà quả và các thứ cúng dâng, bày lên trước án. Chúng con thành tâm kính mời: Các vị Tôn thần cai quản trong khu vực này. Hương hồn Gia tiên nội, ngoại. Cúi xin các Ngài thương xót tín chủ Giáng lâm trước án. Chứng giám lòng thành. Thụ hưởng lễ vật Phù trì tín chủ chúng con: Toàn gia an lạc, mọi việc hanh thông Người người được chữ bình an, Tám tiết vinh khang thịnh vượng, Lộc tài tăng tiến, tâm đạo mở mang Sở cầu tất ứng, sở nguyện tòng tâm. Giãi tấm lòng thành, cúi xin chứng giám. Cẩn cáo! Văn...

Xem nguyên bài viết tại #battrangnews Văn khấn nôm truyền thống cổ truyền của người Việt

Bài văn khấn Đức Ông chi tiết đầy đủ nhất

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 03:07:05 GMT

Theo phong tục của người Việt Nam thì cứ đầu tháng hay ngày rằm hàng tháng, các gia đình thường cầu khấn Đức Ông, chính vì thế việc có hiểu biết về văn khấn Đức Ông là điều cần thiết. Khấn Đức Ông đúng cách, đúng tâm linh phong thủy mới có thể được Đức Ông phù hộ cho bản thân và gia đình mạnh khỏe, may mắn được. Tuy nhiên không phải ai cũng nắm được những quy định căn bản về sắm lễ cúng cũng như chuẩn bị văn khấn Đức Ông, nên hôm nay Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News xin giới thiệu cho bạn đọc mẫu bài văn khấn đang được ưa chuộng nhất hiện nay. Xem nhanh Nguồn gốc của Đức Ông có thể bạn chưa biết Đức Chúa Ông là tên gọi đầy đủ của Đức Ông - đây là một trong những nhân vật được danh xưng quen thuộc, đặc biệt là rất gần gũi đối với bất cứ ai đã từng đi lễ chùa. Có thể nói rằng trong tất cả các ngôi chùa tại Việt Nam đều xây dựng hẳn một ban riêng để thờ cúng Ngài và hơn nữa là có cả đúc tượng Người. Còn khi hỏi về lịch sử nguồn gốc của Đức Ông thì như theo sách Phật Giáo ghi chép lại, Đức Ông chính là một doanh nhân giàu có ở Ấn Độ thời cổ đại. Tìm hiểu sơ qua ý nghĩa cúng lễ Đức Ông Thành tâm cúng lễ Đức Ông có thể khiến cho gia hộ, cho bản thân và gia đình mạnh khỏe, may mắn. Hơn thế nữa, Đức Ông rất thiêng nên phù hộ độ trì cho tai qua nạn khỏi, xua tan sự đen đủi trong cuộc sống Cách sắm lễ cúng Đức Ông Tùy theo từng đặc điểm văn hóa vùng miền mà mỗi nơi có một cách chuẩn bị lễ cúng khác nhau, tuy nhiên thì hầu hết đều có những lễ vật sau: Đầu tiên đối với cúng chay: Gia chủ chuẩn bị mâm cúng bao gồm hương, hoa tươi, quả chín, phẩm oản, xôi chè. Còn đối với lễ cúng mặn: Gia chủ chuẩn bị mâm cúng bao gồm gà, lợn, giò, chả… Tất cả những sản phẩm trên đều phải được làm vô cùng cẩn thận,...

Xem nguyên bài viết tại #battrangnews Bài văn khấn Đức Ông chi tiết đầy đủ nhất

Bài văn khấn cô hồn ngoài trời mùng 2 và 16 âm lịch tháng 7

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 10:07:12 GMT

Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News nhận được rất nhiều những câu hỏi xoay quanh đến cô hồn, cách cúng cô hồn cũng như văn khấn cô hồn ngoài trời. Hôm nay Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News dành riêng một bài viết cho bạn đọc giải đáp những thắc mắc trên. Hãy cùng theo dõi nhé! Xem nhanh Cúng cô hồn vào ngày nào là đúng nhất? Tháng 7 âm lịch hàng năm tại Việt Nam được coi là tháng của ma quỷ. Đặc biệt là ngày 15/7 còn được gọi là ngày “xá tội vong nhân”. Vào ngày này thì Diêm Vương sẽ mở cửa Quỷ Môn Quan để ma quỷ được tự do trở về dương gian. Chính vì thế mà các gia đình người Việt thường chọn ngày trong tháng để cúng cô hồn. Các gia chủ không nhất thiết phải cúng cô hồn đúng ngày rằm. Lễ cúng cô hồn gồm những gì? Tùy theo từng tập tục, tùy theo từng văn hóa mỗi nơi mà việc cúng lễ cô hồn cũng có những đôi chút khác biệt. Sau đây, Gốm Sứ Bát Tràng News cung cấp cho bạn những lễ vật cần thiết trong mâm cúng cô hồn: - Hoa quả - Tiền vàng mã - Muối hạt sạch - Nước - Nấu bát canh khoai tây với xương - Cơm và 1 quả trứng luộc - Mía chặt thành khúc - Khoai lang - Hoa cúc - Một ít gạo tẻ - Hương thắp - Trầu cau - Bánh kẹo các loại - Bỏng ngô, bỏng gạo Văn khấn cúng cô hồn ngoài trời mà bạn nên biết Nam mô A Di Đà Phật (3 lần). Con lạy chín phương trời, mười phương chư Phật, chư Phật mười phương. Con lạy Đức Phật Di Đà Con lạy Bồ Tát Quan Âm. Con lạy Táo Phủ Thần quân Chinh thần. Tiết tháng 7 sắp thu phân Ngày rằm xá tội vong nhân hải hà Âm cung mở cửa ngục ra Vong linh không cửa không nhà Đại Thánh Khảo giáo - A Nan Đà Tôn giả Tiếp chúng sinh không mả, không mồ bốn phương Gốc cây xó chợ đầu đường Không nơi nương tựa đêm ngày lang thang Quanh năm đói rét cơ hàn Không manh áo...

Coi thêm tại #battrangnews Bài văn khấn cô hồn ngoài trời mùng 2 và 16 âm lịch tháng 7

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 15:39:34 GMT

Rose Quartz & friends

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 15:02:14 GMT

Rose Quartz & friends

Image of Rainbow Oval Serving platter X-Large

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 01:01:58 GMT

Image of Rainbow Oval Serving platter X-Large

Spec Bowl - Large by YOURS

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 01:01:44 GMT

Spec Bowl - Large by YOURS

Jumbo-Müslischale Everything is yummy rosa #tazasceramica Diese hübsche Müslischale gibt es sogar im Doppelpack, damit deinem perfekten Frühstück ab jetzt nichts mehr im Weg steht!

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 00:57:53 GMT

Jumbo-Müslischale Everything is yummy rosa #tazasceramica Diese hübsche Müslischale gibt es sogar im Doppelpack, damit deinem perfekten Frühstück ab jetzt nichts mehr im Weg steht!

NEW Three Cotton Sprays

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:19:54 GMT

NEW Three Cotton Sprays

Handmade Ceramic Vase & Dried Floral Arrangement

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:19:02 GMT

Handmade Ceramic Vase & Dried Floral Arrangement

Atelier Stella Ceramics. Katharina sagt… das sieht super aus! StudioStories. liebt Upcycling Projekte. #fotografie #upcycling #diy #blumen

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:18:57 GMT

Atelier Stella Ceramics. Katharina sagt… das sieht super aus! StudioStories. liebt Upcycling Projekte. #fotografie #upcycling #diy #blumen

Minimalist vase with a touch of the rustic in its raw edges and delicately overlapping glaze. Perfect for displays of dry and fresh flowers.

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:18:47 GMT

Minimalist vase with a touch of the rustic in its raw edges and delicately overlapping glaze. Perfect for displays of dry and fresh flowers.

2018 wholesale concrete face plant pot cement face flower vase Type: Floor Boughpot, Flower Kettle/Sprinkler, Flower Tub, Pots, Pergola, Propagator Kits, Small Fence, VASE, Flower Basket, PLANTER Usage Condition: Desktop Style: Modern Used With: Flower/Green Plant Place of Origin: Fujian, China (Mainland) Brand Name: Better-way Model Number: BW-P1637 Material: Ceramic Ceramic Type: ceramic Finishing: Glazed Product Name: 2018 wholesale novelty flower pot Color: Pink, Grey SizeA: 16x16x33.5cm

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:18:39 GMT

2018 wholesale concrete face plant pot cement face flower vase Type: Floor Boughpot, Flower Kettle/Sprinkler, Flower Tub, Pots, Pergola, Propagator Kits, Small Fence, VASE, Flower Basket, PLANTER Usage Condition: Desktop Style: Modern Used With: Flower/Green Plant Place of Origin: Fujian, China (Mainland) Brand Name: Better-way Model Number: BW-P1637 Material: Ceramic Ceramic Type: ceramic Finishing: Glazed Product Name: 2018 wholesale novelty flower pot Color: Pink, Grey SizeA: 16x16x33.5cm

Flower vase, vase arrangement, home decor.

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:18:32 GMT

Flower vase, vase arrangement, home decor.

Are you interested in our white ceramic face vase? With our wedding gift you need look no further.

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:18:23 GMT

Are you interested in our white ceramic face vase? With our wedding gift you need look no further.

PAN set of 4 faience cups and stirrers | Maisons du Monde

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:17:27 GMT

PAN set of 4 faience cups and stirrers | Maisons du Monde

handmade ceramic pottery mug made by @ptitsamiok

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:16:41 GMT

handmade ceramic pottery mug made by @ptitsamiok

About the greens - teal organic ceramic pottery plates #ceramics #plate #pottery #turquoise #blue #dinnerware #stoneware #makersgonnamake #modernceramics #contemporaryceramics #Regram via @hanaakarimm

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:16:04 GMT

About the greens - teal organic ceramic pottery plates #ceramics #plate #pottery #turquoise #blue

40 DIY Bohemian Craft Ideas For Your Hipster Soul - Cartoon District

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:14:07 GMT

40 DIY Bohemian Craft Ideas For Your Hipster Soul - Cartoon District

Gom su bat trang new

How to Make A Twisted Wire Tool for Unique Facets | GAY SMITH

Super Smart Trimming Chuck MIKE JABBUR

Feature | Hybrid Vessels: Nicki Green’s Transmutations

Two Quick Ways to Start Sculpting A Bust

FotoFile | Kathy Butterly: Yellow Haze

Exhibition | Stiina Saaristo: Kinderszenen, Scenes from Childhood

FotoFile | Theaster Gates: China Cabinet

New Wheel-Throwing Webinar with Antonio Martinez

An Easy to Make Stamp with Great Line Quality - AMY SANDERS

Exhibition Digest | April 2021. Objects of Identity, Earthly Wonders, Building Blocks + More!

Raven Halfmoon, Bold and Brilliant.

Qwist Joseph Explores Home and Chance Encounter.

Shecket’s First at Pace

Rose B. Simpson’s Duo: Loyal alter-egos, Potent Allies, Twins Separated at Birth.

The Pairing of Linda Sormin and Gail Wight is Simply Natural.

Nathalie Du Pasquier Builds Beauty, Brick by Brick.

A Doyle Lane Weed Pot is Some Kind of Magic.

Kay Whitney Explores Mark Del Vecchio’s Shadow

Sponsored Post | Golden Age of American Makers: The Barbara and Ed Okun Collection at Santa Fe Art Auction

New Webinar with Amy Sanders

Flair with Dinnerware

Past Meets Future. New Work from Olivier van Herpt

FotoFile | Brian Rochefort’s Winning March Across Europe arrives in Greece

Feature | Process as Prologue, Johannes Nagel’s ‘No Fake’

Feature | Sparks Fly at Intergenerational Pairing: Lois Dodd + Sharif Farrag

Travel to Ireland with ICAN!

A Quick and Easy Way to Make a Plate - CAROLE EPP

Feature | The Light of Lustre, Johannes Nagel’s Radical Vessels

Youtube Ballek WFH Webinar!

Seth Rogen’s Smoking Pots, a 3,000-Year-old Potter and a 5,000-Year-old Brewery.

Nzambi Matee Paving Affordable Building in Africa

Bone Damage Identifies 3,000 Woman as a Potter

Ceramics Champion Ronald Kuchta Passes at 85

Officine Saffi announces the 45 finalists from over 600 candidates

Seth Rogen Favors Pot and Pots

Speak Pottery to the World, Bray seeks a Communications Director

3150 B.C. Egyptian Brewery with 320 Earthenware Vats

Nir Hod Peddles Loneliness in a Set of Four Porcelain Dessert Plates

Brooklyn’s Vessel Closes after Third Suicide

Pots, Puppies and Kitties: A Short Story about Rago Auctions

Groundbreaking Navajo Artist Christine Nofchissey McHorse Passes at 72.

Podcast | Tales of a Red Clay Rambler: A Tribute to Christine McHorse

From the Vault | Christine Nofchissey McHorse: A Studio Visit with Dylan McLaughlin

From the Vault | ‘Dark Light: The Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse’

From the Vault | Exhibition Catalogue: Christine McHorse’s ‘Dark Light’

Pioneering Women: Celebrating Those who Have Shaped the Ceramic Form

Richard Slee’s ‘Mantlepiece Observations’

Talking Clay Field Trip to Lisa Orr's Studio

How to Make an Ornamental Yet Functional Handle - MARTHA GROVER

Exhibition Digest | January 2021: The Britton Edition

Ken Eastman’s ‘Wanton Chase’

The Thing Allison Britton is Seeing

Jennifer Lee‘s Geological Elegance

The Embodied Architecture of Sara Flynn

A Gareth Mason Archeological Dig

Edmund de Waal, Begging to be Held

Bouke de Vries’ Smashing Dinner

How to Make 3 Simple Bisque Molds - Kari Radasch

FotoFile | The Refined Minimalism of Martin Smith

Live Demonstration Webinar with Liz Pechacek!

Public Art | Mariana Castillo Deball at the High Line, New York

Exhibition | Mariana Castillo Deball: Measuring Space And Telling Time

Exhibition | Mariana Castillo Deball’s ‘Making and Knowing Something’

Live Demonstration Webinar with Carole Epp!

FEATURE | Babs Haenen: Waves Crashing Against Porcelain Rocks

Alleghany Meadows: Ceramics Gains One, Loses One.

Fotofile | Tasca’s Traces: The Archeology of an Artist

Exhibition Digest | December 2020: McCollum, Michikawa, Leoni + More!

Allan McCollum | Why Pots without Clay?

Alfonso Leoni’s Innovation honoured by MIC

Shozo Michikawa | Totemic Ceramics Paired with Lush Photographs

Daisuke Iguchi Delivers Structured Bliss

Feature | Theaster Gates: Artist Uses Pots to Unite Ancient Traditions with Modernist Aesthetics.

Spotted | January 2021: Electric Fire and Microbes

Is It a Plate?

HISTORY | Jason Jacques: Collection of French Art Nouveau Ceramics at Phillips Auction

Auction Market | Alive + Dead: Odundo and Voulkos Set New Highs

FEATURE | Ron Nagle: San Franciscan’s Best Exhibition of his Career comes at 80

Spotted | Floating Volumes, Bloody Beasts, Officine Saffi €10,000 Award + More!

**Rose B. Simpson’s Duo: Loyal alter-egos, Potent Allies, Twins Separated at Birth.**

Apply before November for the 4^th €10,000 Officine Saffi Award