Published by Ken Saunders Gallery 2041 West Carroll Avenue, Suite C-320 Chicago, IL 60612 www.kensaundersgallery.com © 2022 Ken Saunders Gallery All Rights Reserved Catalogue Design by Amy Stieve Luksa
Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Featuring new works by Rick Beck April 2 - May 31, 2022
DARK BINARY (detail) cast glass 24.5 x 11 x 6 inches 2022
Ken Saunders Gallery is pleased to present a new body work Rick Beck. Created since the artist’s departure from rural Penland County, North Carolina for the sunny climes of Hilo, Hawaii. This new work builds upon previous efforts to explore the realm of pure abstraction. Indeed, these works are not images of anything and instead are seen in the artist’s eye as monoliths, each a single thing existing on its own in space. The biography that is included here to bring a sense of the artist and his intentions to his viewing audience was largely published in the catalogue for Beck’s exhibition at this gallery in 2014. Beck’s work has been the subject of several essays and monographs, and I want to express my appreciation to those authors whose views are cited in this text. Rick Beck’s story begins as so many do with inspiring instructors and supportive parents. Taking full advantage of the opportunities that were afforded, whether drawing lessons or a college education in the arts, Beck pursued his passion for the studio and making things. At Hastings College in Nebraska Beck worked figuratively in ceramic creating clean, minimal, nearly mechanical works. As he has throughout his career Beck was searching for a way of “bringing something new...find something in those figures that is more universal than arm, leg, shoulder and buttocks.” In addition to working in ceramic, Beck engaged in life drawing and metalworking at Hastings. A roommate happened to be working in glass and invited Beck to the studio one evening because he needed assistance with a piece. Beck was immediately taken by the excitement and danger of the hot shop. The extreme challenges of working with hot glass; doing hard, manual labor appealed to Beck’s sensibility as an individual maker. At the same time Beck found himself drawn to Art History where he was exposed to a diversity of influences. At first there was modern art from the first half of the 20th century and then when he realized that the artists he was looking at were looking at African art and artifacts he too searched African art for inspiration as he developed his own visual vocabulary, primarily in drawings and ceramic sculpture. After completing his undergraduate degree at Hastings Beck arranged with the College to assist at the hot shop, tidying up and shutting down the facility each evening, receiving for his effort exclusive use of the studio after school was over for the day. For at least 4 hours everyday for the next 4 years Rick blew glass at Hastings. When he met Valerie, who was studying education, he insisted that their dates take place in the hot shop where they would work together, the beginning of a partnership that included their marriage in 1986, and a lifetime devoted to working and making together. The early blown works that they created were vessel forms with sandblasted inclusions that reflected Beck’s growing interest in Abstract Expressionist painting. In 1986 Rick began work on his Masters degree at Southern Illinois University in the program headed by William Boysen. It was at SIU, influenced by Boysen’s “democratic proclivities” that Beck learned how to build a studio, make tools and perhaps gain some insight into what it would take to make a life and career as an artist. Boysen’s directive was to find a way to survive to make the work by being frugal, clever and self-sufficient. For Beck these were the most important lessons imparted by his professor and for the first time the Becks began to support themselves by selling their work. Upon completion of his Masters at SIU Beck worked for a summer as a studio assistant at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. At the end of the summer Beck was invited to work as an Artist in Residence at the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Smithville, TN. Founded a decade earlier by visionary Tennessee Congressman Joe L. Evins, the school aspired to celebrate and nurture craft traditions. For Beck the reality of his Residency was that when Beck arrived in 1989 the 10 year old hot shop was in need of a complete renovation, a task that consumed a great deal of his first year in Tennessee. Using the knowledge he had gained at SIU Beck dove into the task of rebuilding furnaces, glory holes and annealing ovens. Beck traces his interest in mechanical objects and the melding at this time of his figuration with an aesthetic that referenced tools and hardware to his renovation of the hot shop. It was at ACC that Beck first cast nuts and bolts and his “threaded” figures. In 1991 came Beck’s greatest opportunity yet when the Penland School of Crafts invited both Rick and Val to be Resident Artists. Founded in 1923 as Penland Weavers and Potters and in 1929 officially renamed the Penland School of 6
Handicrafts, the sprawling campus on 400 acres now has over 50 buildings and courses are offered in a variety of craft disciplines including glassblowing, pottery, papermaking, metalworking, woodworking and weaving, as well as, fine arts subjects including painting, photography and printmaking. The transition to Penland was difficult at times for Beck. The prevailing aesthetic at Penland was informed by technique and material, while Beck found himself “still making things as ugly as I could.” Beck had worked with extremely large kilns at ACC and had cast a variety of materials including glass and metal. In the studio Beck was not pursing technical mastery; the big kilns at ACC had forever altered Rick’s aesthetic. For the next 20 years Rick would be primarily concerned with scale and he would produce some of the largest sculptures ever created in glass. The American Craft Council was founded in 1943 with a mission to support and nurture contemporary American craft. In addition to a magazine, American Craft, the Council produces juried expositions in several cities each year. At the 1992 American Craft Exposition in Philadelphia Beck’s work was discovered by two art dealers, Douglas Heller and Rick Snyderman and the artist was invited to have shows at Heller’s gallery in New York and Snyderman’s gallery in Philadelphia. Typical of the work at Snyderman were the large working screws and nuts while at Heller Beck presented the more figurative work including the threaded torsos. In response to the challenge of presenting serious work in the gallery setting Beck began to create sophisticated and ambitious works that fused his figurative inclinations with a visual vocabulary informed by his intense wonder for all things mechanical and built. For the last twenty years Rick has moved back and forth between abstracted figuration and a lexicon of mechanical elements creating pieces that are more one than the other and pieces that are an eerie hybrid of both. The artist’s large abstractions of hand tools invite smiles and laughter even as they solemnly evoke a time and sensibility that has passed. Ward Doubet, at the time the director of the Appalachian Center for the Crafts in Smithville, TN noted in his statement on Beck’s work in the catalogue for the 1995 Southern Arts Federation Craft Fellowships that Beck’s post-industrial monuments celebrate “ a work-bench culture whose influence is quickly diminishing in the information age.” 15 years later Matthew Crawford in his book Shop Class as Slow Craft urged the like minded,” to speak up for an ideal that is timeless but finds little accommodation today: manual competence and the stance it entails toward the built, material world.” Indeed Beck’s monumentality requires that we contemplate the objects he “portrays” and the utility their forms embody. For a contemporary audience comprehending the usefulness or utility of these objects is more intuitive than definitive. Whether a Reamer, an Ax Head or a Turnbuckle it is the archaic tool-ness of these objects that is conveyed. Our fuzzy comprehension of the forms leads us to relate to the works on a wide range of levels. For the artist and many viewers the transformation from tool to figure provides the most resonance. For writers like Doubet Beck’s message is socio/political, the “iconography grounds the work in the concrete world of the craft studio as one of the last strongholds of individual, rather than corporate, creativity.” For Charlotte Vestal Brown, Ph.D., Ho. AIA, Director, Gallery of Art and Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, writing in the Autumn of 2001 issue of Neues Glas, “his tools are metaphorical references to a body language of multiple meanings having to do with purpose, work, power and sexuality.” Brown’s reading of the work reveals, as the critiques of deep and thoughtful artworks always do, the willingness to bring one’s own agenda to bear on the subject. She goes on to assert that, “these tools are not only symbols of a passing time in the factory but of the passing of the male body as an engine, a machine, a literally potent force in running the world.” Rick Beck creates totemic glass sculptures that revel in the artist’s sense of humor, sense of place and sense of history. His sculptures ask us to reexamine how we appraise work and masculinity and reconsider the value of the accumulation of knowledge about the things we have built and that fill our world. Even as his reductive, minimalists sculptures are perceived to go places rarely explored by artists working in glass it is safe to say that Beck’s intentions remain firmly modern and firmly formal. Ken Saunders, 2014-2022 7
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SMOKEY SUNSET cast glass 16 x 24 x 4 inches 2022
10 OF DIAMONDS cast glass 36 x 10 x 6 inches 2022
YELLOW FLOW VALVE cast glass 23.5 x 10 x 7 inches 2022
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1 ST GREEN MONOLITH cast glass 24.5 x 10 x 7 inches 2022
LIGHT GREEN MONOLITH cast glass 23 x 10 x 7 inches 2022
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GREEN SCREW MONOLITH cast glass 24.5 x 11 x 7 inches 2022
NEO SPOON cast glass 31 x 6 x 3 inches 2022
TURQUOISE SPOON cast glass 31 x 6 x 3 inches 2022
BLUE MOON RISING cast glass 18 x 8 x 4 inches 2022
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COBALT BAFFLE cast glass 40 x 11 x 12 inches 2022
BLUE SPLIT MONOLITH cast glass 27.5 x 12 x 7 inches 2022
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AMBER SPLAYD cast glass 37 x 7.5 x 4 inches 2022
RUBY SPOON cast glass X x X x X inches 2022 24
AMBER SEATED FIGURE cast glass 24.5 x 10 x 7 inches 2022
CORAL SPOON cast glass 31 x 6 x 3 inches 2022
RUBY SPOON cast glass 31 x 6 x 3 inches 2022
DARK AMBER MONOLITH cast glass 24.5 x 10 x 7 inches 2022
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DARK BINARY cast glass 24.5 x 11 x 6 inches 2022
SCARLET SPOON cast glass 31 x 6 x 3 inches 2022
RED CAPTURE cast glass 23 x 8 x 9 inches 2022
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EDUCATION & TRAINING 1982 MFA Glass, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 1989 BA in Art emphasis in glass, Hastings College, Hastings, NE AWARDS 1994 North Carolina Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship 1995 ESAF/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2022 Rick Beck, Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, N.C. Rick Beck, “New Perspective”, Ken Saunders Gallery, Chicago, IL 2019 Rick Beck, “What Lies Beneath”, Angela King Gallery, New Orleans, LA 2018 Rick Beck, Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC 2017 Rick Beck,”It Figures”, Ken Saunders Gallery, Chicago, IL 2016 Rick Beck, Habatat Galleries, West Palm Beach, FL 2014 Rick Beck “Now”, Ken Saunders Gallery, Chicago, IL 2013 Rick Beck,Showcase, Blue Spiral 1, Asheville, NC Rick Beck at Thomas Riley Gallery, Cleveland, OH “Figures and Forms:The Sculptures of Rick Beck”,Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC Shared Journey, Rick and Valerie Beck,Toe River Arts Council, Spruce Pine, NC 2012 “Form,Color,Light” Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL 2011 Habatat Galleries, Palm Beach, FL 2010 Ken Saunders Gallery, Chicago, IL SELECTED INVITATIONALS 1996-2022 Habatat International Glass Invitational, Royal Oak, MI 2022 The Art Show, Blue Print Gallery,Dallas, TX The Art of Glass, Viewpoints Gallery, Makawao, HI 2022 Out of the Vault, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL Abstract Only! Wailoa Art Center, Hilo, HI 2019 Utilitarian-Tool Show, Blue Spiral 1, Asheville, NC 2018 Glass and Steel, Methodist University, Fayetteville, N.C 2017 Light, Habatat Galleries, West Palm Beach, FL Gallery Artists, Angela King Gallery, New Orleans, LA From the Fire: Contemporary Glass, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC North Carolina Glass, Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, Blowing Rock, NC 2016 Hidell/Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC 2015 The Sculptor’s Voice,Blowing Rock Art& History Museum, Blowing Rock, NC Halper Exhibition,Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC Go Figure! Hidel/Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC South by Southeast, Masters of Studio Glass, Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL 2013 Igneous Expressions, David McCune International Art Gallery of Methodist University, Fayetteville, NC 15th Anniversary Show, Hidell/Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC North Carolina Glass, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 32
SELECTEDCOLLECTIONS Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC Dutton Lainson Company, Hastings, NE Fletcher, Barnhart, White Corp., Charlotte, NC Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN Foundation for the Carolinas, Charlotte, NC Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft, Denmark Hastings College, Hastings, NE Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL Imagine Museum, St.Petersburg, FL Lowe Museum of Art, Miami, FL McDonalds Corporate Collection Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL Montgomery Museum, Montgomery, AL Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA The Palley Collection, Miami, FL Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI She Museum, Louisville, KY Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA U.N.C. Charlotte, Charlotte NC University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC XL Screw Corporation, Wheeling, IL SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Arts and Activities May 2009 Front Cover Tools for Creativity May-July 2009 Front Cover American Style October 2004, Page 87. Glass Art January/February 2003, Page 28-29. Glass Winter 2002, Inside Back Cover. American Craft Oct./Nov. 2002, Page 4. Glass Fall 2002, Page 12. Neues Glas Fall 2001, Front cover and Pages 20-27. American Craft Feb./March 2001, Pages 98-99. Glass Winter 2000, Inside Back Cover. American Craft Dec. 2000-Jan. 2001, Page 8. American Craft April/May 2000.
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