SARAH CROWNER
CLAY BODIES
Staff
Board of Directors
Aldy Milliken Executive Director
Stephanie Hall Barrett President
Michelle Staggs Director of
Danielle Wrobleski Schaefer Vice President
Development & Community Outreach
Joey Yates Curator Joanna Miller Direction of Education Emily Benken Visitor Services Michael Clayton Museum Educator Mary Clore Education Coordinator Julia Comer Shop Manager Curtis Conlin Events Coordinator Zara Goldberg Visitor
Kevin Kramer Treasurer Becky Kuster Ragland Secretary Marlene Grissom Lifetime Trustee Mary Stone Chairperson Emeritus John Schriber Immediate Past President Aldy Milliken Executive Director Anna Bass-Wilson, Theresa Carpenter Beames, Robert Bertrand, Joan Block,
Services & Finance Associate
Stacy Brooks, Julia Carstanjen, Christina
Brittany Miller Collections
Carter, Tracie Catlett, Jennifer Cave,
Manager & Development Associate
Tonya Coleman, Lorie Davenport, Gina
Sara Olshansky Shop Associate
Del Negro, Teague DeLong, Julio Driggs,
Forrest Pass Visitor Services
Gregory T. Dutton, Mary Easterling,
Kris Pettit Development
Kevin Fennell, Angela Hagan, Haven
& Membership Associate
Maddie Tong Communications Manager Kevin Warth Visitor
Harrington III, Miles Harvey, Jody Howard, Kevin H. Kramer, Becky Lamb,
Engagement Coordinator
Trace Mayer, Lee Middendorf, Debbie
Dane Waters Facilitator of
Huddleston Mitchell, Kristen Nagel,
Curriculum & Interpretation
Katherine Kannapell Ryser, Melissa Rose, Maria Schweichler, Chase Speiden, Monalisa Tailor, Lee Tatum, Maud Cabot Welch, Chris Welsh, & Tammy York-Day
booklet photography by Ted Wathen [cover] Craft, 2007, Sarah Crowner
Sarah Crowner, Clay Bodies December 15, 2018–April 7, 2019 Exhibition Made Possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts The Mitchell-Schenkenfelder Group at Morgan Stanley Brown-Forman Marlene & David Grissom Augusta & Gill Holland Admission to KMAC is FREE—Thanks to a Generous Donation from Brook & Pam Smith KMAC is Supported by The Fund for the Arts The Kentucky Arts Council
THE MUSEUM CONNECTS PEOPLE TO ART AND CREATIVE PRACTICE.
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
A museum isn’t a building. It’s a place where creative ideas are shared, discussed, and displayed. Our twenty-firstcentury definition of museums was formed by the evolution of encyclopedic institutions that preserved collections of cultural significance: a building where objects were stored, researched, and exhibited. These collections and exhibitions represent the past interests of the institution but also serve to define their present and future programs. In her 1991 essay “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” art historian Svetlana Alpers wrote about “the museum effect,” or the transformation of all objects on display—no matter what they are or where they’re from—into works of art. This happens because the displayed object is isolated from its original context, denied its original use, and displayed in a new context. Reflecting on Alpers and in response to the exoticizing of cultural objects, Lynne Cooke, in the catalogue for the exhibition Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, suggests, “...artists today might school museums. Too often the modern institution assumes automatically—without a self-reflexive questioning—that its primary function is to determine cultural significance. [Trockel’s] intervention suggests that it is time to step forward and scrutinize closely the artefacts we choose to put on view.” In 2014, Cooke spoke about this exhibition at KMAC during her research for her 2018 exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard
Art. There was a discussion at that time about KMAC’s ideological shift: that is, whereas craft, and by extension folk art, have traditionally been hermetic fields focused on traditional objects, KMAC aims to broaden their meanings to encompass the many principles and practices that are employed by artists working today. By that definition, “craft” means following the subjective, attentive sensibility of artists like Sarah Crowner. As a dynamic institution, KMAC Museum strives to respond to and collaborate with artists as we connect people to art. If one returns to the origin of the word museum, the Greek word mousa, meaning “muse,” we can consider another way of informing museum operations: as a source of inspiration for the artist. It is in this vein that KMAC serves its mission with artists such as Crowner and through this exhibition, Clay Bodies. On one hand, we define our program from a perceived need in the community; on the other hand, “being schooled” by an artist strengthens our programs and makes the museum more dynamic. This catalog serves as a discussion of our collaboration with the artist, a tangential representation of her work, a study of institutional display, and a survey of the ideas that inform her work, specifically in terms of ceramics. Traveling around Kentucky, looking at collections and searching for a
context, Crowner explored ideas she had begun to develop in earlier exhibitions. Crowner’s paintings consist of monochrome canvas shapes stitched together with an industrial sewing machine. The resulting bold abstractions reference a visual language closely aligned with modernism, in particular the Bauhaus aesthetic. In Clay Bodies, Crowner extends her painting practice by arranging ceramic objects (art and artifact), borrowed from collections both local and international, in KMAC’s exhibition space, exploring her ability to place seemingly fragmented objects into a new order that is both expressive and intuitive. This new context honors the original creators and acknowledges their voices. The collaboration between artist and object results in a collection redefined by the artist’s narrative. Looking at modes of museum display, Crowner’s cut-out forms and arching gestures become tables and platforms to hold works by other artists. Segments of color are painted on walls throughout the galleries like yardage of fabric prior to stitching. For Crowner’s process, the ceramic works are placed non-topologically and with formal affinities, rather than being arranged by geography or time period. Ceramic forms are shown comparatively and without hierarchy. The relationships between adjacent objects may be erotic, perverse, playful, or emotional.
The ceramic pieces selected and displayed here are borrowed from collections local and abroad combined with works from her studiomates in Brooklyn. Samples of ceramic-glaze experiments over uniquely formed clay surfaces, as well as over 200 pieces of ceramic works borrowed from the collections of Berea College, Al Shands, and artist Doyle Lane (1925–2002) whose tiles were loaned by artist and collector Jeremy Petty, grant KMAC Museum visitors insight into the inspirations for Crowner’s practice. Thank you to Ben Loveless at Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm for introducing me to Sarah’s work. Thank you also to Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York and Simon Lee Gallery, London. Finally, I would like to thank Sarah for engaging in these conversations with me. It’s been a wonderful experience. Included is an essay by Toronto-based writer and curator Brian Sholis, author of Kentucky Renaissance: The Lexington Camera Club and Its Community, 1954–1974, that was written for this exhibition. Additionally, we have included a conversation between myself and the artist that summarizes our thoughts.
Aldy Milliken KMAC Executive Director Louisville, December 2018
Tile Painting (Blue Green Terra Cotta), 2018, Sarah Crowner
Tile Painting (Yellow Terra Cotta), 2018, Sarah Crowner
FROM THE GROUND UP AN ESSAY BY BRIAN SHOLIS
In his essay “Imagination in Place,” Wendell Berry wrote that reflecting upon the relationship between the two is “most immediately obstructed by the difficulty of separating my work from my life, and the place from either.” Many consider Berry a Kentucky writer, but he would prefer being associated with Henry County or, more specifically, Lanes Landing, the hundred-acre farm he has lived on and worked since 1965. To the farmer, the idea of Kentucky is, in some sense, an unhelpful abstraction. As Berry noted, “when one passes from any abstract order … to the daily life and work of one’s own farm, one passes from a relative simplicity into a complexity that is irreducible.” That complexity fuels creativity—in Berry’s case, decades of celebrated fiction about the imagined town of Port William, its hundred-odd residents, and some farms in its vicinity. Berry’s words apply equally to ceramics, another arena in which imagination meets place. Clay, in its purest form, is composed of alumina (bauxite), silica (sand), and chemically bonded water. But it rarely appears in pure form; it is generally found mixed with other ingredients so that different clays have different characteristics. Like wine derived from different grapes, the clay found on one side of a ridge might be subtly different from the clay found on another. Or the differences might be profound: the red clay of the Piedmont region in North Carolina is
utterly unlike the white clay mined in Jingdezhen, China, and used for porcelain. And those who use the material know it’s about more than color: each clay also responds differently to being worked by hand or by machine; to the firing process; and to glazing or other forms of finishing. To return to Berry: “You are continually required to consider the distinct individuality of an animal or a tree, or the uniqueness of a place or a situation, and to do so you draw upon a long accumulation of experience, your own and other people’s.” So, too, with clay, in which considerations of distinct individuality are combined with lessons learned from others; inspiration drawn from aesthetic precedent; and knowledge hardwon from repeated efforts. All inform the designs one creates, whether they are considered functional objects, artworks, or some combination of the two. This exhibition is organized by artist Sarah Crowner, who is best known for evocative abstract paintings she composes by sewing together panels of painted canvas. Her work recalls forms in nature as much as it does twentieth-century models like Ellsworth Kelly and Marimekko fabrics. But in the past decade, Crowner has also designed installations of terra-cotta tiles in collaboration with the artisans at Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico. Her interest in the material
drives Clay Bodies, which brings together more than one hundred and fifty objects made by dozens of potters, ceramicists, and artists who worked all over the world. What draws these disparate pieces together is their locality: they come from California, where Crowner was raised and then attended university; from the studio complex in Brooklyn and the ceramics factory in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she works today; and from the region around KMAC Museum. In California, before and during her time as an art student at the University of California–Santa Cruz, Crowner was exposed to a generation of ceramicists whose experiments had passed into folklore. Working from the 1950s onward, and especially during the ’60s and ’70s, artists like Peter Voulkos and John Mason created an expressive, expansive vision of ceramics. Voulkos’s work was often compared to Abstract Expressionist painting—an association he encouraged in part through his use of bright glazes and epoxy-based paint. Though he could work on a wheel, around this time Voulkos also used an industrial dough mixer, a factory-scale kiln, and powerful humidifiers to make monumental ceramic forms. He and Mason shared the studio that housed these tools, and Mason’s own experiments, though more formally chaste, also pushed the technical limits of clay and relied on novel firing techniques.
He created “vertical sculptures”; made works that weighed more than a ton; and developed an interest in mathematics and in using firebricks (the ceramic blocks used to build kilns) to create large-scale installations. Other artists, like Ron Nagle and Ken Price, circled in their orbit and built their own reputations—Nagle as an artist who packs contrasting details into diminutive forms and Price as someone whose use of color and surface texture is nearly unmatched. The interest of younger artists, sculptor Ricky Swallow in particular, have brought to wider attention the works of lesserknown peers like Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Michael Frimkess, and Peter Shire, each of whom infused the ceramics tradition with other aspects of the culture. Crowner is particularly fascinated by Doyle Lane, an African-American ceramicist who arrived in Los Angeles during the 1950s. After an early period spent making functional vessels, Lane began making large, flat ceramic sculptures that hung on the wall like three-dimensional murals. These “clay paintings” were meant to be seen outside—and could be as large as eighteen feet across. As Lane once noted, “Why not take paintings out of doors where one might sit and watch the changing play of sunshine on the glazes, and thus have changes of mood during the day?”
Critical histories have explored the complicated gender and racial dynamics of the California studioceramics scene, broadening and enriching the stories handed down to Crowner when she was younger and first exploring the medium. Those lessons have filtered into her own work in ceramics, both undertaken at Cerámica Suro and in her Brooklyn studio. The latter space is part of a complex she shares with other artists and which includes a ceramics workshop on the lower level of one building. Ester Kislin is a younger artist whose ceramic pieces, often brightly colored or printed with digital transfers, are sometimes worked into mixed-media installations. Cassandra MacLeod, like Crowner, is known primarily as a painter, though one who, again like Crowner, incorporates unconventional techniques in the construction of her images. The three of them, and occasionally others, use the basement studio as a place of collective exploration and play. They make functional vessels, fabricate tiles, and create sculptures. Led by Kislin’s particular expertise, what characterizes their individual and shared work is a focus on glazing—on creating colors, glossy or matte finishes, and surface textures. “Sometimes the glazes come out beautifully, spectacularly,” Crowner has said, and “sometimes they come out in unexpected, unpleasant ways. The attitude is always ‘Let’s see.’” MacLeod’s glazes
often end up mimicking the look of her thinly applied oil paint. Under Kislin’s guidance, they are building an archive of small sculptural glaze tests that serves as both teaching resource and testament to their collective labor. Some of the third group of objects in the show, drawn from Kentucky, are part of a teaching archive at Berea College. Founded in the mid-nineteenth century as a liberal-minded institution, for more than a century it has offered free tuition and work opportunities for students. A Ceramic Apprenticeship program is part of both the college’s art department and its Student Craft Industries, through which their creations are sold to benefit the university (and, by extension, its educational programs). This hybrid approach is reflected, as well, in the difficulty we have today deciding whether to honor the objects’ artfulness or their usefulness. After touring Berea and other regional archives, Crowner noted the fact that some jugs, pots, dishes, and other ceramic items from earlier eras are “hands-on” artifacts and other items, despite being similar, are “hands-off” artworks. Berea College’s efforts are one part of a rich ceramics tradition in central Kentucky, one that stretches back generations to the mid-nineteenth-century. The fortunes of pottery companies like Bybee, Waco, Louisville Pottery (now Louisville Stoneware), and dozens of smaller
operations waxed and waned across the decades, and changing consumer needs influenced what they created. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they crafted functional objects for everyday use. After the Great Depression, as mass-produced items fulfilled many Americans’ basic needs, they turned to more self-consciously artful designs and finishes. They often remained family-owned and -operated businesses. As scholar Jerry Nicholas put it, “With this, you’re talking a very small-scale production. This is Southern, homegrown, real stuff versus factory-produced stuff…. This is true Kentucky art, made of our natural resources and labor.” If the connections to Crowner’s life and work keep these disparate objects unified, the installation she has designed to house them brings Clay Bodies into line with her artwork. Crowner is a painter who thinks deeply about colour and form, and has conceived of the exhibition design as an expanded form of painting. The colourful walls and gracefully curving shelves echo the palette and presentation of her own artwork in galleries and museums across the world. She has said that the structures she has designed are as important to her thinking as are the objects themselves. “That’s not meant to be irreverent, or solely irreverent,” she said. “The show exists between reverence and irreverence. I love and appreciate these objects.
I didn’t pick them haphazardly.” But she is an artist and Clay Bodies is a creative, not a scholarly, endeavour. Is this, therefore, a solo exhibition, a curated exhibition, or a creative self-portrait? Perhaps it’s best not to draw such distinctions. In the same way Wendell Berry suggests you cannot separate imagination and place, perhaps you cannot sever the link between an art practice and an artist’s other creative pursuits. Or, for that matter, between an art practice and the artist’s life. You don’t have to know the biography to appreciate the art, just as you don’t have to know the histories and traditions represented in Clay Bodies, but you also cannot fully understand it without that knowledge. As Peter Voulkos once said, of ceramic traditions, “Everything’s related ever since the universe started. Time passes. Things happen, then they disappear. That continuous thing, that energy … not really one person. Sometimes it will peak in one person, but it’s a combination of everything around you.”
Brian Sholis Writer, curator, and author of Kentucky Renaissance: The Lexington Camera Club and Its Community, 1954–1974. He lives in Toronto.
[left to right] Wonder Woman Meets Diva, 1983, Rudy Autio; Ceramic Sketch, 2018, Cassandra MacLeod; Porcelain Salt, 19th Century, Unknown, Chinese
WHY CERAMICS?
“The greatest and most far-reaching effects in ceramics have been the new emphasis it gave to the excitement of surface qualities—texture, color, form—and to the artistic validity of spontaneous creative events during the actual working process.” –Rose Slivka, The New Ceramic Presence, 1961, reprinted in Glenn Adamson, ed., Craft Reader, 2010.
A CONVERSATION WITH SARAH CROWNER AND ALDY MILLIKEN Aldy Milliken “Multimedia artist” is a common moniker for the contemporary artist not wanting to be defined by any particular medium. You’re digging deeper into the ways in which ceramic forms represent your personal narrative, but you are also exploring your relationship to the material itself: a lump of clay that you mold, shape, color, and, then, like an alchemist, use to create a new and interesting object. There is a sense of discovery when clay works are seen for the first time after firing in the kiln. You’re taking liberties in Clay Bodies by orchestrating new and personal contexts for extant pieces. You attribute your work in ceramics as influencing your work as a painter. This show could also be a natural response to the economic and social forces influencing how your work is perceived and understood. With the choice of showing primarily ceramic forms bringing an emphasis to the potter, laborer, and craft person, is this a time for you to evaluate painting again?create different
[opposite] Set of 4 Cups, 1995, Gerard Ferrari; Tile, 1960, Unknown, Pakistani; White Horse Wild Woman, 1983, Rudy Autio
Sarah Crowner In order to find meaning and purpose as a painter, I ended up quitting painting (after many years) and tried a new medium for me, clay. Ceramics was the perfect pause, the perfect experiment, because I was able to learn a technique and work in a medium I was completely unfamiliar with. I wasn’t thinking about an end game, I mostly wanted to discover a new process. I enjoyed working with my hands, getting them dirty. I was surprised that building by hand with clay brought me back to painting. Yet the connection is obvious: now my paintings are hand-built objects, too, created three-dimensionally (cut and sewn) using so-called “craft” techniques. I now think there is so much for me to say within this language. I am excited to think about new formats for painting—especially with regard to architecture, and painting in three-dimensional space. Or, painting as it relates to time and duration—on the stage and in performance. I have recently made set designs and backdrops, for theatrical performances (ballet, opera). The painted backdrops, for example, create different meanings when viewed by an audience alongside music, dance, or other activities happening in front of them. I prefer thinking about painting in its expanded field, so to speak. Ceramics led me away from and back into painting, but now I operate in a more scaled-up mode. The definition of painting has now been “stretched,” in a way. [opposite] Untitled, 2018, Cassandra MacLeod
AM You talk about an admiration for clay’s ability to slow down your process, to encourage you to engage with its own properties. Your work is, by nature, a process of cutting, selecting, sewing, and restretching. Clay pieces respond to glazes in mysterious ways, freeing the maker to be more experimental. I am thinking of Doyle Lane; our show includes more than seven hundred hand-built Lane tiles brought from California on loan from artist and collector Jeremy Petty. The surfaces and colors are so rich and tactile that one views them as small paintings. You have placed them in a display that’s a collaboration with artist Julian Hoeber. It must be so satisfying to see these pieces out of storage.
[clockwise from left] Sliced Red and Blue (New Weed) 2, 2017, Sarah Crowner; Untitled, n.d., Betty Woodman; Reproduction of Persian Architectural Tile, 1977, Unknown, Islamic; Minotaure, n.d., Pablo Picasso; Collection of tiles, n.d., Doyle Lane; Custom tables by Julian Hoeber
SC The exciting part of the Doyle Lane installation was arranging his tiles. And, yes, unpacking the tiles was exciting. Julian, who lives in Los Angeles, designed a special viewing table for the tiles with a kind of “pitched roof” effect, so that two rectangular planes face away from each other. It’s as if two paintings lean on either side of this table, offering two autonomous vantage points on the tiles. As there are blues, reds, yellows, and other glaze colors on his variously shaped tiles, my “collaboration” will be as arranger of color and shape. Each tile is slightly different—all are six inches long, but they are one, three, or four inches wide—and there are inconsistencies in the glaze dripping, so none quite
[detail] Collection of tiles, n.d., Doyle Lane; Custom tables by Julian Hoeber
perfectly line up with the next. I learned about Lane through Julian, and then more research led me to Clay Paintings, artist Ricky Swallow’s 2014 book. Swallow’s is a super-inspiring essay that discusses not only the context in which Lane worked, but also technical information about his large-scale tile walls. The major tile work that Swallow references was hung at the Huntington Library in Pasadena in 2015, which I was able to visit. The curator there, Morgan MacLean, schooled me on the intricacies of transporting and hanging Red Tile Mural (1964), which measures eight by seventeen feet. That knowledge helped me figure out how to hang a one-ton terra-cotta tile wall at MASS MoCA a year later.
AM You have mentioned ceramic works representing an opportunity for quicker material feedback and immediacy. Your studio has a collaborative social space that adjoins other studios, one of them being an extensive ceramic studio. In this exhibition, you included test clay samples from your studiomates that appear to be mini-sculptures. These forms are functional in that they convey useful information about clays and glazes for future firings. They form a teaching archive. The tile paintings are also obvious references to functional objects, though you also use them for public installations, such as those you created at MASS MoCA in 2016 and at the Carnegie International in 2018. Can you speak about your tile paintings in the show? SC The tile paintings are a literal bridge between painting and architecture. They are about building color, building form, about employing the techniques of a builder. My very first thought, before I began working with tiles, was, “what if a painting could be walked on?” Or, “what if a painting could be functional?” This led me to The Wave (2014), my first architectural installation with glazed terra-cotta tiles. My tiles are a different form of hard-edge geometric painting—there is color, variation, gesture, and line over space. After installing a few of these architectural platforms and walls, I decided to rewind and take these objects back into the picture
plane, put them in frames, and hang them on a vertical wall, as a painting would be hung. It’s interesting to me how they suddenly become “hands-off” when they engage the language of painting. The tile painting is seen as precious, fragile. When the tiles are hanging as a “wall,” or are a “floor,” people immediately feel free to touch them. AM In August 2017, we toured Western and Central Kentucky. Driving into Eastern Kentucky, specifically Hindman, you’ll encounter the Appalachian Artisans Center. It has quite a workshop, with scores of mandolins and guitars strewn on benches and work tables in differing stages of completion. There we had an interesting conversation with artist-in-residence and instrument maker Doug Naselroad about art, artifacts, and craft that connected to Arthur Danto’s definition of craft in his 1988 essay “Artifact and Art.” Danto wrote, “Artifacts have a primary status of tools, of instruments or at least of objects of use. (The contemporary concept of craft builds upon this in the sense that craft-persons produce things that primarily have uses, like pots and dishes and quilts and glassware.)” In a 2008 reflection, Danto seems to dial it back and also seems to agree with Cooke and Alpers: “It would be awkward to insist that art and artifact are exclusive terms.” He continues to describe two objects that on the surface appear the
same. He proposes that the context in which artists make the work and how the work is interpreted defines whether or not the work is a piece of art. This brings me back to the show, in which you’re looking at these ideas by working with historical objects (and acknowledge your subjectivity and intuition in the process). In the context of Clay Bodies, are these objects works of art, historical and personal references, or functional objects? Does your application and inclusion of these works supersede their makers’ original intention and their original uses? SC The thing about ceramics is that you always want to handle them. The tactile impulse in ceramics is stronger than with other types of art, at least to me. If I see a stoneware mug in a pottery shop I have to pick it up. If I see a ceramic sculpture by Ken Price, for example, I also want to touch it! But, sadly, one is not allowed to touch the art. One of my favorite things about my tile works is that people are finally allowed to touch the art—not only that, they can even walk on it. So, with this KMAC installation, I wanted to put aside the distinction between art and artifact, or between art and craft, skilled or de-skilled, functional or non-functional. The objects are moving, soulful, handmade things that exist in the world regardless of their purpose. I am also hanging a painted-muslin backdrop depicting a blue sky in the largest space of the museum. It was painted by scenic [opposite] Untitled, n.d., Betty Woodman
artists in upstate New York with whom I’ve worked before. In front of the backdrop is a large wooden curved table on which many of the ceramic objects have been placed, like bodies on a stage. Most of all, I think this show represents my own curiosity. I want to pose questions to viewers. Why is this placed here or there? How does this piece feel next to that one? Why is something hanging on the wall while a similar thing rests on a shelf? How does flat wall color relate to built form in three-dimensional space? What does a porcelain teapot brought over from eighteenth-century France,
found in rural Kentucky, placed next to a contemporary artist using the same ancient medium say about history? The reactions and impulses I have may be different from those of the visitors. I feel lucky to be able to do this—to use the museum as a platform, to work and play with these objects, and, through my arrangements, to offer viewers a chance to make their own connections and judgements or find their own answers.
[left to right] Ceramic Blue Jay Teapot, n.d., Cheryl Laemmle; Roman Lamp, n.d., Unknown, Roman; Black Teapot with Mountains, 1989, Kurt Weiser; Bird Teapot, 19th Century, Unknown, Japanese; Teapot, 1982, Betty Woodman
AM At KMAC we want visitors to recognize the influence a curator has on their experience. We have previously exhibited an artist, Kenyatta Hinkle, who created her own museum as a work of art inside our museum, or artists such as Kim Kay who have housed their studio in the building. I am fascinated by how you take over the institution and its labor power: the art-handling staff made works of art according to your vision by painting the walls and making platforms in the stylistic approach you take in your canvases. You hold multiple roles and have called yourself a “conductor” of this exhibition. In the 1990s, the rise of collaborations between curators and artists represented a shift in museum practice. For example, Maria Lind, for her exhibition What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design (2000) at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, invited artist Liam Gillick to act as a “filter” on the architectural layout and the design of the exhibition. There are many other examples, for example the Lynne Cooke–Rosemarie Trockel collaboration for the show Rosemarie Trockel, A Cosmos. Such presentations underscore how successful and important collaborations can be in museums that are often reticent to work with these strategies. SC I loved the Rosemarie Trockel installation because it felt like a portrait of the artist’s brain. It included her own artworks spanning back to 1988, but also the things that
inspire her: seventeenth-century botanical illustrations, James Castle’s assemblages, Judith Scott’s wrapped-yarn sculptures, and drawings by orangutans, among other things. It was extremely intimate, yet somehow it was also about the whole universe, an imagined world, a space of possibility. A personal “cosmos,” as Cooke puts it. It was a meditation on things handmade, things found, a kind of universe-within-a-museum. I like this metaphor, which she writes about, a universe within a museum. Here, in my case, I was thinking about a selective universe of clay bodies. AM The exhibition Sarah Crowner/Tutsi Baskets in Stockholm featured a painted blue wall that presented twenty Tutsi baskets on small shelves. You also designed a bench for that exhibition. Working in space and on display strategies has always been important for you as an artist. While previous generations of artists have shied away from these references, you and many of your peers are working directly with forms that are functional as well as aesthetic. SC I think about the body as it relates to artworks, and here the title Clay Bodies becomes more clear—bodies made of clay, human bodies moving around each other, or around clay bodies. The platforms I have designed with tile and out of wood are meant to encourage awareness
in the viewer, an attention to how we coexist with art in a specific environment. How does it feel to stand on a curved wood platform rather than on cold, hard concrete? The bench you refer to was a particular geometric shape; how then does one read the painting in front of this bench? Does it change one’s opinion, one’s feeling of the artwork? In that case, the bench’s shape directly referenced the angles in the sewn blue
paintings. Are you sitting in the painting? The curved table and shelves in our show do that, too—especially the big table with the cutout curve. I did not want the many small objects resting on this table to get lost. So I designed the cutout area in which one’s body could kind of enter the table and get a closer look at what’s on it. Can we say we not only look at art but we feel it with our bodies?
“For the historian, theorist, or critic who is interested in the problem of craft, the challenge is not to subject every crafted object to an equivalent degree of analysis, but rather to identify and do justice to the reality of craft’s position within modern culture. Above all, this means resisting the impulse unthinkingly to celebrate craft in all its manifestations. Thinking through craft is a useful exercise, and never more so than when it creates uncertainty.” –Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft, 2007.
Glaze Archive, 2017–2018, Ester Kislin
AM We have been sharing Glenn Adamson’s Thinking Through Craft and specifically the paragraphs in which he proposes that craft can challenge and provide problems that one thinks through. We, in the museum, see “craft” more as a verb, a process that helps artists explore ideas. Artists choose different media and discover possibilities within them. We say: Art is the Big Idea and Craft is the Process. For you, is craft a verb, a noun, or both? SC Craft is a means to an end, but it can also be a means as an end. It’s a technique, a process. That can be all that’s needed, a way of getting from Point A to Point B. With my sewn paintings, the work is not about the sewing techniques I use; instead, sewing is a practical way of joining two bodies of painted color. Sewing makes more sense to me than glueing, or taping, shapes. I don’t think there is an answer to your question, really. But I do like what Adamson says about uncertainty. Just last week I went down to the ceramics studio here and found that the big platter I was working on had shattered after drying too quickly. It was too thin and I think I put too much thick white slip over it. Instead of throwing it away, I broke it into smaller pieces and fired those, and they, in turn, led me to another idea about fragments. For me, the best lesson of ceramics is that mistakes can be an unexpected bonus. And when you don’t really know what you’re doing, when you don’t quite have the skills,
you never know what will happen. If you think about it, that curiosity, that uncertainty, that surprise are the most appealing things. AM The exhibition is also about Kentucky, KMAC, and your interpretation of “place.” What benefits and challenges did you face in coming up with an exhibition at KMAC? SC When I was first asked to make an exhibition at KMAC, I thought it was important to get to know Louisville and Kentucky. I took a road trip with you on which we drove into deep Appalachia and met all kinds of makers, archivists, and musicians. We landed at Berea College, which has a teaching archive of clay objects, functional and non functional, we could access and work with. We visited the collection of Al Shands, which features ceramic artworks from the 1980s among much more, and he generously lent objects to the exhibition. The biggest challenge was choosing what medium to work with; I needed to narrow down all that I learned on that trip. Once I decided on ceramics, it took on a life of its own very quickly. Kentucky’s strong craft legacy was a huge benefit, as there is a wealth of material and histories to consider working with. It made me think of the meaning of local, not literally but metaphorically. My “local” is the West Coast, where I grew up. I always
say I am from California even though I’ve lived in New York for twenty years. This local is about memory. That’s represented by the pieces by Doyle Lane, Peter Voulkos, and Paul Soldner. There is also the “local” where I sit right now, in Brooklyn, writing this, in my painting and ceramic studio, maybe the most intimate definition of “local.” We have fabricated tile paintings using tiles I made with a workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico—another “local” important to me—which I have arranged and assembled in Louisville. The tiles were shipped from Mexico to New York to Kentucky, then will be sent back to New York or beyond. I like thinking about those travel routes. It’s interesting to think about all the types of bodies in this small exhibition, that have moved over space and time—actual clay bodies, in different shapes, sizes, and glazes, which come from Mexico, Persia, France, Greece, Rome, Kentucky, California, New York, and beyond, but also the human bodies who made them.
Rosemarie Trockel, A Cosmos, Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Curated by Lynne Cooke. Published by Monacelli Press LLC, 2002. P. 43. 1
CHECKLIST All pieces courtesy the artist unless noted otherwise.
Backdrop Sarah Crowner 2018, Dye on muslin 10'4" x 37'8" Untitled (Oval) #373 Jun Kaneko 1987, Hand-Built and Glazed Ceramic 25" x 20 ½" x 3 ¼" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Set of 4 Cups Gerard Ferrari 1995, Ceramic 5.5" x 4" x 3" 5.75" x 5" x 4" 3.75" x 4.5" x 4.5" 6.25" x 4.5" x 3.25" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Tripod Vessel Unknown, Costa Rican c. 800 AD, Terracotta 12" x 8", mouth 4" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Tile Unknown, Pakistani 1960, Ceramic 9.5" x 8.25" x 1" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Small Bowl Unknown, Jemez n.d., Ceramic 0.75" x 1" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Libation Cup from Abydos Unknown, Egyptian 1304–525 BC, Ceramic 1.75" x 2.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection
Bowl Unknown, Chinese n.d., Ceramic 3" x 7" x 4 ¾" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Vase Unknown, Chinese 206 BC–220 AD, Ceramic 8" x 8" x 6" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection White Horse Wild Woman Rudy Autio 1983, Glazed ceramic 27 ½" x 27" x 17 ½" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Perungy Ken Price 1985, Fired and painted clay 6.25" x 6.5" x 6.5" 3.5" x 4.5" x 4.5" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Juice Cup Unknown, American, Pigeon Forge, TN 20th Century, Ceramic 2.25" x 2.75" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Eared Cooking Pot Unknown, Mexican c. 800 AD, Earthenware 6" x 7", mouth 5.25" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Vase Bruce Gholson 1982, Stoneware 7.25" x 3.5" x 3.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection
Babed Drah Juglet Unknown, Israeli c. 3500 BC, Ceramic 2.75" x 2.25" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection
Oil Lamp Unknown, Palestinian 550–600 BC, Ceramic 2" x 5.25" x 5.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection
Momo Toshiko Takaezu 2000, Stoneware 16.25" x 10.5" x 10.5" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands
Ceramic Sketch Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable
Bowl David Leach 1978, Porcelain 4" x 10" x 10" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Tile Unknown, Pakistani 1960, Ceramic 9 ½" x 8 ¼" x 1" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Bowl Unknown, Japanese n.d., Ceramic 4.5" x 6.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Untitled Suzanne Stephenson 1983, Glazed ceramic 13.5" x 20" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Tile Unknown, Pakistani 1960, Ceramic 9.5" x 8.25" x 1" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection
Babed Drah Burial Cave Bowl Unknown, Palestinian c. 3500 BC, Ceramic 2.5" x 3.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Small Pot Unknown, Native American 20th Century, Ceramic 2.5", mouth 2" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Punch Bowl Walter Hyleck 1978, Ceramic 11.5" x 14.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Punch Bowl Ladle Walter Hyleck 1978, Ceramic 14.5" x 5" x 8" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Palette Sarah Crowner 2017, Watercolor on ceramic tile 8" x 8" Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable
Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable
Ceramic Sketch Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed Ceramic Dimensions variable
Wonder Woman Meets Diva Rudy Autio 1983, Glazed Ceramic 13" x 12.5" x 7.5" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands
Ceramic Sketch Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable
Ceramic Sketch Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Ceramic Sketch Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Porcelain Salt Unknown, Chinese 19th Century, Porcelain 1" x 2", 5 bowls Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Bowl Mary Saxon n.d., Ceramic 5" x 5.5", mouth 3" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Swan Dipper Unknown, Laguna n.d., Ceramic 3.25" x 2.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Ceramic Sketch Sarah Crowner 2017, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Palette Sarah Crowner 2017, Watercolor on ceramic tile 8" x 8"
White Clay Bowl Unknown, Hopi n.d., Ceramic 3.5", mouth 5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Pottery Fragment Unknown, Greek 3rd Century BC, Ceramic 1.5" x 2.25" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Wine Bowl Unknown, Chinese n.d., Ceramic 2.5" x 2.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Bowl Unknown, Chinese n.d., Ceramic 2" x 4.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Ceramic Sketch Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Sake Cup Unknown, Japanese 20th Century, Ceramic 1.25" x 1.75" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Bowl Unknown, Native American n.d., Ceramic 2.25", mouth 1.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection
Tiny Bowl Unknown, Acoma n.d., Earthenware 1.5", mouth 1.5" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Duel-Spouted Vase Unknown, Native American n.d., Earthenware 5.5" x 6" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection White Wedgewood Bowl Unknown, English 18th Century, Ceramic 4.5" x 8.25" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Footed Bowl Beatrice Wood 1983, Metallic-glazed ceramic 8" x 15.5" x 15.25" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Tile Unknown, Pakistani 1960, Ceramic 9.5" x 8.25" x 1" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Craft Sarah Crowner 2007, Oil paint and collage on paper 14" x 17" 14t Ester Kislin 2018, Glazed ceramic 11.5" x 13" Untitled Graham Marks 1984, Earthenware 32 ½" x 32" x 31" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Surrounding the Void Ken Price 1988, Acrylic on ceramic 11 ¼" x 16" x 13" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands
Untitled Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic 3 ½" x 8 ¾" x 8" Bowl, 20th Century Unknown, Santa Clara Ceramic 2", mouth 3 ¼" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Small Bowl Unknown, Greek n.d., Ceramic 1 ½" x 2 ¾" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Bowl Unknown, Santa Clara 20th Century, Ceramic 3", mouth 2 ½" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Pedestal Piece Paul Soldner 1980s, Terracotta 18" x 21" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Bowl with Scalloped Edge Unknown, Santa Clara 20th Century, Ceramic 2 ½" x 6" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Vessel Paul Soldner 1980s, Low-temperature, salt fired clay 22" x 24" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Pisces Ester Kislin 2018, Glazed ceramic 16" x 13 ½" Raspberry Ester Kislin 2018, Glazed ceramic 11" x 13"
Stack Peter Voulkos 1981, Ceramic 36 ½" x 20" x 20" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Ceramic Blue Jay Teapot Cheryl Laemmle n.d., Glazed and painted ceramic 16" x 15 ¾" x 7" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Roman Lamp Unknown, Roman n.d., Ceramic 2 ¼" x 4 ½" x 2 ½" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Black Teapot with Mountains Kurt Weiser 1989, Porcelain 11" x 13" x 4.5" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Bird Teapot Unknown, Japanese 19th Century, Ceramic 3.5" x 4.25" x 2.75" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Teapot Betty Woodman 1982, Terracotta 10" x 8.5" x 6.5" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Sliced Red and Blue (New Weed) 2 Sarah Crowner 2017, Acrylic on canvas, sewn 60" x 65" x 1.5" Untitled Betty Woodman n.d., Glazed earthenware 32" x 17.75" x 6.25" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands
Reproduction of Persian Architectural Tile Unknown, Islamic 1977, Ceramic 11.25"x 11.25" x 1.25" Courtesy Berea College Art Collection Minotaure Pablo Picasso n.d., Glazed ceramic 13" x 12.5" x 7.5" Courtesy Collection Al and Mary Shands Collection of Tiles Doyle Lane, 1925–2002 n.d., Ceramic Custom tables by Julian Hoeber Dimensions variable Courtesy Jeremy Petty Untitled Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic 4" x 33" x 20" Untitled Cassandra MacLeod 2018, Glazed ceramic 5" x 30" x 23" Glaze Archive Ester Kislin 2017–2018, Glazed ceramic Dimensions variable Curtains (Vidas Perfectas) Sarah Crowner 2012, Painted and raw linen, sewn Dimensions variable Tile Painting (Blue Green Terra Cotta) Sarah Crowner 2018, Glazed terracotta tiles, grout 60" x 48" x 2.5" Tile Painting (Yellow Terra Cotta) Sarah Crowner 2018, Glazed terracotta tiles, grout 60" x 48" x 2.5"
Education guides can be accessed & downloaded from the museum website, KMACmuseum.org UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS The Hot Seat, presenting a look at the chair as a central object in contemporary artistic practice. April 26–August 11, 2019 MUSEUM Tuesday—Saturday 10a until 6p Sunday 10a until 5p