Northern Clay Center: Four McKnight Artists 2013

Northern Clay Center_ Four McKnight Artists_ 2011 McKnight Residency recipients: Edith Garcia and Janet Williams_ 2012 McKnight Fellowship recipients: Brian Boldon and Ursula Hargens_

Northern Clay Center_ Four McKnight Artists_ 2011 McKnight Residency recipients: Edith Garcia and Janet Williams_ 2012 McKnight Fellowship recipients: Brian Boldon and Ursula Hargens_

As a ceramics instructor at the University of Alaska in the early-1990s, Brian Boldon turned to photography as source material. He was drawn to the idea of using photographic images on clay and glass and, by the time he moved to East Lansing in 1996 to teach at Michigan State University, he was creating increasingly complex, hybrid installations that synthesized in various combinations all three media. Since moving to Minneapolis in 2008, Boldon has continued to explore strategies to integrate the ancient medium of clay into our technologydrenched 21st century. Also, like innumerable contemporary artists, he is interested in how images are constructed and distributed in a culture inundated with images.

Underlying these investigations was a more existential subtext. Boldon wondered about creativity’s relationship to technology. Does technology make an artist more or less creative?

Does technology enhance or stifle creative impulses? Or is it simply a different approach to the same artistic problems? The relationship between the two is complex and abstract at best, but as Boldon conveys, during a February 2013 studio conversation, technology, in fact, plays a positive role in creativity. “I believe technology is the highest level of creative thought,” he concludes. “It amplifies our biological hardware and technology can reveal our utmost creativity.”

Taking his investigations to the next conceptual level, Boldon wondered if he could create a “fused language of object and image” where ceramics would be the physical support.

“I’m exploring ceramic’s potential to carry imagery, successfully, placing it somewhere between sculpture and painting,” he explained.

“I’m repurposing the discipline of ceramics with digital imagery and through spatial relationships.

My work re-imagines ceramic’s [traditional] experience with digital technology.”

Indeed, Boldon’s new mixed-media installation, The Interval Between Two Days, stands like a sentinel at the nascent crossroads of ceramics and digital technology. Created from stoneware, digital ceramic prints, steel, aluminum, and rubber, Interval consists of two discrete, but related, sculptural elements that have been glazed with digital images. In a visual call and response, the two coalesce to create a single harmonic environment in a gallery painted a deep midnight blue. Here, Boldon realized his conceptual desire to merge 2-D digital imagery with 3-D ceramic form — a “fused language of object and image.” Ironically, he chose images drawn not from technology, but rather from the classic, art historical genre of landscape — in this case digital images of cattails and wild rice.

At its core, Interval is an intensely processdriven work with an industrial edge that counters its poetic subject matter. The cattails sculpture comprises five individual column-like structures evenly spaced. Each column consists of seventeen vertical elements constructed from tall, steel pipes that are welded to a

rectangular base and threaded with multipleglazed stoneware extrusions. The identically shaped rectangular extrusions, suggesting a child’s building blocks, are covered with a porcelain slip, bisque fired, and then fired again with a clear glaze. Subsequently, Boldon affixed the 850 extrusions with sections of the cattail landscape image using an updated version of the 18th century English transfer-print process.

The extrusions were then fired front and back, making four firings for each. The result of this insanely detailed process is a sculpture in the round that prompts the viewer to move through and around its elements, visually and physically mingling with the spiky cattails.

Like a fragmented 3-D mural, the cattail imagery merges into the solid, glazed palette of the deep blue sky, above, and the dark ground, below. Its 360-degree viewing experience, offered by the perforated columns, creates a shimmering, almost prismatic effect. Similarly, the wild rice image is fractured, except its orientation is horizontal, with its ceramic sculptural support suggesting a low, serpentine fence. Circumnavigating the piece, the viewer gazes through its rows comprising 144 horizontal, louvered elements, visually merging with the sinewy wild rice.

Boldon arrived at this complex project because he wanted to transform the 3-D experience of reality — being outdoors — into a 2-D format, the digital image, and then transform that image back into the 3-D format of his mixed-media ceramic installations. Armed with multiple flashlights and a camera mounted on a tripod, he headed outdoors at dusk at his northern Wisconsin cabin. There he “perceived the 3-D world in form and color before it slipped into a 2-D environment of silhouettes and shapes and, then, ultimately into blackness.” Using extended exposure times of up to two minutes, Boldon took hundreds of images as he waved flashlights through the night air for illumination. “I wanted to explore how digital technology could recapture the depth-of-field of the physical world—and use it in my work as a 3-D experience,” he explains.

Over the millennia, monarchies, societies, and civilizations have created decorative murals made of ceramic tile and mosaic. Variously depicting geometric patterns or representational images, and created for both secular and religious purposes, such murals are revealing records of the time and of the people who created them.

In his quest, Boldon has moved one step further, taking the traditional mural format from two dimensions into three. As he describes it, The Interval Between Two Days is “really about mixing images and materials in space. That’s all.” More significantly, Boldon has used technology to expand ceramics’ purview in the 21st century art world, creating a compelling installation that exploits clay’s attributes with provocative results.

Ultimately, The Interval Between Two Days is a participatory and theatrical environment, one where the cattails and wild rice are palpable protagonists in our line of vision.

Brian Boldon, The Interval Between Two Days (detail), 2013, stoneware, digital ceramic prints, steel, aluminum, rubber, installation dimensions variable

By Mason Riddle

2012 McKnight Fellowship recipient:

Brian Boldon_

02_03

Too often, we are fascinated by disturbing ideas and events. Instinctively, we desire to know more. We do not look away, even as we become increasingly uneasy. And so it is with the figurative work of London-based ceramist Edith Garcia.

Dark and brooding, her cast of characters compel us to enter their carefully conceived world, an eerily familiar tableaux, but somehow a forbidden garden. Intuitively, we are immersed, even though we struggle to understand. Like voyeurs, we observe Garcia’s figures grapple with issues that variously beset us all — communication (or lack thereof), personal identity, sexuality, anger, memory, love, and violence — issues that coalesce into “the human condition.” “The figure in art has the strength to communicate in a physical and subconscious manner,” states Garcia. “It holds a unique ability to communicate our ideas and emotions.”

Garcia’s installations are tightly choreographed scenarios that expand across a wall or trail onto the floor. Consisting of two formal types, her current work includes expressive 3-dimensional, hand-built earthenware figures that are tempered by the economy of her 2-dimensional forms, hand-cut from porcelain. The latter recall traditional stencil patterns, or Kara Walker’s cutpaper silhouettes, and are often attached to one another by metal fasteners. These 2-dimensional “drawings in clay,” or “drawing as sculptures,” emphasize the importance of drawing in Garcia’s artistic practice.

Critically, Garcia’s figures are ill-proportioned and misshapen. Largely androgynous, with heads too large and flat, the figures’ limbs may taper into stumps, or be nonexistent. Feet are wide and dangle. Their eyes routinely gaze through us.

Garcia’s purposely narrow palette of black, white, and a vivid vermillion magnifies the physical — and psychological — impact of her figures. “The minimal palette comes from wanting to create a cohesive body of work — at times I have used colour as a metaphor for the human body,” she explains.

“Here, I was interested in creating works that had a strong visual impact and a dialogue with one another across the gallery space.”

In Garcia’s 2012 installation, Constant, Same & Forever, two hooded (or is it hair?) figures gaze beyond us. Each has drawn one arm across its torso in a classic protective gesture. The wrist and neck of one, whose shirt bears an image of a skull, appears stained with blood; the other arm is severed at the elbow. Adjacent is a constellation of Garcia’s clay drawings that symbolize the figures’ thoughts. Although side-by-side, the two are distant and uncommunicative.

More stark is the 2013 work, One Will Devour the Other, where two adjacent figures are dressed similarly in red, white, and black. The arms of one hooded figure are only a mere suggestion and, one quickly assesses that the shrouded figure on the left, wearing the same red booties and black leggings, may have neither head nor arms. Although minimal in form and palette, the psychological gulf separating the two is palpable and amplified by their stunted forms. “Creating a dialogue has the most impact when it is an intimate conversation between two figures — the artwork — and the viewer,” states Garcia.

Garcia’s work also conveys her ongoing exploration of what is the least amount of visual information required to identify a form as a figure. “As humans we have the ability to visually complete an artwork or figure — when we see it,” she states. “It is not necessary to have all or the entire figure to get an idea or concept across to viewers.” (Her Masters thesis at the Royal College of Art, London, was titled “The Vanishing Point of the Human Form in Ceramic Sculpture.”)

More poetic is the 2012 installation titled The First Sun that features a small female figure who kneels on a curved shelf, both glazed black, that projects from the wall. Her arms are outstretched as if in a position of receiving. Her complex thoughts are visualized above in clusters of white clay drawings. Her quest is to find a quiet, interior space, removed from her jumble of worldly thoughts.

Garcia first recognized the human figure’s symbolic potential when, as a young teenager, she visited the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. She was deeply attracted to the ancient Aztec and Mayan sculpture made from clay and stone, with their mix of human and animal forms. Particularly resonate were the terracotta sculptures of Tlaloc (Rain God) and Coatlicue (Earth Goddess of Life and Death), whose visual and spiritual power she still recalls.

“Even after hundreds of years, they stand with such authority,” she has written. “This made me realize how these figures, rooted in traditional forms and myths, can speak to us today.”

In the end, Garcia is an intuitive storyteller of the “human condition.” No matter how dark or opaque their stories, her figures draw us in. Theirs are not literal accounts, but rather evocative tales that trigger our memories and prompt us to reflect more deeply about ourselves. At their best, Garcia's works are haunting, ones that flicker through our thoughts and embody our own travails.

Edith Garcia, Constant, Same and Forever (detail), 2012, handbuilt earthenware sculptures, hand-cut porcelain, fasteners, vinyl spacers, inks, red powdered pigments, graphite, 9’ x 5.25’ x 3’

By Mason Riddle

2011 McKnight Residency recipient:

Edith Garcia_

04_05

Over the last year, with her McKnight Fellowship in hand, Twin Cities-based ceramist Ursula Hargens redirected her artistic practice from the pedestal to the wall. Not that she has retreated from making expressive earthenware pots embellished with bold, floral patterns in saturated hues. She did not. Rather, Hargens expanded her oeuvre to include conceptually based projects that investigate ceramic’s potential to translate personal ideas and experiences into clay and glaze. More cerebral and stylistically minimal than her bold, functional ware, Hargens’ recent wallmounted installations have sprung from a desire to develop a new visual language of form and color. “I’ve been investigating ways to create an artistic language or a series of related languages,” she explains. “I have used symbols such as numbers or the letters of my name to do so.”

Early on in her artistic practice, after receiving a degree in Russian Language and Literature, Hargens carefully researched ceramic’s expansive history, mining its endless manifestations over millennia and across continents. She embraced the maxim that “material is content” and believed that “materials have meaning and when an artist chooses a particular material, he/she is choosing what their work is about.” While in graduate school at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2000, Hargens made the critical decision to swap out working with high-fire porcelain to work with the more rustic, low-fire earthenware. The two clay bodies are radically different in color, texture, and plasticity, and earthenware’s vivid, polychrome glazes seduced her. Equally intriguing was earthenware’s Byzantine history. Over the centuries, it had been the ceramics of choice by both nobility and commoners. “Earthenware moved around in the hierarchies of materials and desirability,” she explains. “Its value shifted over time.” Later, Hargens explored ways to make earthenware pots where “form is surface and surface is form” in a desire to conflate the two into a unified aesthetic language where both hold equal status.

In the early 2000s, Hargens had a personal revelation now critical to her artistic practice. She is a color-grapheme synesthete — she perceives letters and numbers as inherently colored. Put another way, Hargens involuntarily associates letters and numbers with specific colors. In response to this physiological condition, she developed a distinctive palette that corresponds to her unique color vision, an aesthetic choice that figures prominently in her current installation work.

In 2010, Hargens added earthenware tiles to her repertoire of functional forms that are elaborated with dense, tapestry-like passages of flowers interspersed with insects. In Grapheme, Hargens neatly carved out the letter U (the first letter of her name) from the tile’s center to create a static, negative space within the active, decorative

scheme of polychrome flowers. In other works, multiple tiles are puzzled together into large murals whose flower-laden surfaces are defined by cutout forms or protruding edges.

Hargens gives physical presence to her name in I Am Ursula, spelling out the letters using her synesthetic palette: U = pink, R = red, S = orangeyellow, U = pink, L = deep blue, and A = aqua/ turquoise. Before the bold, chunky letters, stands a tall, trophy-like jar whose shape reflects the “form-language” of her functional work. Glazed in the same hues, I Am Ursula is a succinct example of her synesthetic palette in practice.

Hargens takes her synesthesia a conceptual step further in two distinct, but related, pieces titled P is for Pink and R is for Red. In the former, the alphabet’s 26 letters and the 10 numerals, 0–9, are mounted in a grid pattern and glazed in the colors in which she perceives them. In the latter, 36 small tiles, recalling Pantone color chips, are also mounted in a grid. Divided into two parts, a tile’s upper section is glazed to correspond to the letter or number in P is for Pink and its lower section is inscribed with the literal glaze notation.

Mash-up comprises eight large ceramic letters glazed in her synesthetic palette. Here, Hargens plays with how one letter, or symbol, formally elides into another by the addition or subtraction of an element. If a red “leg” is attached to a pink P, the letter transforms into an R. Similarly, a lilac-hued F is transformed into the letter E with the addition of a third bar in pale green at the bottom.

Notably, Hargens’ new installations are critical signposts along her trajectory to create a unique visual language, a conceptual pursuit more complex than the idea that “material is content.” In fact, this body of work represents multiple languages that coalesce into one.

P is for Pink and R is for Red signify symbolic languages by which we navigate our daily lives.

Onto this, Hargens has layered her personal, synesthetic language of color. In turn, these two languages are layered with a third, material language of earthenware and glazes. When viewed collectively, the three comprise a larger, more comprehensive artistic language, an abstract narrative, which is at once aesthetic and autobiographical.

For Hargens, earthenware is the ideal material to devise a new artistic language of color, form, and meaning that is conceptually based, yet still stylistically decorative. Vibrant and challenging, her spare sculptural installations reinforce earthenware’s timeless and evolving legacy, one that has gone beyond traditional functional ware and decorative objects. Recalling a Phoenix, the mythological Greek bird that was cyclically reborn, earthenware, in Hargens' hands, has gained new and vital aesthetic traction in the 21st century.

Ursula Hargens, Grapheme, 2013, earthenware, 14” x 14” x 0.5”

By Mason Riddle

2012 McKnight Fellowship recipient:

Ursula Hargens_

06_07

Artists have long explored the elusive topics of identity and place, and the potential relationship of the two. How does one describe or represent identity, particularly personal identity? And just how powerful is the concept of genius loci — a sense of place — in shaping how we perceive our surroundings and ourselves?

For ceramist Janet Williams, ideas of mapping and genius loci have been central to her artistic practice and to understanding her own identity.

Leading a rather peripatetic life, Williams, a native of South Wales, UK, graduated from Goldsmith’s College in London, and in 1989, moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, to begin graduate work at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Since graduating in 1991, she has lived in such disparate places as Ann Arbor, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; Jingdezhen, China; and Vallarius, France. In 1993, she co-founded Art Farm, an artist residency program in Marquette, Nebraska, where she was co-director for more than a decade. Since 2008, she has resided in Charlotte, teaching ceramics at the University of North Carolina. “As an immigrant…maps have been my entry and guide to new territories and have often been a starting point into my investigations of place,” she has written. Each new home has deepened her understanding — physically and conceptually — of a sense of place and has provoked new ways of mapping a geographic location’s defining characteristics.

When Williams went through the naturalization process to gain United States citizenship in 2009, her creative gaze shifted from mapping the external world to mapping her own identity, an interior exploration. Simultaneously, she began to pursue how the “ancient medium of clay could be relevant in the digital world,” seeking ways to synthesize “these two different technologies, the real and the virtual” into a conceptually meaningful and aesthetically compelling body of work. Naturalization’s myriad steps of documentation led Williams to select her fingerprint — the über-symbol of identification — as her primary subject matter and prompted her to begin a series of related, mixedmedia works collectively titled, Topographies of Touch. “The touch pieces are metaphorical, more an interior place than a specific geographical location,” Williams explains. “Traveling in this terrain has allowed me to explore ‘touch’ both physically and conceptually.” Thus, her fingerprint is not only the record of her physical identity, but also a metaphor for her personal journey.

The Topographies of Touch installations are a complex mix of computer technology and actual materials. First, Williams scans her fingerprint into the computer and then, digitally manipulates it into an array of line drawings or a “map.” Using 3-D software programs, she then transforms

her fingerprint drawings into virtual 3-D forms in space, called wireframes. Finally, using a combination of computers, a CNC laser cutter and router, and working by hand, her fingerprint is translated ultimately into a small battalion of collaged prints and drawings, mixed-media reliefs, and topographic structures made of clay and wire. “Linking the cool and detached visual space of the computer screen with the engaged and connected activity of working with clay is the digit, my finger; it provides the tactility that allows access to both of these worlds,” she writes.

Williams’ most recent installations include Topography of Touch: Terrain and Topography of Touch: Hover II. Conceptually complex and labor-intensive, the installations are a provocative blend of clay and technology. Terrain consists of four vertical wall panels, each a collaged drawing, printed on vellum, that depicts her altered fingerprint. Suggesting the rocky landscapes portrayed in ancient Chinese scrolls, each panel is paired with terraced, slip-cast porcelain forms, and copper and aluminum structures. All interpretations of her fingerprint, the sculptural forms perch on shelves attached directly to the drawings. On the floor sits a large, slab-built porcelain form, sliced in two.

Topography of Touch: Hover II is a suspended expression of Williams’ fingerprint. Slender rivulets of porcelain that reproduce the lines and contours of her fingerprint are connected by monofilament wire to a ceiling-mounted, aluminum frame. Hanging freely in space like a mobile, Hover II is a quieter, less visually complicated companion piece to Terrain.

Terrain and Hover II are infused with a lyricism absent in Williams’ earlier mapping work, an unanticipated result of working with the computer. They also symbolize her aesthetic trajectory — beginning with the scan of her actual fingerprint, then altered by the computer into 2-D drawings, and altered again into the expanded 3-D virtual wireframes, only to be reverted back to 2-D collage drawings, and then made by hand into sculptural works of art. Put another way, the Topography of Touch works, in all their variations, track Williams’ investigative and artistic path from the real to the virtual and back again to the real.

In the end, each of Williams’ Topography of Touch installations can be viewed as individual elements in a larger narrative that constitutes both a map and a journey, one that is both aesthetically charged and autobiographical. In time, Williams’ opaque but associative narrative, with its beginning and end, will be resolved and become the genesis for a new place to be investigated, a new map to be created, and a new journey to be taken.

Janet Williams, Topography of Touch: Terrain (detail), 2013, inkjet print on vellum, porcelain, wire, 16’ x 8.5’ x 3’

By Mason Riddle

2011 McKnight Residency recipient:

Janet Williams_

08_09

10_11

Brian Boldon_

Edith Garcia_

Born: 11/15/1958 Milwaukee, WI

Born: 08/14/1975 Los Angeles, CA

EDUCATION_ 1988: MFA, ceramics, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI • 1982: BS, art, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI SELECTED EXHIBITIONS_ 2013: Ceramics and Print, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN • Four McKnight Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2012: Push Play, NCECA 2012 Invitational Exhibition, The Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA • Deviations From Comfort, NCECA Concurrent, Independent Exhibition, Seattle Design Center, Seattle, WA • The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, Ashville Art Museum, Ashville, NC • 2011: Crossover, Bullseye Gallery, Portland, OR • Craft Meets Technology, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY • 2011 NCECA Biennial, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL • The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI • Strange Attractors, Barr Gallery, Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN • 2010: Digital Clay, Carbondale Clay Center, Carbondale, CO • The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA • Atmosphere, James Oliver Gallery, Philadelphia, PA • 2009: Vital Culture, Gallery 13, Minneapolis, MN • 2008: Shared Journeys: American Art in China, Shanghai and Jingdezhen, China • 2007: Affect/Effect: Adventures in Image, Light and Glass, Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA • 2006: Liquid: Dataspace and Embodiment, Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center Gallery, Skaelskor, Denmark • TRANSPARENCY, Corridor Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland • Hauberg Fellowship Exhibition, Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA • 2005: Material Presence/Body Absence, Dubhe Carreno Gallery, Chicago, IL • 2004: Biomimicry: The Art of Imitating Life, NCECA 2004 Invitational Exhibition, Herron School of Art, Herron Gallery, Indianapolis, IN • 2003: Pilchuck Glass Exhibition, The Center for Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA • 2000: Twins: The Symmetry of Left and Right, Project Room, RARE Gallery, New York, NY • 1998: Visible Human, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI • 1996: Chromosome/Colored Body—Systems of Observation, Methodology, and Amusement, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK SELECTED AWARDS_ 2012: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2006: John H. Hauberg Fellowship, Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA SELECTED PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS_ 2013: as untitled, St. Paul Union Depot Train Station, St. Paul, MN • as untitled, St. Louis Park City Hall, St. Louis Park, MN • this promises water, Ralph Carr Colorado Judicial Center, Denver, CO • 2012: the shape of wind, Omnitrans Rapid Transit Station, San Bernardino, CA • 2010: porous, Transit Authority, Monticello Station Light Rail Station, Norfolk, VA • coelostat, coalesce, anatomia, coryphaeus, integer, corona, consonance and tactus, Secchia Medical Center, Grand Rapids, MI • trestle, Rothwell Student Center, University of Wisconsin–Superior, Superior, WI • 2009: expectation, Wharton Performing Arts Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI • equivalence of site, Landscape Architecture and Architecture Library, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA • rendering the familiar, Mecklenburg County Courts, Charlotte, NC • beacon and lumen, Southeast Division Police Station, Houston, TX PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE_ 2013: McKnight Fellowship Workshop, Northern Clay Center • 2012: Large Scale Ceramic Installation, January Term, 4-Week Course, Cameron Visiting Artist, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT • 2011: Digital Media and Ceramics: Workshop, Public Lecture, and BFA & MFA Critiques, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA • Digital Media, Ceramics and Glass: Workshop, Public Lecture, and BFA Critiques, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 1996–2008: Associate Professor of Art, Ceramics Coordinator, Graduate Programs Director, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI • 1990–1996: Associate Professor of Art, Ceramics Coordinator, University of Alaska, Anchorage, AK • 1989–1990: Assistant Professor of Art, Ceramics and Sculpture, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY

EDUCATION_ 2012: MPhil (Research), Royal College of Art, School of Applied Arts, London, UK • 2004: MFA, ceramics, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California • 1998: BFA, sculpture, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN • Instituto d ’Arte in Porta Romana, Florence, Italy • 1997: Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Xochimilco, UNAM, México, D.F. SELECTED EXHIBITIONS_ 2013: BCB Award 2013, British Ceramics Biennial, Stoke-on-Trent, UK • Four McKnight Artists, Northern Clay Center • Stories in the Making, Ceramic Narratives + Dialogue, Made North Gallery, Yorkshire Art Space, UK • 2012: James Tower and Contemporary Ceramic Art, Gimpel Fils, London, UK • 2011: Naughty and Nice, Lillstreet Art Center, Chicago, IL • From the Center to the Edge, Silent Auction, Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT • RCA Research Show 2011, Royal College of Art, London, UK • NCECA 2011 Biennial Exhibition, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL • 2010: The Figurative Association: Celebrating the Human Form in Clay, (Exhibition and Conference Panel) Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN • Project Space in conjunction with Andrew Lord, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK • 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Northern Clay Center • Made at The Clay Studio, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA • Ceramic Art London, Royal College of Art, (Part of Applied Art Exhibition), London, UK • Transcending the Figure: Contemporary Ceramics, Dairy Barn, Athens, OH • Online: Santiago Gallery, Solo Show, http://santiagogallery.wordpress. com • 2009: Art & Utility, West Wales Schools of The Arts, Wales, UK • International Ceramics Festival, Invited Demonstrator and Exhibitor, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK • Contemporary Monsters, Northern Clay Center, Guest Curator (with Catalog) • ‘Creature Feature’, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Arts Section, Minneapolis, MN, Mar 19. Cover Page • 2008: Confrontational Ceramics, Westchester Arts Council, White Plains, NY • The Grand Ceramics Theatre, MIAAO, International Museum of the Applied Arts Today in association with UIA 23rd World Congress of Architects, Torino 20, Italy • Visual Arts Scotland, Royal Scottish Academy, Invited Artist, Edinburgh, Scotland • Terra Incognita: The Unknown Earth, Baltimore Clayworks, Baltimore, MD SELECTED AWARDS_ 2012: McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2011: Yorkshire Artspace, Manor Oaks Studios, Artist in Residence, Sheffield, UK • 2009: The Clay Studio, International Guest Artist-in-Residence, Philadelphia, PA • 2008: Royal College of Art, MPhil Research Bursary, Applied Arts School, London, UK • 2005: Development Award, Craft Council, London, UK PUBLICATIONS_ 2013: Author, “Reporting on Residencies,” Ceramic Review, Jan/Feb: 19 • 2012: Author, Ceramics and the Human Figure, (London, UK: A&C Black Publishing) • 2011: “The Body is Thinking the Head: Edith Garcia,” Ceramics: Art and Perception (85): 61 – 65 • “NCECA Review 2011,” Ceramics Monthly, June/August: 62 – 63 • 2009: 500 Ceramic Sculptures, Lark Books • 2008: Confrontational Ceramics, (Exhibition and Publication) Westchester Arts Council, White Plains, NY SELECTED COLLECTIONS_ Aberystwyth University Ceramics Collection and Archive, Aberystwyth, Wales • Archie Bray Foundation, Permanent Sculpture Collection, Helena, MT • The Clay Studio, Permanent Collection, Philadelphia, PA • Northern Clay Center, Teaching Collection PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE_ 2013: Hothouse Guest Lecturer, Crafts Council, London, UK (North Cohort) • 2012: Visiting Artist, Guest Lecturer, Winona State University, Winona, MN • Visiting Artist, Guest Lecturer, Carleton College, Northfield, MN • 2011: Visiting Artist, Guest Lecturer, Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK • 2010: The Figurative Association: Celebrating the Human Form in Clay, (Conference Panel), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN

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Ursula Hargens_

Janet Williams_

Born: 12/27/1971 Minneapolis, MN

Born: 11/27/1952 Cardiff, South Wales, UK

EDUCATION_ 2003: MFA, ceramics, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY • 1999–2000: Post-Baccalaureate Study, ceramics, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada • 1999: MA, art and art education, Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, NY • 1994: BA, Russian language, and literature, Columbia University, Columbia College, New York, NY SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS_ 2013: Flora, The Phipps Center for the Arts, Hudson, WI • 2012: Wallflower (Invasive Species), Christiansen Center Art Gallery, Minneapolis, MN • 2004: Decorative Form, Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS_ 2013: Four McKnight Artists, Northern Clay Center • Bloom, Koelsch Gallery, Houston, TX • 2012: Healing Arts, Hudson Hospital Specialty Clinic Gallery, Hudson, WI • Locals We Love, Northern Clay Center • Pots at Rest, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA • de la Fleur, Mudfire Gallery, Decatur, GA • Hand Made in America, Dowstudio Gallery, Deer Isle, ME • Handle with Care, Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe, NM • Cups and Coffee, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA • 2011: Lady’s Cup, Visq LOFT, Osaka, Japan • Table Manners, Lark and Key Gallery, Asheville, NC • Mendovernacular, The Heights Waterfront, Tampa, FL • Pairings, Carbondale Clay Center, Carbondale, CO • 2010: American Pottery Festival, Northern Clay Center • Pictures on Pots, Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, Loveladies, NJ • Six McKnight Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2009: Master Artists Exhibition, Armory Art Center, Palm Beach, FL • Northern Exposure, Promega Corporation, Madison, WI • 2008: Functional Variations, Freehand Gallery, Los Angeles, CA • Near-East Meets West, Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX • Symposium Presenters’ Exhibition, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN • 2007: Clay National, Dowstudio Gallery, Deer Isle, ME • Four Jerome Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2006: Diverse Connections, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN • Style & Function: National Ceramics Invitational, Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, Asheville, NC • Receptive Volumes, The Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY • 2005: Culturing Surfaces, Homewood House Museum, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD • Fine Art of Craft, University Place Art Center, Lincoln, NE • Small Works, Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York, NY SELECTED AWARDS_ 2012: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2009: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, St. Paul, MN • 2006: Jerome Ceramic Artists Project Grant, Northern Clay Center • 2005: Red Wing Collectors Society Foundation Award, Northern Clay Center

EDUCATION_ 1991: MFA, ceramics, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan • 1988: Post-graduate diploma in ceramics, University of London, Goldsmith’s College, London, UK • 1979: BA (Honors), fine art, Middlesex Polytechnic, London, UK • One semester at École des Beaux Arts, Aix-enProvence, France • 1975: Foundation studies diploma, Middlesex Polytechnic, London, UK SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS_ 2013: A Topography of Touch, Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, NC • 2011: A Topography of Touch, NCECA Concurrent, Independent Exhibition, Tampa International Airport, Tampa, FL • 2010: Touch, Texts & Topographies, Lee Gallery, Clemson University, Clemson, SC • Bookworks, Rowe Arts Main Gallery, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC • 2008: Register Series, Walker Art Gallery, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, NE • 2006: Janet Williams, Downtown Gallery, Kent State University, Kent, OH • 2002: Six/Six (Qwest Denver Series), Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO • Register Series II, Residential College Art Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI • 2001: Register Series, Juried by NCECA; Edge Gallery, Denver, CO SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS_ 2013: Four McKnight Artists, Northern Clay Center • Breaking Ground: Innovative Craft, Handmade in America, Asheville, NC • 2012: Repetitive Nature, Northern Clay Center • Ceramic Art at North Carolina Colleges & Universities, North Carolina Pottery Center, Seagrove, NC • 2011: GIC Biennale 2011, 6th International Ceramics Competition, Honorable Mention, Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea • 2010: 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Northern Clay Center • 2009: Fire Works, Prescott College Art Gallery, Prescott, AZ • 2004–2005: Nebraska Now, NE Arts Council Fellowship Winners Exhibition, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE • Contemporary Codex: Ceramics and the Book, Travelling invitational group exhibition — Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI (Summer ’04); Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Pittsburgh, PA (Fall ’04); University of Maryland, MD, (Spring ’05 – NCECA conference); Pyramid Atlantic, MD, (Spring/Summer ’05) • 2004: Innovative Installations, Mid-America Print Conference Exhibition, Loft at The Mill, Lincoln, NE • 2003: Facets of Clay, Macalester College Art Gallery, St. Paul, MN • Roots of Renewal, Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA • Seven McKnight Artists, Northern Clay Center • RSVP, Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE • 2002: 4 x 10 Ceramic Sculpture, Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA • 2001: 52º Concorso Internazionale della Ceramica d’Arte Contemporanea, Museo Internazionale Delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy SELECTED AWARDS_ 2012: McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • 2010: Regional Artist Project Grant, Arts & Science Council, Charlotte, NC • 2009: Faculty Research Grant, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC • 2004: Individual Artist Fellowship, Nebraska Arts Council, NE • 2003: McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center

SELECTED COLLECTIONS_ Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, The Baggs Collection • San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX • Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY, Gloryhole Collection • Schleich Red Wing Pottery Museum, Red Wing, MN • Private Collection of Robert L. Pfannebecker, Lancaster, PA

SELECTED COLLECTIONS_ International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemet, Hungary • KOCEF, Korea Ceramic Foundation, Icheon, South Korea • Kohler Co., Kohler, WI and John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI • Museo Internazionale Delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE_ 2013: Adjunct Faculty, Anoka Ramsey Community College, Coon Rapids, MN • Summer Faculty, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO • 2005–2013: Lecturer, Adjunct Faculty, Ceramics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN • 2003–2013: Teaching Artist, Northern Clay Center • 2009: Visiting Faculty, NSCAD University, Halifax, Nova Scotia • 2008: Presenter, Utilitarian Clay V Symposium, Arrowmont School of Art & Craft, Gatlinburg, TN

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE_ 2008–Current: Assistant Professor of Art, Ceramics Area Coordinator, Department of Art & Art History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte • 2011: Sanbao International Ceramic Institute, nr.

Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China • 2006–2007: Lecturer, Ceramics Area Coordinator, Residential College, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI • 2005–2006: Visiting Artist & Adjunct Faculty, Ceramics, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH

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About The McKnight Artist Fellowships for Ceramic Artists_

The McKnight Artist Fellowships for Ceramic Artists Program is designed to strengthen and enhance Minnesota’s artistic community by providing recognition and financial support for individual ceramic artists. The awards are intended to significantly advance the work of ceramic artists whose work is of exceptional artistic merit, who have already proven their abilities, and are at a career stage that is beyond emerging.

The program provides two forms of direct financial support to ceramic artists: two fellowships are awarded annually to outstanding mid-career Minnesota ceramic artists; four residency awards are granted each year to artists from outside Minnesota, for a threemonth stay at Northern Clay Center.

The 2012 selection panel consisted of three

individuals: Michael Corney, a potter from Carlsbad, CA, and a participating artist in Northern Clay Center’s 2012 exhibition, Self[contained]; Alexandra Hibbitt, a ceramic sculptor from Athens, OH, and Associate Professor, Assistant Director, and Graduate Chair of the School of Art at Ohio University; and Marlene Jack, a potter from Barhamsville, VA, and Professor of Ceramics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. The 2013 exhibition featured work by the two 2012 McKnight Fellowship recipients and two 2011 McKnight Residency Artists. The fellowship artists used the grants to defray studio and living expenses, experiment with new materials and techniques, and build upon ideas within their current and past work.

Past McKnight Recipients_

1997_ Fellowships Linda Christianson Matthew Metz Residencies Marina Kuchinski George Pearlman

2001_ Fellowships Margaret Bohls Robert Briscoe Residencies Vineet Kacker Davie Reneau Patrick Taddy Janet Williams

2005_ Fellowships Maren Kloppmann Tetsuya Yamada Residencies Edith Garcia Audrius Janusˇonis Yonghee Joo Hide Sadohara

2009_ Fellowships Ursula Hargens Maren Kloppmann Residencies Jonas Arcˇikauskas Cary Esser Alexandra Hibbitt Ryan Mitchell

1998_ Fellowships Judith Meyers Altobell Jeffrey Oestreich Residencies Andrea Leila Denecke Eiko Kishi Deborah Sigel

2002_ Fellowships Maren Kloppmann Keisuke Mizuno Residencies William Brouillard Kirk Mangus Tom Towater Sandra Westley

2006_ Fellowships Robert Briscoe Mika Negishi Laidlaw Residencies Lisa Marie Barber Junko Nomura Nick Renshaw John Utgaard

2010_ Fellowships Linda Christianson Heather Nameth Bren Residencies William Cravis Rina Hongo Naoto Nakada Kevin Snipes

1999_ Fellowships Gary Erickson Will Swanson Residencies Joe Batt Kelly Connole

2003_ Fellowships Chuck Aydlett Mary Roettger Residencies Miriam Bloom David S. East Ting-Ju Shao Kurt Webb

2007_ Fellowships Mike Norman Joseph Kress Residencies Greg Crowe John Lambert Lee Love Alyssa Wood

2011_ Fellowships Gerard Justin Ferrari Mika Negishi Laidlaw Residencies David Allyn Edith Garcia Peter Masters Janet Williams

2000_ Fellowships Sarah Heimann Joseph Kress Residencies Arina Ailincai Mika Negishi Mary Selvig Megan Sweeney

2004_ Fellowships Andrea Leila Denecke Matthew Metz Residencies Eileen Cohen Satoru Hoshino Paul McMullan Anita Powell

2008_ Fellowships Andrea Leila Denecke Marko Fields Residencies Ilena Finocchi Margaret O’Rorke Yoko Sekino-Bové Elizabeth Smith

2012_ Fellowships Brian Boldon Ursula Hargens Residencies Pattie Chalmers Haejung Lee Ann-Charlotte Ohlsson Nick Renshaw

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Northern Clay Center_

Northern Clay Center’s mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts. Its goals are to promote excellence in the work of clay artists, to provide educational opportunities for artists and the community, and to encourage the public’s appreciation and understanding of the ceramic arts.

STAFF_ Sarah Millfelt, Director Michael Arnold, Exhibitions Manager Christian Novak, Information and Artists Grants Manager BOARD OF DIRECTORS_ Ellen Watters, Chair Teresa Matsui Sanders, Vice Chair Rick Scott, Treasurer/Secretary Lynne Alpert Robert Briscoe Philip Burke Mary K. Baumann Craig Bishop Linda Coffey Debra Cohen Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill Sally Wheaton Hushcha Christopher Jozwiak Mark Lellman Bruce Lilly Alan Naylor Mark Pharis T Cody Turquist Bob Walsh HONORARY MEMBERS_ Andy Boss Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Joan Mondale DIRECTOR EMERITA_ Emily Galusha

McKnight Artists Fellowships and Residencies for Ceramic Artists and this exhibition are made possible by generous financial support from The McKnight Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information, write to: Northern Clay Center 2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, MN 55406 © 2013 Northern Clay Center All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States First edition, 2013 ISBN: 978-1-932706-28-3 Essays by Mason Riddle Photography of ceramic works by Peter Lee (except for Janet Williams) Design and portraits by Joseph D.R. OLeary (vetodesign.com)

2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org