Ceramics: Art and Perception - Ceramics: Art and Perception #97

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Ceramics: Art and Perception Volume 24 Issue 3

Print Post Publication No. PP255003100105 September – November 2014

97

97

Ceramics Art and Perception

2014 ISSUE

T he Blossoming of Celadon

Seiji no kaika 青磁の開花

K a w a se Shino b u September 1 5 – O c t o b e r 3 1 , 2014

J O A N B M I R V I S S LT D

JApANeSe ART Antique – Contemporary 39 east 78th Street, 4th floor | New York NY 10075 Telephone 212 799 4021 | www.mirviss.com Hours: Monday - Friday 11:00 - 6:00 pM and by appointment

Ceramics Art and Perception

2014 ISSUE

97

INTERNATIONAL

Contents Articles Margaret O’Rorke and Beverley Bell Hughes Soda Fired Ceramics by Matt Kelleher

Brandon Reintjes 24

Breath: Beth Lo in Korea

Harriet Smith 28

Chris Keenan at Oxford Ceramics

Adam Welch 30

Whitney Biennial 2014 Language of the Heart: The Work of John Foster

Owen Rye 44

The Professionalism of Ted Secombe

Antoinette Badenhorst 50 Janet Koplos 56

Clay Bodies at Barry Friedman Ltd New York

Nancy M Servis 62

Paul Philp – Shadows

Judith Tolnick Champa 66 Robert Silberman 70

Warren MacKenzie Susana Espinosa & Toni Hambleton: Encuentro

Judy Seckler 76

Out of Necessity

Adam Welch 80

Kathy Venter – Life

Gil McElroy 83

Christopher Adams

Janet Koplos 86

Constancy: Peter Wilson and the Work of Art

Ribbed Bowl Photo by Adrienne Gilligan Photography

John Kaufman 36 Elizabeth Reichert 40

Marie Torbensdatter Hermann

Cover:

8

Joshua Green 20

Edges – David Crane

Ted Secombe

David Romtvedt

Zach Tate 16

Print and Clay

Dark Garden: Linda Huey

3

Hannelore Seiffert 12

Ucki Kossdorff: The Condensed Man

Lou Pierozzi

Bonnie Kemske

Dr Marilyn Walters 90

Notes from Art Basel Miami

Ivan Albreht 94

Janet DeBoos

Tony Martin 100

Shipwreck and Metaphor: English Transferware

Erica Warren 104

Editor Elaine Olafson Henry

Office Manager Cheryl Fields

Proofreader Diane Bailiff

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Editorial

Advisers:

Linda Arbuckle Jennifer Forsberg Douglas Beagle Tony Franks

Frank Boyden Sergei Isupov Grace Cochrane Les Manning Janet DeBoos Owen Rye Mary Jane Edwards Shira Silverston Jeff Zamek Editorial contributions are welcome.

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Ceramics: Art and Perception (ISSN: 1035-1841) Copyright © 2013 by Ceramic Art is published four times per year by Ceramic Art, 23 North Scott Street, Suite 19, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801-6337 US. Months of issue are March, June, September and December. Business, Editorial, Accounting and Circulation Offices: 23 North Scott Street – Suite 19, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801 USA. Visit www.ceramicart.com. au or call 001.307.675.1056 to subscribe or for information on retailing the magazine.

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This September issue is a compilation of 24 articles and reviews from more than 10 countries. As our faithful readers know, we work to engage reviewers in order to make the writing more critical and more objective. Artists do not always agree with the analysis or review of their work and, in some cases, the artists are not aware of the reviews until they are published. In one such recent case, as I mentioned in my last editorial, the artist Erik Gronborg took exception to a review of his work written by Craig Adcock. Since we do not publish letters to the editor and since Gronborg does not have a web site, I will mention just a few of his objections to Adcock’s comments. Gronborg states, “. . . my work was not Funk and not included in Funk shows. It was too formal and well crafted.” He also objects to the author’s reference to Kitsch and explains his direct connection and association with Islamic ceramics and architecture. While we do not doubt Gronborg’s sincerity in his objections to Adcock’s writings, we do support our writers’ analyses that lead to the writing of their reviews.

Ceramics artist Gail Kendall and I recently took a road trip. She picked me up in Wyoming and we drove to the coast of Oregon taking the back roads (at her suggestion) through Yellowstone National Park, the lower part of the state of Idaho and on across the Cascade Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. We were students in an intermediate drawing workshop (taught by California artist Larry Thomas) at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology which was founded by Frank and Jane Boyden. I know that I talk a lot about legacies but there is no better word for what the Boyden’s have given to artists and ecologists with the founding of this centre.

Much is happening around the ceramics world. An experimental exhibition of works from the permanent collection is being held at the Ceramics Museum Princessehof (Vindaloo in the Taj Mahal) and will be on view through 4 January, 2015; sculpture from Lucio Fontana to Luigi Ontani is on display at the Intenational Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy through 1 February, 2015; Australia’s Deputy Premier announced funding of $125,000AUD from the Regional Growth Fund for a feasibility study on a new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM); Sukjin Choi, Lindsey Dezman, Heidi Preus Grew and Vipoo Srivilasa have all been awarded the Lighton International Artist Exchange Program fellowships to fulfil projects in ceramics throughout the world (www.liaep.org). Thank you to the Lighton Foundation and Linda Lighton for her support of artist exchanges.

Travel is an important part of today’s international world. Our journals reach 67 different countries and we watch for articles and exhibition reviews from each and every one of them. Please keep us informed of what is happening in ceramics in areas where you travel or live. Thank you for your support.

With Cheryl Lucas of Lyttelton, New Zealand on her recent visit to Wyoming, US.

Elemental Conversations Left: Beverley Bell-Hughes. Sea Stack. 64 x 26 cm.

Right: Margaret O’Rorke. Wall Discs.

238 x 112 x 1.5 cm. Photo by B Ryberg.

I

Margaret O’Rorke and Beverley Bell-Hughes

n an age when headlines feature new man-

made materials, such as graphene and carbon nanotubes, with high-spec technical advantages, the exhibition Elemental Conversations: Margaret O’Rorke and Beverley Bell-Hughes at Contemporary Ceramics Centre, London, offered a concrete example of how the most traditional material, clay, can still be explored and exploited, in this case, aesthetically. As Geoffrey Crossick, the new Chair of the Crafts Council (UK) has said, “Makers have an understanding of materials and imaginatively push their boundaries in ways that technologists can’t.”

Margaret O’Rorke is well known for her light

sculptures, both through the work itself and through her book Clay, Light & Water (A&C Black, 2010). It is intriguing to see how a drive to explore high-fired porcelain’s quality of translucency has led her to so many significant forms, designs and constructions.

The work in this exhibition comprised a wide range of scale, from small tabletop works to floor-to-ceiling installations.

Thrown Light Sculptures, into whose beehive shapes you are drawn by the way the light shifts repeatedly from bright to dark, hold the attention with their vibrancy and exquisite detail. This same quality is more formally executed in Thrown Shell Fleet, whose torn edges and distinctive shapes (as if the weight of the

A Review by Bonnie Kemske

Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 97 2014

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porcelain itself has determined it) give these pieces a delicate vitality. The slipcast piece Cast Ice Mountain, on the other hand, holds the attention less, as in the casting, the serendipitous detail from the throwing is lost.

O’Rorke’s large installation piece Wall Discs also makes full use of the possibilities of porcelain’s luminosity. The overlapping plates are irregular, some thicker than others, changing the depth of light penetration and, along with gaps between them, some discs bear central cracks, allowing light through unfiltered. It is these irregularities that make this piece a light installation and not an interior design feature.

Other installation works were done in collaboration with the Finnish weaver Sirkka Paikkari, combining optical fibres, steel and porcelain. In Vortex Number One the shimmering steel mesh and bright pinpoints of the fibres offer a contrast to the muted and diffused light of the 13 or 14 porcelain spirals, which hang like tamed ringlets alongside the looser chaotic fibre optic ‘hairs’. In Woven Light & Porcelain, feathery ends of thin folded discs shelter delicate light fibres. These discs evoke images of animated sea creatures that cling to both sides of the floor-to-ceiling mesh, as if just drawn up from the water.

O’Rorke’s work is sometimes let down by the technical issues that arise from incorporating light. Wires, cables and wooden boxes and frames are sometimes visible, especially in the installations, to the detriment of the overall perception of the work.

The hope is that as lighting improves with innovations, such as solar-powered LEDs, these issues will be overcome.

But this should not diminish one’s appreciation of the work, which, through her skilful manipulation of clay

density and shadowing and her sensitive throwing, comes across as intuitive, of the hand and, ultimately, engaging.

There is a sense that O’Rorke could be on the cusp of taking her work out of sculpting ceramics and into sculpting light, through the soft, diffused and warm glowing luminescences she creates.

Whereas O’Rorke’s pure smooth surfaces deter us from touching, Beverley BellHughes’s distinctive vessel forms invite our hands and fingers to feel the shapes of the making. In Clay, Light & Water O’Rorke is quoted as saying that she aims not to create ceramic pieces that reflect light, as do most ceramic surfaces, but ones that emit light. By contrast, Bell-Hughes’s pieces seem to suggest a third variation. The seemingly rough-hewn forms, such as the small vessels entitled Sand Pockets, appear to absorb light into their mottled, heavily fingered surfaces and, even though their interiors are often smooth and filled with colour, these significant voids are still shadowy and arcane, with projecting edges to protect them.

As in O’Rorke’s Woven Light & Porcelain, Bell-Hughes’s pieces seem to have grown, rather than to have been made. Whereas the O’Rorke piece may have appeared to have come from the sea, BellHughes’s pinched and pulled forms and their muted colours suggest sustained damage and reconstruction in an estuary, where tidal waters further sculpted the initial forms. Yet the work was clearly made by hand, and there was a strong sense of what the clay would have felt like between your fingers when you investigated its nooks and dimples.

One might think the decision to show Margaret O’Rorke and Beverley Bell-Hughes together was problematic as their styles

Facing page: Margaret O’Rorke. Woven Light & Porcelain.

300 x 80 x 16 cm. Photo by Tuukka Paikkari.

Above: Margaret O’Rorke. Vortex Number One. Variable. Photo by B Ryberg.