THE SKIN WE’RE IN
In Glass Armory, a solo show on view last summer at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Charlotte Potter MFA 10 GL used the idea of skin “as a metaphor to discuss how one’s identity is affected by relationships.” Using microscope slides, lenses and window glass, she constructed a series of glass armor pieces that invites viewers to explore how the body’s largest organ and protective barrier — with all its blemishes, scars and imperfections — is fundamental to each individual’s sense of self. In Siblinghood (2016), Potter examines hereditary identity using slides of her own skin connected with those of her brother’s and her sister’s to create an ambiguous body form. The work also references the history of the medical and other scientific fields that traditionally utilize glass. “My grandfather was a scientist and helped to create the first working transistor, which was actually made out of glass,” she notes. “I think about the lineage of the family and the hereditary nature of the skin we all live in.” Armor (2014), which took center stage in the exhibition, is made of more than 4,000 glass microscope slides presenting photo decals of Potter’s own skin painstakingly connected with silver chain and assembled over metal armature. “My armor investigates the
skin as both a barrier and an entryway,” she explains, “bringing the viewer into an intimate yet universal conversation about the fluidity of human bodies, identity and the material world that surrounds them.” In addition to expanding the field of glass with her own work, Potter has been running the Glass Studio at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA since being appointed its first manager and programming director in 2011. Based on its growing reputation under her direction, the Glass Art Society will hold its 2017 conference there in June. For Potter, the seductive properties of glass — fragile and strong, transparent and opaque, fluid and rigid — offer endless opportunities for exploring issues of identity and engagement in contemporary culture. “It’s about starting a conversation — a real conversation,” she says, which means she really wants her work “to reward you if you sit there a little bit longer.”
Emily Fleisher MFA 06 SC Last fall Emily exhibited work in Outta Space, a group show at Rudolph Blume Fine Art /ArtScan Gallery held in conjunction with Sculpture Month in Houston. She was also excited to exhibit with fellow alum Stella Ebner MFA 06 PR in Smile Because It Happened, a show held in October at Terminal 136 at the University of Texas in San Antonio, where she lives.
2006 continued Work by Stephanie Williams MFA SC was on view in Good and Plenty, a five-person show that ran at School 33 in Baltimore, MD from early September through late October. She lives in Washington, DC and in October also exhibited work in a fourperson show at Acre Projects in Chicago. 2007 Last summer One Nature, the Brooklyn-based landscape architecture firm founded and led by Bryan Quinn MLA , designed and built a new pre-school garden for the Beacon [NY] Hebrew Alliance.
2008 Jonas Criscoe MFA PT has been working with five other alumni to establish ICOSA, a 20-member gallery collective in Austin that has been hosting monthly exhibitions since last spring. In October he showed his own work in Bits & Pieces, a two-person show at that collective’s space. Jonas also had work in The Third Coast National, an early fall show at K Space Contemporary in Corpus Christi, TX. DownCity Design (DCD), a nonprofit founded and run by Manuel Cordero Alvarado and 92
For more on Charlotte’s work, go to charlottepotter.com.
Adrienne Gagnon MA , has received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant to support its efforts to enhance public schools in Providence. The $30,000 award has already helped more than 100 Providence-area youth build amenities for four schools as part of Design/Learning, a DCD collaboration with Providence Public Schools. Curandi Katz, the duo of Nathaniel Katz MFA DM (Jupiter, FL) and Valentina Curandi, is exhibiting the performance piece Resist Everywhere, Masako in the exhibition Orestiade Italiana in Rome. As part of the 2016 Quadriennale di Roma, the exhibition opened in mid October and ends in early January. RISD faculty member Lucky Leone MFA DM exhibited work in I am unclear, a solo show that ran from mid September through mid October at the Chazan Gallery in Providence. Work by Yuka Otani MFA GL is on view in Best if Used By, a group exhibition at Houston [TX] Center for Contemporary Craft that opened last September and runs through January 15. The Tokyo-based artist also curated and presented work in Emancipa-