TO OUR SUPPORTERS
Tapas and Tango: Starworks Annual Gathering and Fundraiser
We are so excited to welcome everyone to Starworks to join our community of supporters and artists for this exclusive event featuring tango dancing, mimosas & sangria, a tapas luncheon, and an impressive live auction of 13 incredible works of art. Last year’s inaugural fundraiser was a success so we’re doing it again!
For nearly two decades, Starworks has hosted hundreds of incredible visiting and resident artists, now averaging 40 to 50 artists per year for a few weeks to a few months. This year's benefit proceeds are in support of our Residency Program as we continue work on our Residency Housing conversion and prepare to grow our Metals Studio into its new space of more than 10,000 sq. ft. This expansion will give us the opportunity to offer more community workshops and invite the very best artists working in metal to Starworks as resident and guest artists in the future.
The Starworks Metal Studio will facilitate continued education and resources for students fresh out of sculpture/metal programs, as well as the general public interested in learning to work with metal. The program will be focused on, but not limited to, the three main approaches of working with metal: fabrication, blacksmithing, and casting.
As many of you are aware, the conversion of our 100-year-old boiler building into resident and guest housing is central to our program expansion. We're thrilled to announce that this project is underway. Thanks to the generosity of many of you at last year’s event and with support from Windgate, Cannon, James G. Hanes, and Marion Stedman Covington Foundation, we've raised just under $2 million. We are in the demolition phase and are grateful to be working with VINE Architecture and Hamlett Associates on the project. So come see the progress and celebrate with us!!!
This year, our Raise the Paddle goal is $75,000 and will be focused on furnishings for the housing project and equipment for the Metal Studio. We hope you will help us “raise” our goal so that we can continue to welcome more of the world’s best artists to Starworks to make the world’s best art!
With appreciation,
Nancy Gottovi
5
Info for Buyers
This is a live auction and bidding will be open at the event on September 16th at 2:00 pm EDT. If you cannot join the event in person, you may participate in absentee bidding by contacting tara@starworksnc.org before Sept. 15th.
Bidding Process
Bid increments are set by the auctioneer, who may vary the increments at their discretion. The auctioneer will explain bidding rules at the beginning of the live auction. The highest bidder for any item shall be the purchaser. In the event of a dispute, the auctioneer will have the sole and final discretion to determine the successful bidder or to re-offer or resell the article in question. Designation of your bid as the winning bid is a legal contract to purchase the item.
Payment
Item purchases may be paid for with cash, personal checks, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express. You must have a credit card to participate in absentee bidding.
Pickup
Artwork will be available at the close of the auction. Staff will assist with the packing.
Shipping
Shipping fees are in addition to art purchases. Items will be shipped via UPS ground, FedEx, or USPS and will be insured for the purchase price. Please allow three to eight weeks for packing and delivery. Crated or oversized items may require additional time for packing and delivery.
6
7
"The Makers' Dozen"
11
Carol Gentithes By Design
2023
Glazed ceramic 13” l x 6” w x 10" h
Retail Value: $1,800
Carol Gentithes grew up in the flatlands of Ohio. She has a BA from Duke University in English Literature and a BFA from Alfred University in Ceramics. She has been awarded artist-in-residency fellowships at Arrowmont School of Arts in Tennessee, the Sanbao Ceramic Institute in China and ArtLink in Estonia. In 1997, Carol and her husband Fred Johnston established Johnston & Gentithes Art Pottery in Whynot (suburb of Seagrove), NC where they presently make and sell their work. Her work is in the Mint Museum permanent collection and documented in several publications.
www.johnstonandgentithes.com
www.instagram.com/johnstongentithesstudios
12 01/
Ben Galata Fiddleheads
2013 Steel
10.25" l x 10.25" w x 40.25" h
Retail Value: $900
Ben Galata is a noted metal artist in the state and was a guest artist at our first Firefest in 2013. He established Galata Designs in Raleigh, NC in 1997 soon after graduating from the College of Design at NC State University where he received a Bachelors of Industrial Design degree. Since its inception, Galata Designs has been creating one of a kind forged and fabricated metal architectural elements, furnishings, and sculpture for residential, commercial, and public spaces.
www.galatadesigns.com
www.instagram.com/bengalata
13 02/
Kate Waltman
Midnight Lotus
2023
Wood fired ceramic
18" l x 18" w x 25" h
Retail Value: $2,000
Kate Waltman makes decorative and functional pottery using locallyprocessed clay from the central NC region. Her pottery forms are based on historical Greek and Minoan pottery and decorated with Art Deco inspired patterns. She began assisting a plein air painter as an elementary school student, developing her love for the natural world and specifically studying plant life. At the age of 14, she changed mediums and talked her way into Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center’s pottery studio. She assisted for 2 years and was then hired as a potter. Kate went on to earn a BFA in Art and Design from Alfred University. She opened her pottery studio in Seagrove, North Carolina in 2010. Kate shows her pots, lectures, and teaches throughout the USA.
www.thetrianglestudio.com
www.instagram.com/kayetwaltman
03/ 14
Kazuki Takizawa
BW BE Zanfirico Reticello
2023 Blown glass, cane
15" l x 15" w x 14.5" h
Retail Value: $3,000
Kazuki Takizawa is a Japanese glass artist based in Los Angeles, CA. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a BFA in glass art in 2010 and currently owns and runs KT Glassworks, LLC in the historic West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. Takizawa crafts elaborate vessels and installations, each with a unique story. Universally rooted in a dialogue around mental health, his series examines broad themes such as attaining minimalism among chaos as well as his personal narratives around the topic of living with bipolar disorder and suicide prevention. Takizawa has traveled to numerous communities in and outside the US to share his work and act as an advocate for mental illness. His practice offers an uncommon and inclusive space to increase awareness and start a conversation.
www.kazukitakizawa.com
www.instagram.com/ktglassworks
04/
15
Colored clays with Shino
Retail Value: $2,800
Lance Henriksen has been one of the American screen's most distinctive character actors for more than 50 years. He has appeared in more than 260 films including Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, Dog Day Afternoon, the western The Quick and the Dead, James Cameron's The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aliens with Sigourney Weaver, the smash hit TV series Millenium as Frank Black, a former FBI agent and criminal profiler (for which he was nominated for three Golden Globe awards), and more recently co-starring with Viggo Mortensen in Falling about a homophobic man and his gay son dealing with Alzheimers. When he is not acting, he is continuing his 40 year career as a potter, saying "there is nothing as simple and beautiful as raw clay... And that Potters have the remaining soul of the nomads...always searching...."
A big fan, he visited us earlier in the Spring and says he wants to support Starworks. Henriksen uses his platters as ceramic canvases to create a "glazescape." He creates an intense depth of tonal value by firing his pieces 4 to 6 times until he achieves the looks he wants. He lives and work in the hills near Hollywood.
www.instagram.com/officiallancehenriksen
Lance Henriksen Survivor
2021
22.75” l x 22.75” w x 1.5” h
05/ 16
Robyn Horn
#1171
Just Emerging Form
2011
Tasmanian Eucalyptus Burl
24" l x 10" w x 23" h
Retail Value: $5,000
Robyn Horn was born in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and with both her mother and her sister as painters, her interest in the arts was encouraged and she went on to earn a BFA from Hendrix College in Conway, AR. Following college, she worked in the typesetting field in Little Rock, before becoming the chief photographer for Arkansas Parks and Tourism. After trying her hand at stained glass, she found wood. In 1984, she began working on the lathe making wood bowls and vases which eventually evolved into carving wood sculpture. Over the past 40 years, she has developed an aesthetic through studying the work of sculptors such as Barbara Hepworth and David Nash, as well as painters’ work such as Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase, along with Picasso and Braque’s Cubism. Horn has always worked in series, making sculptures that contain qualities of asymmetry, geometry, volume, lack of balance, and contrast with heavily textured surfaces. Her work has been collected and exhibited by museums and galleries throughout the nation and internationally. Public collections include: The National Museum of American Art, The Renwick Gallery, Museum of Arts and Design, Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and numerous other collections.
www.robynhorn.com
www.instagram.com/robynhornart
06/ 17
Paul Marioni Duck
Paul Marioni, one of the founding members of the American Studio Glass movement, is based in Guanajuato, Mexico and creates sculptures and vessels that incorporate humor, images of taboo sexuality, genre figures, tribal masks, photographs, and visual puns. Known as an innovator in the glass world, Marioni pushes his techniques to their limits, regularly redefining what is possible to achieve with the medium. He excels not only technically in glass, but he also uses it as a powerful conceptual platform: his enamel portraits and blown sculptures have existential poignancy. Marioni has been a mainstay in the studio glass scene since the 1970s. He was asked by Dale Chihuly to teach at Pilchuck Glass School in its second year, and also taught at the Penland School of Crafts, among other schools and programs internationally. His artwork can be found in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, Corning Glass Museum, Oakland Museum of California, and the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, among others.
18 07/
Einar & Jamex De La Torre
Blown and hot sculpted glass
9" l x 8" w x 12.5" h
Retail Value: $10,000
Collaborating brothers, Einar and Jamex De La Torre were born in Guadalajara, México (1963 & 1960), where they grew up until a sudden family move to California in 1972. Presently living and working in both Ensenada, México and San Diego, CA. Both started working in glass in the late-70's and both attended California State University at Long Beach. They have been collaborating in earnest since the mid-90's and have developed their signature style mix-media work with blown glass sculpture. Their pieces represent a multifaceted view of life that reflects a complex and humorous aesthetic that could be called baroque. In recent years, they have been experimenting with lenticular printing and large photo mural installations alongside blown glass. The brothers have had 18 solo museum exhibitions in 6 countries, completed 8 major pulic art projects, and have participated in 4 biennales. They have been awarded the USA Fellowship Award, The San Diego Art Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, and their work is prominently featured at "The Cheech" in Riverside, CA.
www.instagram.com/delatorrebros
Charlotte 2015
08/ 19
David Stuempfle
Covered Jar
2022
Wood fired local clay
21" l x 21" w x 21.5" h
Retail Value: $3,000
David Stuempfle's ceramics have been featured in numerous articles and books, including Ceramics in America (2021), major museum and private collections throughout the US and abroad—the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park Museum (Japan), the Museum of American Ceramic Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Asheville Museum of Art, the Chipstone Foundation, and the Museum of International Folk Art, among others. He has worked internationally to learn from other working potters, absorbing and adapting the intricacies of his international colleagues' techniques. He has been a US/Japan Creative Artists Fellowship recipient, and an NEA/Central and Eastern Europe Visual Arts Fellowship recipient. He has taught at Penland School of Crafts, the Bascom Center for Visual Arts, Peters Valley School of Craft, studios in Canada, Portugal, and numerous universities and colleges. He lectures widely and provides intimate demonstrations of his monumental jar making throughout America. He has curated several exhibits at the NC Pottery Center as well as the Mint Museum, where he curated an exhibition devoted to world pottery traditions.
www.stuempflepottery.com
www.instagram.com/davidstuempflepottery
09/ 20
Leckie Gassman is a maker and designer originally from Annapolis, MD. In 2015, Gassman received his BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University where he concentrated in glass and ceramics. In the last three years, Gassman continued to study production glass blowing at Lexington Glassworks in Asheville, NC. He is currently based out of Brooklyn making glass art for himself and other artists. Leckie was a resident at Starworks in the Spring of 2020, Winter 2023, and visiting artist at GlassFest 2020 and 2023.
www.leckiegassman.com
www.instagram.com/leckiegassman
10/ 21
Leckie Gassman
Tara Thacker Horizon
2023
Porcelain and steel
15" l x 18" w x 11" h
Retail Value: $2,400
Tara Thacker is a visual artist working primarily in porcelain to create sculptures and large-scale wall pieces made of thousands of individually made components combined to create an effect of fluidity and soft appearance that challenges the normal assumptions of the material. She was born in Lynchburg, VA and received her BFA in Ceramics from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Washington. She has taught at the college level for many years, most recently at Northern Vermont Univeristy in Johnson. She has twice been a resident artist at Starworks (summer of 2021 & winter 2023) and is happily a new member of the staff.
www.tarathacker.com
www.instagram.com/tarathackerart
11/ 22
Sarah Band
Fruit Bat Skeleton (artibeus lituratus)
2023
Hot sculpted glass on copper tubing
33” l x 10” w x 24” h
Retail Value: $900
Sarah Band creates glass sculptures inspired by science, anatomy, and the macabre. Her science interest came from her upbringing, being raised in California's Silicon Valley by a family of physicists. She graduated from San Francisco State with a BFA in Sculpture in 2011. Her copper and glass sculptures depict skeletons of animals who are endangered species. She has had solo exhibitions at the Randolph Art Guild, The Works Museum, and Public Glass. She is a current NC Artist Support Grant recipient and is featured in The Art of the State, Celebrating the Visual Art of North Carolina by Liza Roberts.
www.sarahaband.com
www.instagram.com/sarahaband
12/ 23
Altered Bottle 2022
Wood fired local clay
17.5" l x 10" w x 24" h
Retail Value: $2,000
Ben Owen III is an American potter born and raised in Seagrove, NC who uses wood firing and other techniques for making functional and decorative pottery. A sixth generation potter learning from his family, he received his BFA in Ceramics at East Carolina University, a Fellowship in Japan, and was a visiting artist in Jingdezhen, China. Ben’s recent passions have included glaze creation and experimentation for wood firing. “For some pots, I use a four-chambered wood kiln with a firing process of up to four days. The prolonged exposure to ash and heat develops a wide range of color and texture on the clay.” Over the past two decades, Ben has created custom works installed in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Tokyo, Japan; Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary, NC; the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston, MA; and Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, UT. Owen has received many awards and honors, including North Carolina Living Treasure, 2004; and induction into the North Caroliniana Society.
www.benowenpottery.com
www.instagram.com/benowenpottery
Ben Owen III
13/ 24
Major Event Supporters
25
"Raise the Paddle" to Fund a Need
Raise the Paddle to support Starworks' Residency Program!!!
This year our Raise the Paddle goal is $75,000 and will be focused on furnishings for the housing project and equipping the new Metal Studio Expansion. We hope you will help us “raise” our goal so that Starworks can continue to welcome more of the world’s best artists to Starworks to make the world’s best art!
Gifts for Raise the Paddle may be made at the $25,000, $10,000, $5,000, $2,500, $1000, $500, $250, and $100 level. Paddle gifts will also be accepted as donations through our website at: www.starworksnc.org/tapas-and-tango or you may contact Tara Thacker, Bid Coordinator, at tara@starworksnc.org or (910) 428-9001.
26
About the Residency Program
Starworks’ residency program provides time, space, and technical assistance to artists so that they can explore new materials and techniques at no cost with minimal to no obligations while in residence. Residencies are completely self-directed with artists determining their length of stay (1-3 months) depending on their individual objectives. Residents have full access to approximately 25,000 square feet of studio space, 15,000 square feet of multiuse installation and fabrication space, and 12,000 square feet of exhibition space. Artists have access to audio-visual equipment, building-wide WiFi, industrial forklifts, computers, graphics equipment, a café, community events (such as yoga, run club, open-mic, live music, etc.), and an onsite fitness center.
Each year, Starworks hosts 40-50 resident artists for periods of 1-3 months. Visiting ceramic artists have included Ibrahim Said, Cristina Cordova, Sergei Isupov, Michelle Erickson, Michael Sherrill, Priscilla Mouritzen and Sunkoo Yuh. Esteemed glass artists have included Jamex and Einar De La Torre, Ethan Stern, C. Matthew Szösz, Nancy Callan, John Moran, Paul Marioni and many others.
About the Metals Program
Starworks Metal was developed out of a necessity for doing in-house metal work to support our glass and ceramics programs. As Starworks grew and expanded facilities, the metal studio followed suit and now has grown into its own entity. The Starworks Metal Studio will offer residencies for professional and mid-career artists, and continued education and resources for students fresh out of sculpture/metal programs, as well as the general public interested in learning to work with metal. The program will be focused, but not limited to the three main approaches of working in metal: fabrication, blacksmithing, and casting.
27
910.428.9001 100 RUSSELL DRIVE, STAR, NC 27356 WWW.STARWORKSNC.ORG/TAPAS-AND-TANGO
By Design, Carol Gentithes
