Mindy Horn by Todd Merrill Studio

MINDY HORN

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80 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10013

Todd Merrill & Associates, Inc.

Catalog Design: Todd Merrill Studio

Todd Merrill

with essay by Todd Merrill Studio

Self published using Lightning Press Totowa, NJ MINDY HORN

Left Image courtesy of: Tom Brookes

Todd Merrill Studio

Todd Merrill Studio represents an international group of established and emerging artists, each with a singular artistic vision and unprecedented point of view. In creating unique works of collectible design, each artist takes a hands-on approach that intersects contemporary design, fine art, traditional craft techniques, and pioneering innovation.

Individually, through meticulous craftsmanship and rigorous studio experimentation, each has developed leading-edge, proprietary methods that break previously set inherent limitations of conventional materials like wood, metal, plaster, concrete, ceramics, glass, and resin. Their intimate studio approach fosters an atmosphere of creativity where the work rendered significantly bears the hand of the artist.

Collectively the artists are helping to create a new visual vocabulary that advances long-held, established artistic boundaries. Their dynamic, one-of-a-kind, and frequently groundbreaking works contribute to today’s increasingly relevant grey space between art and design.

With the gallery’s support, the artists’ works have entered the collections of major private and public patrons and prestigious museums including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Museum of Art and Design in New York; the High Museum in Atlanta; the

Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the Carnegie Museum of Art in Philadelphia, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

In 2000, Todd Merrill opened Todd Merrill Antiques which quickly became renowned for its glamorous and eclectic mix of twentieth-century furniture and lighting. The pioneering gallery was one of the of the first to promote modernist and postmodernist American studio artisans including Paul Evans, Phillip Lloyd Powell, George Nakashima, Karl Springer, James Mont, Tommi Parzinger, among others.

In 2008, Rizzoli published Merrill’s “Modern Americana: Studio Furniture from High Craft to High Glam”, the first ever authoritative examination of the great studio furniture makers and designers who, from 1940 thru the 1990s defined American high style. To celebrate the tenth anniversary, in 2018 Rizzoli published an expanded edition, adding 60 pages to his original book. This survey of the period continues with two massive additional chapters focused on Women Makers and Showrooms.

After the publication of Modern Americana in 2008, Merrill began to shift the mission of the gallery and started the Studio Contemporary program which has today become his primary focus.

MINDY HORN

Ceramist Mindy Horn’s believes that a life, an idea, or a work of art all begin with perfection, or as she puts it “an untested plan of what they are meant to be.” In the course of development, as each are nurtured and buffeted by forces beyond their control, they are constantly mutating in order to grow and survive. In her work, it is precisely this mutability or ability to adapt an altered blueprint that creates complexity and deeper layers of meaning.

As a material, porcelain (Horn’s medium of choice) has usually been regarded as the most idolized type of pottery for its strength and the delicate purity of its white color. For many years Horn worked as a paper conservator, a meticulous occupation that requires not only mastery over an acute set of techniques, but also a scientific understanding of the material and how it behaves. Porcelain and paper are kindred materials. Both are fragile, transformable, and respond fundamentally to touch. Over time, both materials physically record their own history.

Part of Horn’s artistic process is to place stresses on the clay, forcing it to respond and change. Her sculptures primarily take on one of two forms, vessels or wall reliefs.

The non-functional vessels, purposely thrown off center, appear to have grown and weathered organically, rather than have been created by hand. The surfaces of the vessels, crusty or cracked, emphasize the crooked, uneven forms. While their appearance seems to contradict porcelain’s typical convention of perfection, it is the material’s strength

and elasticity that allows Horn to give each vessel its uniqueness.

The painstakingly constructed wall reliefs are composed of minuscule, seemingly identical pieces. Within the medallions, each tiny, handformed component’s individuality is lost within the larger picture. Each work is a celebration of imperfection, created by the combination of intention and chance.

In Horn’s hands the imperfect becomes more significant than the perfect, asking the viewer to examine what is common in all of us and to celebrate the complexity of our differences.

-Dallas Dunn

4.50h x 20w x 19.50d in 11.43h x 50.80w x 49.53d cm

Hana i, USA, 2023

Porcelain, Glaze, Gold Leaf

20h x 20w x 5d in

50.80h x 50.80w x 12.70d cm

Hana ii, USA, 2025

Porcelain and 22k luster

17h x 18w x 12d in 43.18h x 45.72w x 30.48d cm

Cloister, USA, 2024

Porcelain, glaze and 24k gold leaf

Plan for an Invisible Understory, USA, 2020

59h x 59w x 5d in

149.86h x 149.86w x 12.70d cm

Porcelain, clear glaze and 22k luster, on painted wood panel

The Nature of Soil, USA, 2021

with mason stain on wood panel

23h x 20w x 3d in

58.42h x 50.80w x 7.62d cm

Porcelain

Delft, USA, 2020

Porcelain with mason stain on wood panel

23h x 20w x 3d in

58.42h x 50.80w x 7.62d cm

Nature and Translation, USA, 2021

Porcelain with mason stain on wood panel

34h x 31w x 1.50d in 86.36h x 78.74w x 3.81d cm

Reflection, USA, 2021

mounted to painted panel

41h x 41w x 3d in

104.14h x 104.14w x 7.62d cm

Porcelain,

Several themes appear often in Horn’s work, the most central being multiplicity.

Horn’s meticulously constructed wall reliefs are composed of minuscule, seemingly identical pieces. Within the medallions, each tiny, hand-formed component’s individuality is lost within the larger picture.

The same process, guided largely by muscle memory, forms each given design element -beads, thorns, sticks, etc. – yet each element is slightly different. In assembling the work, Horn seeks to create a resonance in the tension between the sameness of the multitude of components and the subtle but distinct variations between them.

The patterns and rhythms embody the idea that the whole is much more than a sum of its parts.

Persistent Movement of Time, USA, 2019

porcelain, painted wood panel, glaze

30h x 30w x 3d in

76.20h x 76.20w x 7.62d cm

Porcelain, mounted to painted panel

14h x 14w x 3d in

35.56h x 35.56w x 7.62d cm

Aureole, USA, 2017

Opening, USA, 2019

Porcelain, mounted to painted panel 14h x 14w x 3d in 35.56h x 35.56w x 7.62d cm

Parterre (Triptych), USA, 2018 porcelain

16h x 50w x 3d in

40.64h x 127w x 7.62d cm

Mindy Horn’s non-functional vessels, purposely thrown off center, appear to have grown and weathered organically. The surfaces of the vessels, crusty or cracked, emphasize their crooked, uneven forms. While their appearance seems to contradict porcelain’s typical convention of perfection, it is the material’s strength and elasticity that allows Horn to give each vessel its uniqueness. The extensive alteration of surface texture and the addition of hand built elements result in vessels that speak about time and how things grow beyond their beginnings.

In Horn’s hands the imperfect becomes more significant than the perfect, asking the viewer to examine what is common in all of us and to celebrate the complexity of our differences.