RADICAL REINVENTION: CONTEMPORARY CERAMIC SCULTURE

Moontide #1 (2019), Nancy Train-Smith, Glazed Stoneware

Moontide #1 (2019)
Nancy Train-Smith, Glazed Stoneware

 

Radical Reinvention: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture 
March 13 - May 25

Radical Reinvention: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture presents the work of artists who have redefined the possibilities of ceramics as a medium for sculpture. The exhibition showcases works that push the boundaries of material, form, and cultural interpretation and highlights the cross-over of ceramics from the worlds of utility and craft into the mainstream of contemporary art. The  exhibition features innovative pieces influenced by ceramic practice and bodies of knowledge from diverse cultures—Ancient Egypt and Greece, Portugal, Southeast Asia—while incorporating contemporary sensibilities, themes, and ideas.
Floating Vase 29
Embrace

Ibrahim Said
Floating Vase 29, 2022-2023
White Earthenware
18 1/2”x 7 5/8” x 7 5/8"

Ibrahim Said
Embrace, 2021
White Earthenware
17" x 9" x 9"

Artist Bio

From the narrow streets, pottery ovens, and noisy workshops of Fustat, Ibrahim Said was born in 1976. Fustat is an area in Cairo, Egypt that has etched its name in the history of the pottery industry since the Islamic conquest. Ibrahim comes from a family of potters, and his father became his first teacher and the rich cultural heritage of Egypt became his second.

Known for his elegant vases that are included in some prestigious Middle East collections, Ibrahim’s work is inspired by the ancient work of Egyptians—the strong lines and bold shapes—although his signature work embodies a lightness that comes from his silhouettes, small bases, and delicate finials.

His carvings are derived from Islamic jug filter designs, which were both functional and aesthetic. The carved area in the neck of the jug filtered out impurities when water was collected in the Nile. Ibrahim wanted to find a way to bring these ancient carvings back to life while somehow maintaining their history.

He has participated in workshops and demonstrations throughout the Middle East, and has been highly recognized for his technical ability, creativity, and innovation in the field of ceramics.

Artist Statement

I work with clay. My interests lie in expanding on forms and principles rooted in my culture: namely ancient Egyptian pottery and Islamic arts.

Through bridging the languages of function and sculpture, I hope to conjure stories about rituals, memorializing, and cultural proverbs, that feel both ancient and currently relevant.

Through the use of geometry, it is possible to explore ideas about perfection, order, and infinity that I find powerful and humbling.

The vase forms that inspire me are from the Naqada III period in Egypt from 3200-3000 BCE. The strong lines and bold shapes of that period in particular are my favorite. Their delicate finials and small bases embody an elegance and strength that are still unmatched for me.

My carvings are inspired by artifacts of water jug filters made between 900-1200 ACE in Fustat, Egypt. Although the carved designs were made for functional reasons, to filter out river sediment, the beauty of geometric, floral, and animal designs are prevalent in Islamic Arts and adorned many day-to-day objects.

But what was particularly poetic about them was that only those drinking could see the designs: it embodied a principle emphasizing inner beauty rather than the external, and emphasized an individual contemplative experience. Searching for ways to bring these ancient carvings and their narratives back to life has become one of my artistic challenges— I always want my work to feel Egyptian and build on that rich cultural history.

In the past ten years I have incorporated both wheel throwing and hand-building techniques into each piece giving particular attention to finials, surface carvings, and glaze color. The construction and engineering of them has become more complicated, pushing the material to its limit, and trying to invent new forms, but I believe the work cannot come easily. I believe the act of making is in itself an act of devotion and meditation to the beauty present and possible in the world.

Vessel
Vase

Chris Gustin
Vessel #9901, 1999
Stoneware
20”x 23” x 21"

Chris Gustin
Vase #0309, 2003
Porcelain
29”x 17” x 13"

Artist Bio

Born in 1952 in Chicago, Illinois, I grew up in Los Angeles, California, where I was surrounded by ceramics from an early age. My family were part owners of several commercial whiteware ceramic manufacturing companies. Spending my childhood around ceramic factories, it was an obvious choice for me to go into the family business.

After taking a pottery class at a local clay studio in Venice Beach while in high school, I went to the University of California, Irvine in 1970, where I studied biology and sociology. Because of my interest in clay, I also took an introductory studio ceramic course with John Mason. After a semester of college, I took a summer job at one of my father’s factories, located in Pasadena, California. I decided that I wanted to continue working in the family business, so in the fall of 1970, when I was 18 years old, I quit school and became the factory foreman and manager at Wildwood Ceramics, which I ran until 1972. Two years of running a small commercial ceramics factory was an apprenticeship that has since proved invaluable in my career.

During my time at Wildwood, I was still making wheel-thrown pottery. Having decided that the studio side of ceramics was of greater interest to me, I left the factory in 1972 to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, from which I received my BFA in ceramics in 1975. I then went on to graduate school at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where I received my MFA in 1977.

I established my first clay studio in 1977 in Guilford, Connecticut with my sister-in-law Jane Gustin. We shared the studio for five years, where we each produced functional and sculptural pottery. During this time, I was invited to teach at Parson’s School of Design in New York, where I was an instructor in the Crafts Department from 1978 to 1980. In 1980, I began teaching at the Program in Artisanry at Boston University, where I was Assistant Professor of Ceramics. In 1985, the Program in Artisanry moved to the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where I became Associate Professor of Ceramics and head of the ceramics program. Swain School subsequently merged in 1988 with Southeastern Massachusetts University, now the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

It was during my tenure at Boston University in 1982, that I moved my studio from Connecticut to South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where I purchased and renovated an 8000 square-foot building that was an old chicken farm. This building became both my studio and my living space.

In 1986, I became involved with a small group of artists interested in saving and preserving an old brick factory in southeast Maine. With Peg Griggs’ generous donation of the property, she, George Mason, Lynn Duryea, and I founded the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. Watershed is now thriving, offering summer and winter residencies to artists from around the world.

I became interested in the production of tile in 1994 when my wife and I began to design our new home. I made all of the tiles for the new house, and out of that experience, I started Gustin Ceramics Tile Production in 1996. The tile company offered me another way to work with ceramics and has grown significantly over the years. The tile is represented nationally by architects, designers and tile showrooms.

I was Associate Professor of Ceramics and the senior faculty of the ceramics program during my ten-year tenure at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. After twenty years of teaching and working with hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, in the summer of 1999 I retired from academia to devote myself full-time and energy to my studio work and the tile production company.

Artist Statement

I am interested in pottery that makes connections to the human figure. The figurative analogies used to describe pots throughout history all in some way invite touch. The pots that I respond to all speak of a clear, direct sense of the hand. The hand is celebrated in the work by its maker, whether it is that of a fifteenth-century rural potter or a nineteenth-century court artisan. And it becomes a necessary tool for the user in understanding the relationship of the object to its function, and subsequently, to how that object informs one’s life.

Though most of my work only alludes to function, I use the pot context because of its immense possibilities for abstraction. The skin of the clay holds the invisible interior of the vessel. How I manipulate my forms “around” that air, constraining it, enclosing it, or letting it expand and swell, can allow analogy and metaphor to enter into the work.

I want my work to provoke an image to the viewer, to suggest something that is just on the other side of consciousness. I don’t want my pots to conjure up a singular recollection, but ones that change with each glance, with each change of light. I use surfaces that purposely encourage touch, and by inviting the hand to explore the forms as well as the eye, I hope to provoke numerous memories, recollections that have the potential to change from moment to moment.

Flowered_Lions_(2)
I Wanna Dance

Zemer Peled
Flowered Lion #2
Porcelain
10”x 11” x 8"

Zemer Peled
I Wanna Dance #2
Porcelain
11”x 8” x 8"

Artist Bio

Zemer Peled’s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, engaging with themes of memory, identity, and place. Her works are formed from thousands of porcelain shards constructed into large-scale/small-scale sculptures and installations.

Peled was born and raised in Israel. She earned her MA at the Royal College of Art (UK). In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Sotheby's, Saatchi Gallery (London), and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City). She has been featured in Vogue, O Magazine, Elle, and other international publications.

Her work is found in many private collections around the world and museum collections, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fuller Craft Museum; Crocker Art Museum; and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.

Sherwood 2
Sherwood 1

Dana Sherwood
Winged Medusa
Glazed Stoneware With Gold Lustre
9”x 8” x 6"

Dana Sherwood
Proserpina And The Sphinx
Glazed Stoneware With Gold Lustre
9.5”x 5.75” x 6"

Moontide #1 (2019),
Nancy Train Smith,
Glazed Stoneware
Bait Ball 2

Nancy Train-Smith
Moontide #1, 2019
Stoneware
36" x 36" x 4"

Nancy Train-Smith
Bait Ball, 2017
Porcelain
15" x 19" x 11"

Artist Statement

I began working in ceramics in 1980 at Clay Dragon in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a short time there, Anne Smith and I moved to our own studio in Somerville, MA, and continued to work there for the following eight years. During that time I was working figuratively, specifically on a long series of self-portrait busts inspired by French 19th century sculpture. Eventually, the self-portraits gave way to an exploration of the character of Eve as a kind of everywoman, and the work changed scale to a “figurine” approach. At the time there was an infatuation with teapots in the ceramic world, and I responded with tongue in cheek in a series of eccentric woman teapots. This extended body of ceramic work came to an end when I moved to South Dartmouth, MA.

Perhaps a decade or more ago, I fell in love with Chinese Scholar Objects. The scholar objects depend on a “found” object that appears to distill the form taken by the movement of energy in nature. Though I loved them, I felt at the time that it would be impossible for me to come up with an authentic way for me to approach that material in my own work. Still, the desire was there, and eventually I began to find a way into it. My current ceramic work represents an on-going exploration of that passion.

The porcelain fish are an off-shoot of “Migration”, bringing that body of work back to the discrete gallery object.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Reitz Ring Toss 2012

Don Reitz
Geode, Oval With Red2008
Wood-Fired Stoneware, Color With Salt
3 1/2”x 16” x 14"

Don Reitz
Ring Toss2011
Wood-Fired Stoneware With Salt
13”x 12” x 11"