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rEvolution: 105 Years of Jewelry & Metalsmithing at The University of the ArtsPhiladelphia Art AlliancePhiladelphia, PennsylvaniaMay 14th - July 26th, 2009“rEvolution: 105 Years of Jewelry & Metalsmithing at The University of the Arts” is a survey, of sorts, of the many jewelers and metalsmiths who have taught at the Philadelphia College of Art/University of the Arts over the years. Like many art schools, UArts first offered hands-on metals instruction in the early 1900s. Blacksmithing maestro Samuel Yellin was one of the first; Sharon Church, Rod McCormick and Lola ...
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Santa Fe Clay Chris Staley: Harmony and DissonanceSanta Fe, NM Oct. 30 - Dec. 5, 2009www.santafeclay.comChris Staley’s ceramic sculptures and functional stoneware, all from 2009, are the products of competing interests that the artist balances with remarkable facility and visual aplomb. For example, in his classic functional objects, Staley is drawn to a Bauhausian sense of modernity, with crisp, minimal delineations of Platonic forms and decorations rendered in spare patterns of black and white. Yet, in his all-black sculptural jars and lidded boxes, the artist also embraces a degree of ...
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The subtitle of the show is borne out through objects that display a primal delight in the innate qualities of clay. ...
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Dorothy Feibleman: New Works in PorcelainMobilia GalleryCambridge, MassachusettsMay 2-May 30, 2009
Dorothy Feibleman's spare porcelain forms—precise and finished to translucent, weightless perfection—elevate the art of pattern making to an extraordinary degree. In Feibleman’s hands, the ancient Japanese technique of nerikomi—in which ceramic objects are decorated with patterns created by combining different, often differently colored, clays—has been reinvented through the introduction of ideas drawn from glassmaking, mosaic art, jewelry making and other disciplines. Obsessively ornamented, with patterns that multiply across their surfaces, Feibleman's most striking works are reminiscent of objects as diverse as blue-and-white Delftware, central ...
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Don’t Know, We’ll See: The Work of Karen KarnesDVD, 62 minutes, Lucy Massie Phenix, director.$29.99.Our Founding Mudder: Who Art in Heaven: A Workshop with Peter VoulkosDVD, 62 minutes, Martin Holt, director.$65, Glass Masters at Work: Lino TagliapietraDVD, 59 minutes, Robin Lehman, director.$19.95.Emile Norman: By His Own DesignDVD, 60 minutes, Will Parrinello, director.$24.99.What do people hope for in an art documentary? A window into the secrets of creation? A better sense of the artist’s personality? ...
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Hank Gilpin: New Furniture and a Display of Commissioned Projects
Gallery NAGABoston, MAOct. 9 - Nov. 7, 2009Hank Gilpin has been making furniture for individual clients for over 30 years. For 20 of them, Gallery NAGA in Boston has been trying to persuade him to stage a solo show of his work. The result, at long last, is one that combines a wall's worth of images of commissioned work with new pieces that are for sale. While Gilpin has been part of group shows in museums, this is the first solo show of ...
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Museum of Contemporary CraftAi Weiwei: Dropping the Urn (Ceramic Works 5000 B.C.E. - 2010 C.E.)Portland, ORJuly 15-October 30, 2010
Before defacing the first in a series of Neolithic vessels on video at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, Beijing-based artist and activist Ai Weiwei pauses to look into the camera, as if to ask the viewer to bear witness. He then dips the pot into a bucket of pink industrial paint, obscuring its ancient design. It could be said that by altering ancient Chinese artifacts Ai is making a statement, but most often his work comes ...
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The dictionary will tell you that jewelry is for personal adornment. But "Us, in flux" puts that definition to the test. Curated by Seth Papac and Ruth Koelewyn, and split between Lawrimore Project gallery and Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, "Us, in flux" brings together six artists whose work evokes inner worlds that visitors can "try on" without donning a thing.
On exhibit at Greg Kucera, Brazilian artist Célio Braga's Abstractions to Die For (21 Days) consist of loops of linked photographs slung casually over rods suspended from the ceiling, and remnants of medical attention as revealed in medicine boxes and ...
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Kaleidoscopic Quilts: The Art of Paula NadelsternAmerican Folk Art MuseumNew York, New YorkApril 21-September 13, 2009Remember your own childlike wonder when you held a kaleidoscope in your hands and quietly marveled at the shifting, dissolving color patterns created by a gentle turn? The quilt artist Paula Nadelstern takes a viewer back to that wonder, the pure visual pleasure first seen in a small tube.In this exhibition the American Folk Art Museum has, for the first time, offered a one-person show to a contemporary quilt maker, pairing her work with a ...
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The IceboxCrane Arts BuildingPhiladelphia, PAMarch 5 - April 3, 2010www.cranearts.com
"Medium Resistance" offered an intriguing snapshot of a certain kind of craftsmanship: ambitious, largely academic and unconcerned with traditional boundaries. The exhibit was conceived by Philip Glahn, Richard Hricko and Nicholas Kripal, all teachers at Tyler School of Art in, respectively, critical studies, printmaking and ceramics. The curators saw the latter two disciplines as forms of craft, which is not so provocative as it might seem. Both disciplines are rooted in skilled handwork, and both are under threat from the fashion for post-studio education. Despite ...
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Tony Marsh: New Work
Frank Lloyd GallerySanta Monica, CASept.5-Oct. 3, 2009Tony Marsh gets down to basics in his new ceramic sculptures, subject of a solo show at Frank Lloyd Gallery. These are organic, primordial forms reimagined and rendered with unusual skill and soul into polished, modern artifacts that invite us to contemplate—dare we say it?-the meaning of life, or at least life’s elemental properties and processes: germination and growth, reproduction and mutation, in and out. Marsh studied ceramics at California State University, Long Beach (where he’s been teaching now ...
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BY ANDREA DINOTOChris Antemann: Battle of the BritchesJason Walker: Human Made WildFerrin GalleryPittsfield, MassachusettsAugust 1 - September 12, 2009Both of these concurrent shows of surface-decorated ceramic sculpture present startling, witty and subversive works by a second-generation artist of the genre. Are we having fun yet? might be what Chris Antemann’s playfully erotic porcelain figurines are wondering as, in her words, they investigate “the struggle for dominance within the domestic experience.” If this phrase sounds dryly academic, imagine instead Meissen figural groups unleashed, performing in their own reality show in ...
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An In-depth Look at the Works of June Schwarcz and J. B. Blunk ...
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This must be the year of Wharton Esherick. Apart from the recent biography, the "dean of American craftsmen" who died just over 40 years ago has been featured in no less than three books and is the subject of a retrospective now at the University of Pennsylvania. The latter is a production of the Penn Libraries in association with the school's Architectural Archives and the nearby Wharton Esherick Museum [WEM]. As such it offers an exceptionally richly layered romp through a time - still not well understood - when nudity was nearly normal and artists could squeak by ...
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