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Review
Racine Art MuseumApr. 24 - Aug. 16, 2009Racine, WIramart.org
"Bigger, Better, More," the first retrospective since 1981 of Viola Frey's work, isn't actually very big. An exercise in thoughtful distillation by co-curators Davira S. Taragin and Susan Jefferies, it manages to spotlight Frey's recurring themes, passionate exploration of color and increasingly bold use of scale with just 22 well-chosen pieces. Making the selections must have been wrenching. Frey was phenomenally productive: although her sculpture sold consistently, her 15,000-square-foot warehouse/studio was still crammed with work when she died in 2004.
Frey, of course, is best known for her brilliantly colored, ...
Review
This show zeroes in on an aspect of industrial production that
studio ceramics once considered a chief weakness: the capacity
to convey a compelling sense of detail and touch. ...
Review
Since DIY - the abbreviation for "Do It Yourself" - is usually associated with self-empowerment, it's not surprising that works in the exhibition "DIY: A Revolution in Handicrafts" seek to reveal some disquieting truths. Most of the 16 featured American, British, and Canadian artists in the show at Pittsburgh's Society for Contemporary Craft (in celebration of the organization's 40th anniversary), move beyond traditional, artist-versus-craftsman debates and use meticulously wrought productions to make cautionary social statements.
Perhaps the most openly political work is CBU 87, 2010, by Desert Storm veteran Ehren Tool. CBU 87 refers to the specific weapon used by the ...
Review
The New MaterialityDigital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft
Fuller Craft MuseumBrockton, MAMay 29, 2010 - Feb. 6, 2011http://fullercraft.org
Madam CJ Walker (Large), a wall sculpture by textile artist Sonya Clark, is constructed entirely out of hair combs-those skinny plastic ones that barbers collect in Barbicide jars. When viewed from afar, the 2008 tapestry looks exactly as it should: a portrait of a beauty mogul, the first African-American millionairess.
Up close, though, the homage is upstaged by Clark's brilliant construction. Here, you're hit with how meticulously she has removed certain of each comb's teeth to create the picture, ...
Review
The de la Torre brothers combine glass with other materials as a means of addressing issues of identity. ...
Review
Racine Art Museum
Racine, Wisconsin
April 13–August 10, 2008
Life has a way of letting you know that you are lucky. One of those ways is the satisfaction of working on something you love. The evidence presented in “Earl Pardon: Palette Maestro” reveals this honored practitioner as a lucky man through a lifelong engagement with the potential of jewelry. Curated by Rosanne Raab and presented in the elegant and spacious entry gallery of the Racine Art Museum, the survey of over 70 objects from four decades of jewelry, hollowware, flatware and tabletop accessories includes a vigorous bloom of work from 1990, ...
Review
Although many visual artists use drawing as a form of diaristic practice, the role these drawings play in creative outcomes is as varied and complicated as the artists themselves. For Kurt Weiser, drawing once served as a kind of private parallel universe, intersecting with his production of functional pottery only as suppressed artistic longing. In the early 1990s Weiser began outing the preoccupations and fantasies visualized in his drawings, a process that resulted not only in a new body of work, but also a shift in his authorial voice.
Weiser’s mid-career retrospective, “Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser,” documents ...
Review
Two makers who find in skin a medium for revealing personal statements in ways that are simultaneously sophisticated and primal. ...
Review
Gargantuan in its ambition, "The Global Africa Project" seeks to gather the strands of African culture as they stretch across the globe. Now on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, the exhibition offers about 200 works of photography, furniture, jewelry, fashion, and ceramics. Notably, not all of the nearly 120 artists are African or even of African descent, but they respond to African themes from their studios around the world. Besides selecting artists and designers from countries like Senegal and South Africa, co-curators Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King-Hammond included many from the United States, Germany, France, Japan, India, ...
Review
Jeff Irwin: Nature as TrophyEarl & Birdie Taylor/Pacific Beach Branch Library San Diego, CASept. 13 - Nov. 22, 200
Denaturing carries a connotation of loss, the removal or compromise of something essential. Strictly defined, however, to denature means to change the properties of a thing, and that process might be transformative in a positive way. Jeff Irwin's compelling ceramic sculptures of the past several years engage both aspects of such change-the tragic and the catalytic, the sacrificial and the spectacular.
Most of the work in this memorable show took the form of wall-mounted animal heads, akin to the ...
Review
What becomes a legend most? Karen Karnes is more than admired in the ceramics world; she is beloved. She has won respect for the exceptional quality of her work and for her generosity of spirit as a teacher and an artist. "A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes," curated by Peter Held and first presented at the Ceramics Research Center at Arizona State University before embarking on its two-year national tour, is a reminder of what a pleasure it can be to encounter, in person, the full range of work created by such a figure.
Ceramics historian Garth Clark's ...
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