20
th
anniversary
invitational exhibition
This publication accompanies the 20th Anniversary Clay on the Wall Invitational Exhibition
organized by Landmark Arts in the School of Art at Texas Tech University. The exhibition was
co-curated by Glen Brown, Ph.D., professor of art history at Kansas State University, Manhattan
and Juan Granados, founding Director of Clay on the Wall and associate professor of ceramics
at Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
January 26 – February 24, 2013
Published by
Landmark Arts, Galleries of the Texas Tech University School of Art
Box 42081
Lubbock, TX 79409
www.landmarkarts.org
Copyright 2013 by the authors, artists and Texas Tech University. All rights reserved. No part of
this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission from Texas Tech University.
The exhibition and catalogue were generously supported with grants received from the Helen
Jones Foundation and The CH Foundation, both of Lubbock. Additional support came from
Cultural Activities Fees administered through the College of Visual & Performing Arts.
ISBN: 978-0-9883617-5-1
Printing by Copy Craft Printers, Inc., Lubbock, TX
Design by Cari Caldwell, Lubbock, TX
jan u ary 26t h - febru ary 24t h , 2013
glen r. brown | co-curator
juan granados | director
about clay on the wall
The concept of staging a “Clay on the Wall” exhibition came about in 1993 while I was teaching at Eastern
Washington University in Cheney Washington. I was asked by the gallery director to develop and plan a
show with national exposure. After thinking through several possibilities for this exhibition I came to the
simple conclusion that most exhibitors of 3-D work tend to present on pedestals. The concept of placing
the ceramic work on the wall emerged because I wanted to see how other artists could respond using the
wall as a means to present their artistic visions and personal voice regarding the various complex variables
of the human condition while using art as a universal language. I too had been challenging myself to create
work devoid of pedestals and therefore used the wall as a means for presenting ceramic artworks. Coming
up with the title “Clay on the Wall” was somewhat simple as the title suggests the method of exhibition.
This was the premise for the first “Clay on the wall” exhibition, which was conducted as an invitational.
Artists were invited to submit 10 – 20 slides from which the juror would select the best choices. Both
the inaugural exhibition in 1993 and the following exhibition in 1996 were presented in this manner and
I served as juror for the first two invitational exhibitions. Succeeding exhibitions were conducted as
competitive national calls for entries. I have co-juried subsequent exhibitions, once with my Texas Tech
University colleague Sara Waters in 1997 and later, in 2005, with Kansas State University Art Historian, Dr.
Glen Brown. I have also called upon internationally renowned artist, critic author and former editor of
Ceramics Monthly as well as internationally renowned Seattle based art critic, Mathew Kangas in 2007 and
in 2010 Elaine O. Henry, an internationally renowned artist and editor of Ceramics Art and Perception, was
also tapped to serve as juror.
The invitationals and the following juried exhibitions have included artists such as Marek Cecula, Tom
Bartel, Harris Deller, Barbara Frey, Susan Goldstein, Shin-Yeon Jeon, Leah Hardy, Steve Hilton, Anna Calluori
Holcombe, Hsin-Yi Huang, Tim Guthrie, Gary Molitar, Greg Roberts, Debora Sigel as well as many, many other
emerging artists who at the time were using the wall to present their works.
I can honestly say I am amazed it has been 20 years since the first “Clay on the Wall” exhibition. Twenty years
later there is no doubt that the exhibition project has been well received and has served as a tremendous
venue for many tremendously talented artists to share their personal artistic visions. The exhibition has
also served as a valuable teaching asset and thus inspiring countless exhibition enthusiasts. To celebrate
the 20th Anniversary Clay on the Wall Invitational Exhibition, I invited Dr. Glen Brown from Kansas State
University to serve as co-curator. We invited an exceptional group of artists to embody the spirit of “Clay
on the Wall.” The invited group of artists were not given scale and weight limitations for their artistic
creations. Therefore many of the artists’ complex, multi-part installation artworks are quite impressive.
Both Glen and I challenged the artists to expand their visions beyond previous parameters of past exhibitions – we believe these exceptionally talented artists most certainly met and exceeded our expectations.
Additionally, through the initiative of Texas Tech graduate student Adam Redd, participation at Texas Tech by
two guest artists from Kansas State University, Dylan Beck and Amy Santoferraro, has been made possible
with additional support from Landmark Arts.
I want to Acknowledge previously received generous support which has made “Clay on the Wall” such a tremendous success. Past “Clay on the Wall” exhibitions have received generous grants from the Helen Jones
Foundation of Lubbock and additional support from the Ryla T. & John F. Lott Endowment for Excellence in
the Visual Arts has facilitated the presentation of important symposia for the students and visiting artists.
I want to thank Joe Arredondo, Director of Landmark Arts, Anthony Saia, Assistant Director, for his exquisite installation and Robert Terrell for his nuanced lighting of the exhibition. I want to thank Dean Carol
Edwards, Director Tina Fuentes, my colleagues within the School of Art, Von Venhuizen, my colleague in
the ceramics area program, and our ceramics graduate students, Charles Dreis, El-yesha Puplampu, Adam
Redd and Zach Tate, for all their support – it has been all greatly appreciated. I certainly want to express
my gratitude to Ms. Cari Caldwell for an exceptional catalog design. Last, but not least – thanks to Glen
for his immensely generous and professional help and enthusiasm throughout the process in developing
this exhibition. I also extend a very warm thank you to the artists who contributed their artistic creations
in making this exhibition.
Juan Granados | Associate Professor of Ceramics, Texas Tech University | Founding Director of “Clay on the Wall”
Clay on the Wall:
Context and Content
b y G l e n R . B r o wn , ph . d .
o
n the 20th anniversary of Clay on the Wall, discussion of specific works should
properly be secondary to reflection on the context in which these works are presented. Gallery walls, after all, are signifiers that actively limit certain mean-
ings and proliferate others, especially where clay is concerned. Perhaps most obviously,
walls of any sort awaken in clay associations with its own history as a medium, particularly
its role as ornament in relationship to architecture. No doubt this relationship is as old as
the earliest carved mud-bricks of the Mesopotamian plain and the ancient Nile valley. It
inheres in the glazed reliefs of the palace at Persepolis, the spectacular tiled surfaces of
the Alhambra, and the glistening ostentation of the 18th-century Capodimonte Porcelain
Room. It is not by chance that many of the works in this exhibition allude to the history of
bricks and tiles or even embrace that history openly. Contemporary ceramics has a deep
and complex relationship with the past. Ceramists themselves generally recall it to some
degree in their work, and viewers tend to discern it in the forms and materials.
In this, the latest version of the Clay on the Wall exhibition, a lineage in ce-
ramic architectural elements is frankly acknowledged by such works as Adam Welch’s
NZKCCI #26/2012, which takes the form of the ordinary building brick – complete with
personalized frog (beveled concavity) – and subjects it to a transformation ambiguously
suggestive of both emergence and disintegration. An impression of metamorphosis is
also conveyed by the earthenware and fritware forms in Cary Esser’s Untitled Diptych 1,
which employ fissures left by the forming process to suggest aged masonry walls but also
to provide glimpses into interiors in implicit refutation of the superficiality of bricks
and tiles. In a similar vein, Cameron Crawford’s Bedtime Story juxtaposes trompe-l’oeil
representation of weathered architectural fragments with a pictorial tile, suggesting
that narratives flow equally over both. History marks the surfaces of individual bricks
and tiles, but these, in turn, speak abstractly of the long history of the utilitarian and
aesthetic forms that they exemplify.
It is noteworthy that Del Harrow, though a pioneer in exploring the poten-
tial of digital technologies for production of ceramic art, orients his untitled work to
the wall through the same vertical-and-horizontal grid employed by masons to lay Delft
tiles in the 17th century. Neil Forrest’s Tectonic Sutra, an implicit cybernetic fusion of
lungs and steel girders, has evolved partly from an interest in the curved spaces defined
by muqurnas, decorative Islamic corbels that drip like honeycombed stalactites from
the bay ceilings of historical mosques and mausoleums. Nick Kripal, who has spent
much of his career integrating quiet site-specific sculptures into the interior architectural spaces of churches and synagogues, arrays the wall-oriented porcelain multiples
of W. S. Variation #4 – each molded unit suggestive of a hexagonal Gothic baptistery
– into a decorative pattern derived from the sacred geometry underlying religious architectural design. David East’s Gingham Palimpsest and Through This Field, reference
architectural design of quite another sort: American suburban dwellings whose walls
bear the traces of aesthetic descent from homespun charm to the anonymous rusticity
of Martha Stewart corporate hominess.
Walls are clearly key to meanings conveyed by works that incidentally or ten-
dentiously call up the history of clay’s relationship to architecture, but what of those
works that seem indifferent to bricks and tiles? In what way do the gallery walls affect
meaning in those instances? One frequent answer relates not to physical location but
rather to conceptual orientation. It involves an issue that has little or no relevance to
media such as painting, but which is central to questions of identity in the field of contemporary ceramics. It is significant that the gallery wall conceptually negates utility
and guides the viewer to adopt a particular mode of reception toward objects: the “art
mode,” as it were. Mathew McConnell’s Between One and the Same I, for example,
cannot be misconstrued as incorporating vessels for domestic use, not simply because
of the deliberately rough execution of those vessels but rather because they are pointedly carried into the space of painting: the wall as a site that confers on objects a specific
status, both aesthetic and intellectual. This is crucial for McConnell’s work, which is
not about the utility of certain forms but rather the relationship between concepts of
originality and copy in the context of art.
Dirk Staschke’s Premonition could hardly be mistaken for a utilitarian form,
but its intense naturalism and potential for interpretation as a macabre product of dismemberment calls for a positioning in the rhetorical space defined by the gallery wall.
This contextualization immediately illuminates Staschke’s links to baroque vanitas
paintings, with their melancholy reminders that ephemerality is endemic to the human
condition. Jae Won Lee’s Blue Mountain is a similarly contemplative piece that utilizes
the white, shadow-softened expanse of the gallery wall to transcend material concerns
and evoke philosophical, cultural, and autobiographical allusions, in this case stemming from musing over the nature of Chinese characters as aesthetic abstractions of the
physical world.
The gallery wall lifts Linda Lopez ‘s One Day the Draft Will Blow it All Away
out of the everyday context in which objects are defined by their empirically discernible qualities. In her work, the still life inhabits an alternative world of psychological
resonance in which objects seem to quiver and metamorphose into loci of energy. In
contrast, Jeff Mongrain’s Habemus Papam inverts this order of energy and matter, rendering a physical object from a wave of compression and rarefaction. The ostensibly
non-objective sculpture materializes a sound wave corresponding to Cardinal Felici’s
1978 announcement of the election of Pope John Paul II: “Habemus papem! (We have
a Pope).”
If many of the works in this exhibition exploit the liminal space of the gallery
wall (in effect a threshold between the material and the purely conceptual) to reflect
on abstract ideas or immaterial phenomena, other works openly engage contemporary
issues of pressing material consequence. Jessica Knapp’s Thirst, for example, addresses
the severe drought conditions that currently grip the state of Texas, especially the Panhandle region. Delicate porcelain flowers in which blue glaze pools up like playa lakes
are dispersed over a map of the state’s rivers and streams rendered in raw clay that des-
iccates, shrinks, and cracks like the mud of a dry creek bed. A water crisis of another
sort, the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, is referenced by Nan Smith’s Summer’s Over II,
which washes up a school of dead minnows around a pictorial tile that rings with echoes
of Munch’s archetypal The Scream of Nature.
The degree to which nature has been overrun by human aspirations is suggest-
ed by Dylan Beck’s Domestic Conglomerations, which deploys a fleet of miniature slipcast airplanes to metonymically invoke the roughly 87,000 flights that occur across the
skies of the United States each day. Employing gallery walls primarily for their receptiveness to expansive, multipartite installations, Beck has in some exhibitions dispersed
many hundreds of the tiny aircraft in vast configurations that remind one of the scale of
energy consumption today. In this context, Amy Santoferraro’s BaskeTREES – bright
hybridized flora of salvaged plastic and metal and thin, slip-cast porcelain stems – seem
to weave issues of recycling and, consequently, energy conservation into the practice of
bricolage. Like Santoferraro, Chad Curtis includes an artificial tree in his Dis•location
but juxtaposes that to living moss encased in a terrarium. Suggestive of the fragility of
the earth’s ecosystem, the piece simultaneously sounds a cautionary note against the
wedge driven between human beings and nature by the virtual realities conjured from
digital technologies.
New technologies, both as topics and as tools, have become integral to much
of contemporary ceramics, raising questions about distinctions and reciprocity between craft and design. The recent work of Alex Hibbitt initiates a deliberate dialectic between the handmade and the computer designed, synthesizing forms from these
ostensibly antithetical formats. For Exercise #1 she began by hand building ceramic
objects in a baroque style, then scanned these into digital form, mapped the contours
as schematics, digitally fabricated these in felt and pinned the results over hand-built
porcelain interpretations of the digitally simplified originals. Bryan Czibesz and Shawn
Spangler have also taken note of the complexities arising from a synergy of craft and
computer-aided design. In their thrown-porcelain and CNC–cut urethane-foam Tectonics
and Dross: Remarks on the future archaeology of objects, they play similarly with the
products of encounter between hand and digital technologies and reflect on the benefits
and liabilities incurred in the transition between these.
The works of Hibbitt or Czibesz and Spangler might, of course, convey their
reflections on craft and technology as effectively off the wall as on, and this observation
raises an important point for this exhibition in both its current and previous manifestations. There are as many distinctions as similarities between the works on display, and
the walls that tie them physically together, far from unifying them in the level space of
a neutral ground, are in a sense bent variously to the wills of the works they bear. Clay
may compel walls to conjure history, invoke art-mode conventions of seeing that negate perceptions of utility, or simply yield the advantages of broad, open space. What
ultimately emerges from these differing interactions between clay and wall is a picture
of heterogeneity that is immediately recognizable as reflective of the great diversity of
contemporary ceramics in general.
Glen Brown, Ph.D. | Professor of Art History at Kansas State University, Manhattan
Artist List
Dylan J. Beck
Cameron Crawford
Chad D. Curtis
Bryan Czibesz and Shawn Spangler
David S. East
Cary Esser
Neil Douglass Forrest
Del Harrow
Alex Hibbitt
Jessica Knapp
Nicholas Kripal
Jae Won Lee
Linda Lopez
Mathew McConnell
Jeffrey Mongrain
Amy Santoferraro
Nan Smith
Dirk Staschke
Adam Welch
Dylan J. Beck [Manhattan, KS]
Domestic Conglomerations (2012), slip cast porcelain, cone 4, 84 x 120 inches
Recently, I have been thinking the overwhelming amount of Air traffic. On any given day in the United States there are over
87,000 flights. This is an astounding number of airplanes and even more staggering number of passengers. On the ground
we hardly notice the thousands of daily flights nevertheless air travel is an integral part of our economy, an amazing feat of
engineering, and a source of fear in terms of terrorism or just human incompetence. So the idea of flight has been a source
of great American inspiration yet at the same time it has been used as a tool in attempts to destroy the American way of life.
This work was created by using flight patterns and air traffic densities and takes the form of a field of falling airplane snowflakes
that simultaneously appears peaceful and menacing. The airplanes are cast in porcelain from plaster molds taken of
commercial airplane replicas.
Cameron Crawford [Chico, CA]
Bedtime Story (2012), ceramic, 27 x 13 inches
While hinting at their former function these disparate shards appear to have been re-purposed
into a new structure. They frame a tile with a distinct narrative. My interest in using the
imagery of degraded fragments of architectural ceramics centers on their ability to imply a
tension between attempts at permanence and corrosive forces. The drawn imagery is meant to
suggest a possible context, offer more clues, but withhold conclusive answers.
Chad D. Curtis [Glenside, PA]
Dis•location (2012), glazed ceramic, wood,
earth, moss, 40 x 26 x 17 inches
Dis•location incorporates a living element in the form
of moss contained in a terrarium. Moss is a simple
plant more closely related to algae than to common
plants of today and has survived for approximately
250 million years. Wardian Cases (terrariums) rose
to popularity during the 19th century on the heels of
the Industrial Revolution and the concentration of
people in urban centers. Terrariums served as a means
of protection from the polluted air of Victorian cities
and allowed for nature to be brought into the domestic
space, fostering a connection to the natural world in an
era when the human relationship to their environment
changed more rapidly and significantly than at any other
point in history. Not unlike the Industrial Revolution,
the Digital Revolution has further distanced the human
relationship to the natural world, ushering in an era
of mediated experiences removed from the world of
tactility and the physical nature of the body.
Bryan Czibesz & Shawn Spangler [Kingston, NY & Macomb, IL]
Tectonics and Dross: Remarks on the future archaeology of objects (2012), porcelain,
CNC-cut urethane foam, acrylic, and stainless steel , 24 x 36 x 4 inches
Ceramic history is implicitly tied to ideas of culture, technology, labor, art, and utility. As our means of producing
functional vessels has evolved, technological development has always defined a boundary between beginnings and
endings, and between old and new. This work presents a spatial map of potential and loss, and suggests the range of
practices necessary to trace the shape of time across these boundaries.
Gingham Palimpsest 2 (2011), ceramic, 20 x 16 x 2 inches
David East [Brooklyn, NY]
Through architectural and design references my work has revolved around issues of urban planning, architectural
ornament and design as signifiers of our cultural history. My work attempts to reveal the positive and negative byproducts of our attempts to establish order. As Ebenezer Howard’s idealism gives way to white flight and Constance
Spry is remade into Martha Stuart as a multi-national; my work attempts to trace these cycles, combining the
nostalgia of gingham with the high modernism of an Eames profile. The sources and images I have sought out:
cheap Styrofoam knock-offs of classic decorative trim, the rosette, the mantle; become a mirror of the phenomena and peculiarities of an “American” point of view.
The approach I have taken attempts to reflect on the monumental within the mundane, and seeks to bore out the
middle of modernism to see its split-level by-products. The work rotates around these axes operating as much a
strategy of thinking as of making.
Cary Esser [Kansas City, MO]
Untitled diptych 1 (2012), earthenware and fritware, 13 x 20 x 2 inches
These works depart from my usual passions for the decorated and highly glazed surfaces of tiles, bricks, and carved reliefs.
Here, markings and fissures left by the forming process contrast with grid lines that recess into the mass of the objects.
This new process celebrates the raw clay surface and provokes me to consider the mysterious interior of solid masonry.
Neil Forrest [Nova Scotia, Canada]
Tectonic Sutra (2011-12), stoneware and porcelain, mixed fabrication methods, 14 x 120 x 20 inches
Tectonic Sutra is a ‘line’ of visual text, intending to collect a number of interests. I have been involved in ideas about
layered assemblies that produce field decoration. The polymorphic forms of ‘Sutra’ intend a primordial or instinctual
counterpoint to the more strict architecture that bonds the ‘lung’ shapes of a more biological animus. This provisional
ornament facilitates movement and change, advancing a ‘detached’ and nomadic entity. The works share an
expression with traditional Islamic ornament describing a similar curved space of the arabesque and muqarna in
the architectures of Persia and Ottoman Turkey. On top of this, I see the skewered lung shapes as a darker representation – vulnerable biological organs removed from their rightful place and violently repositioned.
Del Harrow [Fort Collins, CO]
Untitled (2012), ceramic (stoneware) and glaze, 16 x 54 x 8 inches
This new work - produced specifically for “Clay on The Wall” - was inspired by the exhibitions title. The show’s subject is
material and architecture.
Gottfried Semper proposes that the original interior walls (or space dividers) were woven membranes or hung tapestries.
As a building component clay can create walls by itself - as brick or cob - or as a layer in a stratified composite - as tile. Tiled
surfaces are a kind of skin. They function both as ornament - bringing color, pattern, and texture, and also as a physically
impervious surface.
This object - a kind of architectural fragment - weaves between the wall, the membrane textile, and the ceramic tile. The
form was generated digitally. The topography of a virtual mesh/fabric is pulled by computer simulated gravity. A plaster
mold was carved on a CNC milling machine and a thin sheet of clay was draped over this mold.
Exercise #1 (2010), porcelain, felt,
and pins, 14 x 14 x 7 inches
Alex Hibbit [Athens, OH]
During a recent visit to the Czech Republic, I was struck by the juxtaposition of particularly iconic architectural stylesthe baroque and the cubist. The polarization indicated by these two movements surfaces in the artist’s attitude to
digital technologies, where the use of such technologies seemingly necessitates the erasure of craft and the handmade.
Exercise #1 is part of a body of works which are combinations of handcrafted and digitally formed materials: A series
of hand-made ceramic forms that reference the baroque aesthetic were scanned using a 3-d scanner, and the skin of
the form then “unwrapped” to provide a 2d mapping that was translated by digital fabrication methods into, in this
case, felt. Some of these forms were also simplified – (made cubist) in the digital environment, and remade by hand.
This work is intended to add to a body of critical responses to craft practice and it’s relationship to contemporary
technologies, which are often seen as pre-deterministic processes, not adaptable tools.
Jessica Knapp [Columbus, OH]
Thirst (2013), unfired clay, hand-built porcelain and glaze,
fired to cone 6, and stainless steel wire, 96 x 84 x 8 inches
The rich symbolism, value, and allure associated with porcelain provides me with opportunities to explore, map out, and respond to
other histories as well, personal or universal; histories that are not easily described by words alone due to the intense emotion that
surrounds them. I create objects and installations, many of which could be described as abstracted layered maps. For the piece titled
Thirst, I combined lines of unfired earthenware clay affixed to the wall that map out the waterways and watersheds in Texas with porcelain
flowers glazed with a deep water blue to signify the relative scarcity and importance of fresh water sources to all life forms, and specifically
the population centers, ranches and farms in the state. The dry, unfired earthenware speaks both to the recent climate conditions Texas
has endured, as well as contrasting it with the comparable rarity of porcelain as a material, and thus evoking a sense of preciousness and
need for care that echoes the understanding Texans have about the value of water, and the state’s widespread water conservation efforts.
Nicholas Kripal [Philadelphia, PA]
W.S. Variation #4 (2007), porcelain and aluminum, 44 x 44 x 2 inches
Over the past ten years one aspect of my studio practice has been an investigation of site-related/site-specific
installations. Specifically, but not exclusively, I have placed sculptural installations within sacred spaces. I am
interested in the history of the site, the religious rites that take place within the site, and the architectural iconography of the site. The last is of particular interest as it operates as a signifier for the other two. Unlike traditional
exhibitions in white box gallery spaces, these sculptural installations involve interface with the site’s congregation,
and extensive research and development for preliminary proposals that describe and negotiate the conceptual and
aesthetic integration of the sculpture to the site. Consequently, all of the above affect and determine the format of
the final installation. Furthermore, the research for these site-related installations inevitably generates ideas,
materials, and new forms that extend other aspects of my studio practice. W.S. Variation #4 is one example. This
series evolved out of my research into sacred geometry, fractals, and religious architecture iconography.
Jae Won Lee [Mason, MI]
Blue Mountain (2012), porcelain, 36 x 48 inches
There are three main components in the conceptual development of my creative process—art philosophy, personal identity, and cultural
dimension. Artistic activity is a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined. Life is about contacts and
encounters, and the new work inevitably reveals the nature of that new contact. The subtle, gradual change in the way I see, in both natural
and cultural surroundings, expands the manner in which I ultimately operate in the studio. As the term, a homing instinct, indicates, my
search lies in the instinctual directing homeward in terms of philosophical return to dust from dust, and the poetic pursuit of return to a
physical homeland. I also recalled studying basic Chinese characters while growing up in Korea and how those characters were developed
in such a visual way, emulating nature itself. After the first trip to China, I started to study Chinese characters as the hieroglyphic nature
of the language inspires me to visual imagination, then to artistic interpretation. Through this multiple wall panel, I attempt to visualize
Chinese characters, (qing shan: Blue Mountain), evoking elusive qualities as well as examining worldviews through the coordination of
art objects with meaning.
One day the draft will blow it all away (2012), ceramic,
acrylic, ink, and gouache on paper, 55 x 62 x 12 inches
Linda Lopez [Elkins, AR]
What was in it for the chair that hooked my bag today? What was in it for the bag?
I resist acknowledging that the objects inhabiting our lives are inanimate. By considering the objects’ needs, and
denying our needs for those objects, they can expose a life and language of their own. A sagging couch expresses
its physical exhaustion from the continuous support of lounging bodies. A coffee table makes its hostility clear to
the car keys by continuously throwing them over its edge and onto the floor. By carefully observing the relationships
between furniture, knick- knacks, and utilitarian objects, I have found them to reveal less about the lives of their
owners than they do about their own hidden lives.
These objects present evidence of the physical and psychological states of objects that often go unnoticed. In this
realm, objects cause unexpected encounters, such as the chair that hooked my bag. When these interactions are
revealed, we look at things and they look back.
Mathew McConnell [Elkins, AR ]
Between One and The Same Part 2 (2011), raku-fired earthenware,
mixed media on paper, plywood and fasteners, 30 x 86 x 20 inches
Many of my past works have relied on a formula whereby I remake the work of another artist/s. The work in this exhibition, Between
One and The Same, Part 2 takes as its premise my personal production of both the “original” and the “duplicate.” The results are two
apparently similar versions of the same object or image.
I was hoping in these works that if I casually produced both the original and duplicate, exerting a pointed nonchalance over one thing
and the next, that I may be able to intuit something fundamental about the self in the space found between. Each side of the composition
contains a factual physical account of my presence, but what remains unaccounted for is as nebulous as any single being.
Jeffrey Mongrain [New York, NY]
Habemus Papam (2005), clay,
black iron, wax, 45 x 45 x 3 inches
This sculpted sound wave is taken from October 1978 recorded announcement by Cardinal Felici
from the Vatican balcony. He is proclaiming the election of Pope John Paul II. Habemus Papam
is Latin for “We have a Pope.”
Amy Santoferraro [Manhattan, KS]
BaskeTREE: Rianna (2012), slip cast porcelain and found materials , 14 x 8 x 8 inches
BaskeTREE: Dusty Rose (2012), slip cast porcelain and found materials, 14 x 8 x 8 inches
BaskeTREE: Guest Host (2012), slip cast porcelain and found materials, 14 x 8 x 8 inches
BaskeTREES are marketed and sold separately as floral arrangements, because they employed a wide variety of delicate and non-archival
materials. By using plastic, ceramic, aluminum, foam, and a variety of other materials interchangeably I am quite literally taking our
disregarded and discarded stuff and representing it as carefully organized and reconsidered stuff, encouraging the celebration and questioning
of a possible shelf life attached to an item for sale in a gallery.
I find a lot of stuff. I make a lot of stuff. Found and created objects get blurred through my making and thinking. It is no coincidence that
I lean towards stuff of little to no value. I beg these materials to acknowledge and engage their own artificiality and actively retain a bit of
apathy in their new debut.
Summer’s Over II (2013), glazed earthenware
and porcelain with china paint, photographic
decal, and latex paint, 33½ x 63¾ x 2 inches
Nan SmitH [Gainesville, FL]
My current research utilizes sculptural imagery to illustrate the impact of environmental
contamination. Being a synthesis of ceramics, sculpture and photography, the artwork
continues my use of molds, and photographic imagery printed as glaze decals.
Summer’s Over II, is a wall hung artwork that focuses on the environmental impacts of Gulf
Oil spill. This artwork has been informed by research collaboration with UF scientists are
on the Gulf Oil spill team. The sculpture evokes an emotional response to the impacted
aquatic biota by illustrating the menhaden; a small bait fish, called “the most important
fish in the sea “, (H. Bruce Franklin’s most recent book).
Dirk Staschke [Portland, OR]
Premonition (2009), ceramic and mixed media, 10 x 28 x 6 inches
My work reinterprets Vanitas still life paintings of 16th century Northern Europe, which recognize the
fleeting nature of life and question the futility of earthly pursuits and acquisitions. Using sculptural form
instead of paint, I employ a transgressive beauty that contradicts commonly held convictions about what
makes something appealing. Playing on the human impulse to own and consume, my work uses symbols of
longing to explore notions of human desire and its repercussions.
The work Premonition embraces contradiction and seeks to explore the inexplicable through Art and craft,
life and death, the beautiful and the grotesque, the permanent and the ephemeral. In reaching for an
explanation of everything, it leaves one with more questions than answers.
Adam Welch [Highstown, NJ]
NZKCCI #26 (2012), New Zealand kaolin with Cape Cod inclusions, print, 40 x 40 x 4 inches
My work focuses on the brick as a form and concept - an investigation into theory, history and material culture.
My work incorporates design, documentation and intervention. I use the brick as performance and labor performative labor, the embodiment of human labor, not some abstract notion thereof. The making of the brick
and the constructions explore cultural value attached to labor and doing something for the sake of doing it.
Separate though not distinct bodies of work emerge from this practice – reintroducing brick into architecture, a
theoretical bricking up of existing windows and an investigation into objectivity. Using techniques pioneered by
generations of atlas makers, the brick undergoes subjective objectivity, from the human observation of brick to
the supposed scientific objectivity of technology, in an effort to understand the brick more fully.
20th Anniversary Clay on the Wall
Invitational Exhibition Checklist
Dylan J. Beck, Domestic Conglomerations (2012), slip cast
porcelain, cone 4, 84 x 120 inches
Nicholas Kripal, W.S. Variation #4 (2007), porcelain
and aluminum, 44 x 44 x 2 inches
Cameron Crawford, Bedtime Story (2012), Ceramic,
27 x 13 inches
Jae Won Lee, Blue Mountain (2012), porcelain,
36 x 48 inches
Chad D. Curtis, Dis•location (2012), glazed ceramic, wood,
earth, moss, 40 x 26 x 17 inches
Linda Lopez, One day the draft will blow it all away (2012),
ceramic, acrylic, ink, and gouache on paper,
55 x 62 x 12 inches
Bryan Czibesz and Shawn Spangler, Tectonics and
Dross: Remarks on the future archaeology of objects (2012),
porcelain, CNC-cut urethane foam, acrylic, and stainless steel ,
24 x 36 x 4 inches
Mathew McConnell, Between One and The Same Part 2
(2011), raku-fired earthenware, mixed media on paper, plywood
and fasteners, 30 x 86 x 20 inches
David S. East, Gingham Palimpsest 2 (2011), ceramic,
20 x 16 x 2 inches
Jeffrey Mongrain, Habemus Papam (2005), clay, black iron,
and wax, 45 inches in diameter x 3 inches deep
David S. East, Through This Field (2012) detail view,
ceramics, steel, mini DVD player, and Quicktime animation,
30 x 50 x 12 inches
Jeffrey Mongrain, Pierced Moose with Branch (2005),
clay and resin,11 x 4 x 33 inches
Cary Esser, Untitled diptych 1 (2012), earthenware and fritware,
13 x 20 x 2 inches
Cary Esser, Untitled diptych 2 (2012), Earthenware and
fritware, 13 x 20 x 2 inches
Neil Douglass Forrest, Tectonic Sutra (2011-12),
stoneware and porcelain, mixed fabrication methods,
14 x 120 x 20 inches
Del Harrow, Untitled (2012), ceramic (stoneware) and glaze,
16 x 54 x 8 inches
Alex Hibbitt, Exercise #1 (2010), porcelain, felt, and pins,
14 x 14 x 7 inches
Jessica Knapp, Thirst (2013), unfired clay, hand-built
porcelain and glaze, fired to cone 6, and stainless steel wire,
96 x 84 x 8 inches
Amy Santoferraro, BaskeTREE: Dusty Rose (2012),
slip cast porcelain and found materials, 14 x 8 x 8 inches
Amy Santoferraro, BaskeTREE: Guest Host (2012),
slip cast porcelain and found materials, 14 x 8 x 8 inches
Amy Santoferraro, BaskeTREE: Rianna (2012),
slip cast porcelain and found materials , 14 x 8 x 8 inches
Nan Smith, Summer’s Over II (2013), glazed earthenware and
porcelain with china paint, photographic decal, and latex paint,
33½ x 63¾ x 2 inches
Dirk Staschke, Premonition (2009), ceramic and mixed
media, 10 x 28 x 6 inches
Adam Welch, NZKCCI #26 (2012), New Zealand kaolin with
Cape Cod inclusions, print, 40 x 40 x 4 inches