EDITOR’S NOTE: Numerous local art events are associated this week with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)’s 59th conference which is being held in Salt Lake City. For a feature about the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and NCECA’s three cornerstone exhibitions, see this feature link.
No better opportunity for Material Gallery to host its first show featuring 3-D art forms than in Form (in)Formation, one of the exhibitions for the national gathering National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) which is taking place this week in Salt Lake City.
Organized by Hideo Mabuchi, a Stanford University physicist who studies quantum optics and is a ceramic artist, the show features the work of nine artists who also share the foundational elements from their respective processes of how they decided the form, creation and presentation of their work. The exhibition is open today through March 29, the closing day of the NCECA conference and Material Galley (2970 South West Temple) has extended its hours to accommodate as many viewers as possible.
The eclectic body of work curated by Mabuchi delivers a fascinating return on the premises of its creative brief. Mabuchi explained the provenance of the exhibition’s theme that as “the footprint of exploration, form physicalizes the ways we search for knowing, feeling, and connection. Our functional, sculptural, and installation works are presented alongside sources, snapshots, and sidelines of the creative strivings behind them.”
Notable are the plentiful examples of works that engage and reflect the practicalities of science, including ecology, marine biology, the impact of human presence on animals and birds, and even the philosophical approach to the scientific inquisitiveness of artists, in general. In some instances, function, which has such strong salience and valence in ceramics, is considered. There are examples of traditional ceramic craft in which the artists are working with wild clay and natural materials that differ from what they have previously used in their pieces. Forms inspired by nature and culture are combined in a unique counterpoint. How structure and assembly are achieved is just as compelling to observe. The spirit of problem-solving runs deep throughout this collection of artwork, as artists contend with the realities and reconcile techniques to create work that carries artistic value which extends beyond aesthetically musings to have concrete meaning on multidisciplinary platforms.
Local floral ecology is elemental to Altman’s porcelain sculptures. Or Just Some Human Sleep, comprising porcelain, stoneware, glass and epoxy, is inspired in part by Apple Picking, a Robert Frost poem: “Were he not gone,/ the woodchuck could say whether it’s like his/ Long sleep, as I describe it’s coming on,/ Or just some human sleep.”
In Sacrificial #1, Kelly Connole, a Carleton College professor, melds the intersection of poetry, science and cultural heritage beautifully, which includes crow sculptures (as well as the head of a sacrificed lamb) and screen lithographic prints reflecting the ancient traditions of stargazing and their cosmological significance throughout history. Crows, which have been revered for their wisdom and intelligence, were especially vulnerable to West Nile Virus outbreaks.
One curious dimension in Megan Thomas’ work tied to nature is identifying the underlying reasons about the frequency of birds flying into windows and structures with deadly impact. An avid birdwatcher, Thomas has created Sleeping Owls and owl jars, making a commanding set of salt-fired stoneware.
Eva Kwong‘s brightly colored Emergent Microbes are 3-ad printed in resin comprise a magnificent interdisciplinary study of the conversational exchange between our microcosmic and macrocosmic selves.
Steeped in her studied engagement with marine science and intertidal ecosystems, Sarah Logan‘s Otolith Project, which highlight the pairs of tiny ear stones that provide key sensory information in fish, are riveting for their delicate rendering, as they are representational but also not imitative. They are significantly enlarged from their microscopic scale and Logan fires each pair in a wood kiln, which, in turn, become data points per se, by recording the atmospheric conditions at specific points inside the kiln. Logan also has two aggregate pieces that are her artistic interpretations of drops of water under a microscope.
Mabuchi‘s study of bottles arises from his scientific interests in the microscopic transformations that occur when clay is fired in atmospheric kilns, He created a series of 21 bottles, with the objective of attempting to hone and perfect each successive version. It is the 10th bottle, the one that he said that he believed was the most ideal of the lot, which is featured. In addition, he includes a 2-D silhouette of the entire sequence of the 3-D bottle forms he created on his computer. Another piece is inspired in part by an older generation oscillator.
The show includes works by Takuro and Hitomi Shibata, the husband-and-wife owners of Studio Touya and the co-authors of the book Wild Clay. Their works are iconic in their representation of classic ceramic pieces that are just as functional as they are esteemable in complex artistic expression. Viewers should note the fine details in their respective pieces, which signify both artists’ deft approach to adapt to changes in materials and technical process: Nothingness and Awareness by Hitomi and Whispers of the Forest and Emptiness Held by Takuro. Their studio prioritizes sustainability on an immersive scale with regard to reclamation and recycling. They harvest the clays in North Carolina where they live, use wood firing, and make glazes from washed wood ash gathered from wood kilns and stoves, collect rainwater for their studio and dry their pieces in the sun.
Viewers will be delighted in the scores of crawling delicately fashioned flowers that grace the walls and ceiling infrastructure of the Material Gallery space, as created by Juliane Shibata. Her installations are premised on the principles of decorative patterns as well as the Japanese aesthetic principle of mujō (mutability and impermanence).
Material Gallery is open today and hours for the remaining days are March 27, from 10 am-4 pm, with an opening reception (open to the public) from 5 to 9 pm., which will include Mabuchi and several artists attending; March 28, from 10 am-9 pm and Saturday, March 29, from 10 am-2 pm. For more information, see the Material Gallery website.