Lookingcloselyatwhatisnotthere by Kate Blacklock

Looking Closely at What is Not There

Kate Blacklock

NEWPORT ART MUSEUM January 14th- May 15th, 2017 76 Bellevue Avenue Newport, RI 02840 401) 848-8200

LOOKING CLOSELY AT WHAT IS NOT THERE

_____________________ Kate Blacklock

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Synthesizing the Seen and the Unseeable Dominic Molin The philosophically puckish title of Kate Blacklock’s exhibition at the Newport Art Museum, “Looking Closely at What Is Not There,” prompts consideration of our ongoing search for meaning in the world and what is perhaps an increasing over-reliance on vision and “visuality” to realize that endeavor. That this should deﬁne a moment distinguished by perhaps the most treasonous (and potentially treacherous) ability of imagery to be synthesized with startling authenticity makes an understanding of the illusory nature of what we see in visual representations all the more urgent and necessary. The four bodies of work in the exhibition combine computer-based photographic and sculptural renderings and more conventionally created paintings to encourage a heightened sense of optic activity and attention as a strategy to become both better equipped at seeing through “what is not there” and more enchanted by what is. The ambitiously orchestrated range of technical, cultural, and emotional complexities within Blacklock’s individual works also characterizes the relationships between them, thus giving the entire enterprise a rather “symphonic” demeanor. As such Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde or “The Song of the Earth” (1909) becomes a ﬁtting soundtrack of sorts for Blacklock’s digital reimaginations of

traditional 13th and 14th Century Chinese landscape scrolls, both for its own expansive sensibilities but also for its similar inspiration in and evocation of Chinoiserie.[1] The alternation of dark meditations on the transitory character of earthly existence and bright celebrations of childlike innocence in Mahler’s song cycle finds their visual equivalent in the tenebrous backgrounds and fascinating computer-and-hand processed whirl of nature in Blacklock’s images. These Chinese landscape scroll-inspired works comprise two vertically oriented pictures and five connected horizontal panels. They feature images of natural elements sourced from the artist’s backyard both as they appear in life and intensively manipulated on the very digital scanner used to develop the overall composition. Grasses, leaves, insects, and other flora and fauna are presented with an expected degree of veracity, whereas earth and rock formations were created by the alteration of images of dead leaves, and waves and ripples on water through the direct use of the artist’s hand in the scanning process. Blacklock’s direct intervention anticipates and complicates facilely critical comparisons between the “handmade” characteristics of the centuries-old Chinese scrolls with an assumed technological detachment resulting from the use of computer hard-and-soft-ware. The transformation of once-diurnal scenes into nocturnal 4

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ones becomes a possibly sobering reflection on 21st Century humankind’s increasingly fraught (and most likely worsening) relationship with the natural environment. Other differences between new and old are made manifest in Blacklock’s use of an aluminum ground whose durability and metallic sheen contrasts sharply with the fragile and “absorptive” character of the paper of the Chinese scrolls. Finally, the bracketing of her landscapes with solid color blocks might evoke the borders of their historical counterparts but perhaps more strongly produces a “cinematic” effect – like an edited cut or fade in experimental and independent films beginning in the 1960s. A related series based on traditional Chinese “scholars’

tradition of extracting stones from nature and either

rocks” extends Blacklock’s complex engagement of

encourage concentrated and contemplative thought.

Asian art of past eras. These more portrait-like works

A series of large still life paintings serves as a transition

use digitally manipulated imagery—actually the same technique used to synthesize rock or earth in the landscapes—to reconﬁgure objects based in a Chinese

retaining their existing form or altering them through carving or other means. Historian of Chinese Art, Robert D. Mowry has suggested that scholars rocks, “like a landscape painting … represented a microcosm of the universe on which the scholar could meditate within the conﬁnes of his studio or garden.”[2] Their amorphous appearance and materiality allowed them to

suggest

multiplicity

readings

and

interpretations, making them an ideal focal point for philosophical musing and speculation. Blacklock’s reconsideration of the objects in her own pictorial works positions the tradition of modern western art within which she works as similarly existing to

from the scholars’ rocks’ simulation of historical objects

intended

for

intellectual

meditation

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to rigorously aestheticized representations of ordinary,

1780) or Dutch ﬁgures including Pieter Claesz (1597–

functional phenomena such as drinking glasses and

1660) or Floris van Dyck (1575–1651). Her

vases staged to encourage a heightened sense of

contemporary photographic or cinematically framed

visual delectation. These photorealist works by

“close-ups,” however, are more phenomenological

Blacklock are rendered in traditional painterly fashion

than allegorical, encouraging the viewer to reconstruct

and represent surfaces, reﬂections, and refractions to

eﬀects of light that were both “there” and “not there”

the point where their verisimilitude dissolves into

when Blacklock arranged the objects to be painted in

abstraction. In doing so, they engage the distinctly

her studio, depending on one’s physical position and

European art genre of still life that, particularly in its

visual perspective.

Spanish and Dutch manifestations of the 16th through

The polish and lustrous aﬀect represented in the

18th Centuries, represented quotidian objects in arrangements that raised the viewer’s consciousness of such philosophical considerations as mortality, vanity, and temperance. Returning again to the title of Blacklock’s exhibition, “Looking Closely at What is Not There,” it seems readymade both for this particular group of paintings and for such art historical precedents as the work of Spanish masters Juan Sanchez Cotan (1560–1627) and Luis Meléndez (1716–

photorealistic paintings is brought into the physical and material realm with a group of 3D printed ceramics that take shape from the elaboration of traditional two-dimensional design motifs. Blacklock’s use of porcelain returns us interestingly to the intensive cultural exchange between Eastern and Western cultures developed throughout the work in her exhibition. Porcelain originated in China 2000

11 11

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years ago and appeared later in Europe in the 18th

musical sensibility. Not coincidentally, much of the

Century. Blacklock extends this legacy by bringing a

imagery found on album covers of recordings of Das Lied

technologically advanced technique and process to

are drawn from Chinese and Japanese art history. A 1963

bear on a time-honored expressive practice. Her

pressing on CBS Classics of a Bruno Walter-conducted

forms resemble vases at ﬁrst glance yet “looking

recording of the song cycle actually features a work by

closely at what isn’t there” reveals none of the required

Qian Xuan, whose scrolls inspired the imagery in

apertures or provisions for containment that such

Blacklock’s work.

vessels require. They possess a curiously organic quality—reﬂecting, possibly, the coexistence of various

[2] Robert D. Mowry, quoted in, “Collecting Guide:

decorative elements, some of which might have a basis

Scholars’ Rocks,” www.Christies.com, November 23, 2015

in natural forms—while also embodying the hi-tech manner of their manufacture in their sturdiness and ﬁnish. Curiously timeless, yet only conceivable thanks

Dominic Molon is the Richard Brown Baker Curator of

to means available in this day and age, they singularly

Contemporary Art at The Rhode Island School of

represent the exchange of past and present, of east

Design Museum. He was previously Chief Curator of

and west, and of seen, unseen, and un-see-able that

the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2010-2013)

characterizes Blacklock’s most recent work.

and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1994-2010). Molon has organized solo

_________________

exhibitions of numerous artists including Martin Boyce

[1] Mahler’s composition was inspired by German poet

(2015), Leslie Hewitt 2012), Liam Gillick (2009),

Hans Bethge’s translations of Chinese poetry beginning in

Wolfgang Tillmans (2006), and Sharon Lockhart (2001)

1907. Songs such as “Von der Jugend” (“Of Youth”) and

and major thematic shows such as "Production Site:

"Der Trunkene im Frühling" ("The Drunkard in Spring")

The Artist's Studio Inside-Out" (2010) and "Sympathy

(“The Drunkard In Spring”) possess a distinctly “Asian”

for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967" (2007).

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In Praise of Shadows (and Light) Richard Turner The opening sequence of the 1986 film Blue Velvet begins with idyllic images of a blue sky, a white picket fence and red roses. Things quickly go wrong as a man watering his lawn apparently has a stroke and falls to the ground. The camera follows him down and tunnels into the lawn where the blades of grass become a jungle and ants become menacing monsters, their masticating amplified by an ominous soundtrack. Kate Blacklock’s Nightscapes take us into a similarly fascinating but sinister world where things are not what they seem. They exist on the cusp of curiosity and morbidity, somewhere between the opening shot of David Lynch’s film and Qian Xuan’s 13th century painting Early Autumn. The images in the Nightscapes are pinned to the dark space of the background in much the same way that insect specimens are literally pinned to a cork matrix where they are typically arranged in deliberate sequences. In the Nightscapes the images are freed 15

from the tether of a methodical catalogue to become expressive symbols, to define space, to change scale and morph unexpectedly, all in the service of Ms. Blacklock’s murky narratives. Qian Xuan’s Early Autumn, which is the point of departure for Ms. Blacklock’s Nightscapes is a daytime experience, a close observation of the natural world where the gossamer details of the dragonfly’s wings and the sleek patterns of the frog’s back are rendered with delicate precision. Gazing at the painting we, the viewers, know where we are located. We are lying on the ground on the bank of a pond peering at the undisturbed flora and fauna of this wee world. In Ms. Blacklock’s Nightscapes we have no such sense of security. The light is artificial, the colors are unnatural, the space is both water and land and, at the same time, it is neither. Her use of dead grasses, leaves, insects and birds transports us from the realm of Chinese painting to the world of taxidermy and

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museum dioramas. The dead bird ﬂies again. The leaf morphs into a rock, then becomes an island and then a distant mountain range. The fact that the artist frequently moves the leaves, grass and other objects while they are being scanned increases their abstraction often to such a degree that it loosens their hold on their initial identities as familiar components of the natural world. An eerie luminosity shines through the dark ground from the aluminum substrate on which the Nightscapes are printed. This glow is intentionally reminiscent of the light in the vanitas paintings of Johann Claesz, another touchstone for Ms. Blacklock. Like the vanitas paintings, the Nightscapes entreat us to contemplate our mortality but without the reassuring guidance of a familiar set of religious symbols. Here we are wandering on our own through a region of disquiet. The elegance of the imagery in Nightscapes beguiles us and before we know it we are in Alice’s wonderland where one pill makes you smaller and one pill makes you tall, where we can no longer trust our perceptions, where a Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia could well be drifting and drowning beyond the bank of grasses that frames our journey into this netherworld. Like her Nightscapes, Ms. Blacklock’s series of prints inspired by Chinese scholars’ rocks have an uneasy relationship with their source material. Just as we can understand the extended horizontal format of the

Nightscapes as evoking the traditional hand scroll, so we can find the grotesque forms of the scholars’ rocks in this series of images. The tortured convolutions of the manipulated floral matter remind us of the lithic forms created by centuries of erosion by water and wind or the intense heat and pressure of the earth’s crust. Indeed, the textures in some of the images do bear a resemblance to fossilized plant matter, weathered driftwood or petrified wood. Some images persuade us to imagine the studied abandon of modern schools of ikebana. Others summon comparisons to the gnarled and bleached cypress of a classic bonsai. Such visual correspondences are not as vital to understanding the work as is the manner in which the imagery conjures the malleability of stone rather than the weight, mass and immutability we commonly associate with idea of a rock. If we think of the life of a stone as enduring over vast millennia, well beyond that of the brief epoch of the anthropocene, it becomes a mutable entity rather than a static object. Blacklock imbues her images of scholars’ rocks with a sense of frenetic energy, they tremble like tethered leaves in a sharp and sudden draft. Ms. Blacklock’s images are animated by the chi (energy or spirit force ) that connoisseurs claim to perceive in scholars’ rocks. They are anything but the immutable objects that we think of as rocks, stones and boulders. In the words of Henry Miller they “stand still like a humming bird” ever

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ready to morph into yet another fantastic configuration. The Chinese term zhu is used to describe the beauty of the ungainly. It is sometimes applied to scholars’ rocks that have an awkward appeal. Some of Ms. Blacklock’s images share this quality. The contours of the larger forms echo the quivering energy of their interiors. The unstable images plunge like wounded birds shot in flight. They float like exotic tropical fish in a somber aquarium. It is this very instability that charges them with their intriguing tension. Ms. Blacklock likens the process of creating these digital images to the development of a painting, stating that moving plant material around during a scan is analogous to laying down brushstrokes on a canvas and that building up digital layers via Photoshop is akin to applying layers of paint one atop another. With this in mind it is perhaps more accurate to understand this series in the context of the long tradition of paintings and drawings of scholars’ rocks. Seen in this light they have the spontaneity of brush and ink paintings and, like so many renditions of scholars’ rocks and garden stones, they are works of the imagination rather than depictions of specific objects. The installation of Ms. Blacklock’s Looking Closely at What’s Not There subtly proposes an unconscious choreography to the viewer. The left-to-right narrative of the six Nightscapes not only guides the viewer in a specific direction, it signals pauses for closer

inspection of intimate details much in the same way that a path in a Japanese garden recommends stopping points and orients one towards the intended view. The compositions beckon the viewer to approach the image plane and then to step back for a larger view. Inspired as they are by Chinese hand scrolls, which more often than not depict journeys through picturesque landscapes, this choreography of 22

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the viewer's walk through the gallery is no surprise. The pieces inspired by scholars’ rocks, like the Nightscapes, are printed on aluminum panels. Moving back and forth in front of the images changes the quality of reﬂected light producing an illusive glow emanating from each image. One’s movement in front of these pieces is more circumscribed than the stroll through Nightscapes, but that prepares one for the next sequence in the dance. Approaching the 3D printed sculptures aligned on a shelf, one would of course, be inclined to experience them from several diﬀerent vantage points. They are, after all, three-dimensional objects. Here however the artist intentionally frustrates our desire to see these sculptures from all sides. They are presented for

frontal viewing only and are thus "ﬂattened" to remind us of their origins as two-dimensional decorative patterns. Nonetheless we are not content to view them from a set distance. Their intricate detail seduces us, drawing us in for closer inspection. The negative spaces in the 3D printed pieces rupture the solidity of the forms but do so in a regular rhythmic way that produces a delicate lattice that does not disrupt the serenity of the forms themselves. Indeed it seems as if these computer-generated pieces are the ﬁnal realization of the aspirations of centuries of handcrafted ceramics. The gee-whiz nature of the 3D printing technology does not detract from the classic formal vocabulary of the vessels – neck, belly, foot etc. The display of the pieces on a shelf, as they might otherwise be experienced atop a kitchen cupboard for instance, reminds us of their utilitarian origins as well

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as their past lives as artifacts of the ancient world on display in prestigious museums. As we, the dancer/viewer moves on from the shelf of 3D printed sculptures to the Glass Paintings, we are in for a surprise. The large scale and the salon style hanging of the paintings force us to step back, perhaps into the middle of the room, to take them all in as a single group. The paintings, at least initially, intrude on our space rather than inviting us into theirs. The jam-packed compositions burst off the front of the stretched canvas and wrap around the edges. The plane of the canvas is not sufficient to contain their energy. While the Glass Paintings are, technically at least, still lives, their scale is akin to that of bus stop advertisements and subway station posters and their life is anything but still. The hugely exaggerated scale of the glassware and the extreme compression of the space bring the foreground and background into direct conflict with each other. Once we recognize that the artist is pursuing a strategy that differs from what we have experienced in her other pieces, we can overcome our sense of intimidation and step in for a closer examination of the complex surfaces of the paintings. It is here that we come closest to looking closely at what is not there. It is here that we can lose ourselves in the indeterminate abstractions of reflected light, in the artist’s renderings of the elusive transparency of the cheap glassware and the complexity of the liminal

spaces between the hulking forms jostling for our attention. The thrift store glass is fractured and dematerialized by reflections that have as much physical presence as the glass itself. The loose brushwork makes it clear that these are paintings, not photographs, that the artist’s interest in in abstraction not realism. 17th century Dutch painters such as Vermeer were reputed to have employed the camera obscura, mirrors and other devices in pursuit of capturing the essence of the mundane world through accurate rendering of its detail. Ms. Blacklock also uses mechanical means – digital photography and Photoshop – in her Glass Paintings, but with a different end in mind. The preparatory digital images for the paintings, each of which is shot with a different focal length, are layered so that the apparent depth of the composite image that informs the painting is compressed. This deliberate confusion of space and the flattening of the objects therein is the artist’s way of exploring territory similar to that of the Dutch masters but employing abstraction rather than realism as the mode for understanding the quotidian. In the 17th century still life paintings the reflections are masterfully rendered details that heighten the illusion of an object’s physical presence in the world, whereas in the Glass Paintings the reflections dematerialize the vases, tumblers and decanters as if to say that they are not the tangible forms they seem to be. Which brings us back to Johann Claesz’s vanitas paintings and

the transient nature of existence. Even in the hurlyburly intensity of the Glass Paintings there is the acknowledgement that all things must pass. The artist has said that when she looks out the window in her studio she is as conscious of the reďŹ&#x201A;ections of her studio interior on the on the pane of glass as she is of the trees and grass, dog, squirrels and hammock that she sees, through the glass. This superimposition of one reality on another, the evanescent on the substantial, two dimensions on three, is how the artist makes perceptible, for the rest of us, what is not there.

Artist/curator Richard Turner is a Professor Emeritus at Chapman University where he taught contemporary Asian art history and studio art. He lived in Saigon, Vietnam from 1959 -1961. He studied Chinese painting and language in Taipei in 1963-1964 and Indian miniature painting in Jaipur, Rajasthan in 1967 -1968 while on a Fulbright scholarship. As Director of Chapman Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guggenheim Gallery, he curated over seventy exhibitions. He has worked as a public artist for over three decades. His studio work, public art and curatorial projects can be viewed on his website turnerprojects.com.

Technology plays an important role in the development of my work. To varying degrees my creative process relies on the computer. The Nightscapes and Scholars Rock series are choreographed illusions of nocturnal worlds. They are produced using a large format ďŹ&#x201A;atbed scanner to capture images. I scan dead plants, animals and inanimate objects. These scans are digitally pieced together to create worlds crawling with life. Mountains and rocks are really leaves and ďŹ&#x201A;owers scanned in motion and layered.

The Vessel collection draws forms from 19th century European porcelains. Unlike those labor intensive hand crafted works, these pieces are completely created using computer software and 3D printing technology. The forms are constructed digitally from patterns and designs similar to those that would have decorated the surfaces of the original pieces. Thus, the ďŹ nal three dimensional forms are literally constructed using two dimensional decorative motifs.

KATE BLACKLOCK

Born: New York City, 1957 Education: BA, University of California, Santa Cruz. MFA, Rhode Island School of Design

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS SOLO 2017 2013

2009 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 1997 1995 1991

Looking Closely at What is Not There, Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI Kate Blacklock, Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA Through Time, Candita Clayton Gallery, Providence, RI Continuum; Photography, Painting and Sculpture, Foster Gallery, Dedham, MA Kate Blacklock: Recent Work, The Figurative Gallery, La Quinta, CA Life/ Time, Residential College Art Gallery,University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Kate Blacklock: New Work, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York City Kate Blacklock: Holding On, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York City Kate Blacklock, The Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Porcelains From Sèvres, Shaw Guido Gallery, Pontiac, MI Kate Blacklock, Habatat Shaw Gallery, Pontiac, MI Katherine Blacklock, Schneider, Bluhm, Loeb, Chicago, IL

GROUP 2016 2015

2012 2011

2009 2008

2007 2006 37

Tangible Thinking, Veterans Memorial Gallery, Providence, RI 3D Printing, Lill Street Art Center, Chicago, IL Blacklock, D’Avanzo, Lamb & Seller, Chazan Gallery, Providence, RI Hiﬁre Resolutions: 3D Printing in Clay, Chazan Gallery, Providence, RI — Curator and Participating Artist Botanica Ceramica: Large Scale Sculpture under Glass, Roger Williams Botanical Center, Providence, RI — Curator Rhode Island School of Design Faculty Biennial, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI Networks Artists Anniversary Exhibition, Deedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, MA State of Photography, Pawtucket Arts Collaborative Juried Exhibition, Mill Gallery, Pawtucket, RI Uniquely Louisiana, LSU Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA NBAM 2.0: Next Generation of Art in New Bedford, New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA Building Blocks, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI Ann Conelly Fine Arts, Baton Rouge, LA Sustainable Beauty, Candita Clayton Studio, Pawtucket, RI Didi Suydam Contemporary, Newport, RI Rhode Island School of Design Faculty Biennial, Providence, RI Pacini Lubell Gallery, Seattle, WA Clay Mates, The James Patrick Gallery, Wiscasssett, ME — Curated by Judith Schwartz All Fired Up, EA Gallery, Portchester, NY Contemporary Ceramics, The Dairy Barn, Ohio University, Athens, OH RISD Routes, Fuller Museum of Craft, Brockton, MA Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ Jane Sauer Gallery, Santa Fe, MN

2005

2005 2004

2003

2002 2002

2001

2000 1999

1998

1997

1996

Surface Tension, Foster Gallery, University of Wisconsin, Eauclaire WI Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A.), Thirteen Moons Gallery, Chicago, IL Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Thirteen Moons Gallery, Chicago, IL L.S.U. Clay Tigers, Faculty and Alumni Exhibition, Signature Gallery, Atlanta, GA LSU Art Center, Baton Rouge, LA Spinning Tales, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI Vanitas, Lucy La Coste Gallery, Concord, MA Speaking Volumes, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC My Cup Runneth Over, The Society for Arts & Crafts, Boston, MA Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Snyderman Works Gallery, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL Gallery Artists, The Figurative Gallery, La Quinta, NM Watershed Artist, Watershed Gallery, Edgecomb, ME Raw, Santa Fe Clay Center, Santa Fe, NM RISD Faculty Biennial, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Navy Pier, Chicago, IL Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York Clay Octet, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI Art in Palm Beach, Exhibited with Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York City Spinning Tales, The Sybaris Gallery, Royal Oak, MI Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Franklin Parrasch Gallery, Chicago, IL Spinning Tales, The Sybaris Gallery, Royal Oak, MI Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Franklin Parrasch Gallery, Chicago, IL Figured Ceramics, University of Northern Illinois, Cedar Falls, IL nstallation at T.F. Green Airport, Providence, RI, Sponsored by R.I. Arts Council Kate Blacklock, Michael Crespo, Libby Johnson, James Watkins, Doug Peck Gallery, Providence, RI Five Fresh Voices, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York City Centennial Arts & Craft Invitational, The Providence Art Club, Providence, RI Expressing the Human Form, Baltimore Clay Works, Baltimore, MD Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), The Works Gallery, New York City Containment: Recent Work by Dharma Strasser, Brad Schweiger and Kate Blacklock, University of Texas, El Paso, TX Work from the Alan Chasenoﬀ Collection, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC Catalog Scripps 51st Annual Ceramic Invitational, Curated by Adrain Saxe, Claremont, CA International Infusion, The Sybaris Gallery, Royal Oak, MI Southeastern Clay Invitational, Blue Spiral Gallery, Asheville, NC S.O.F.A New York, The Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA The Spirit Show, Ann Connelly Gallery of Art, Baton Rouge, LA Group Show, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York City & Portland, MA Gallery Artists Group Show, Shaw Guido Gallery, Pontiac, MI, Catalog San Angelo National Ceramic Competition, Museum of Fine Art, San Angelo, Texas Juror: Ronald Kutcha, Editor Survey Of Contemporary Clay Artists, Slidell Cultural Center, Slidell, LA Red Stick Invitational, Baton Rouge, LA Baton Rouge Green Invitational, Baton Rouge, LA Three Women, Art Museum, The University Of Memphis, TN Fine Crafts Biennial, De Land Museum Of Art, Museum in DeLand, FL La Grange National, La Mar Dodd Art Center, Lagrange, GA Project Harmony, Louisiana Arts and Science Center, Baton Rouge, LA Virtualita Del Vaso, D’a Gallery, Vitorchiano, Milan &Sicily, Italy 38

1995

1994

1993

1992 1991

1990 1989

1988

1987

1986 1985

1984

Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (S.O.F.A), Habatat/ Shaw Gallery, International Exposition, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL Lill Street Gallery 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Chicago, IL University Of Georgia In Cortona, Cortona, Italy Fine Crafts Biennial, Florida Gulf Coast Art Center After the Apple: Invitational Exhibition, South Suburban College, IL Regional Clay Exhibition, Moody Gallery Of Art, University Of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL Clay Designs for The Home, Mario Villa Gallery, New Orleans, LA L.S.U. Past and Present, Sylvia Schmidt Gallery, New Orleans, LA Orgamorphism, Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York City American Ingenuity, Swidler Gallery, Royal Oak, MI Group Exhibition, Habatat Shaw Gallery, Royal Oak, MI 9th Ceramic National, The Everson Museum Of Art, Syracuse, NY 9th Ceramic National, The Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ Artistic Generations: J. Rice and Her Students, The Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA New Art Forms, Navy Pier, Chicago IL, Catalog athematics Of The Heart, Ella Sharp Museum, Chicago, IL Rhode Island Clay, Lill Street Gallery, Chicago, IL Classicism Reconsidered, The Fuller Museum Of Art, Brocton, MA Smithsonian Crafts Show, Washington, D.C. Teapot Invitational, The Lee Sclar Gallery, Maplewood, NJ American Craft at the Armory, A.C.E. Show, New York City, Catalog Monarch Tile Ceramic Competition, Juried Exhibition, TX, Catalog Clay U.S.A. Radford College, Radford, VA The Art Of Craft, The Harcus Gallery, Boston, MA Craft at the Armory, A.C.E. Show, New York City On the Surface: 4 artists, Joan Robey Gallery, Denver, CO Providence Artists in Boston, Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA The Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Joan Robey Gallery, Denver, CO Rhode Island School of Design Graduates, Greenwich House Pottery, New York City New Artists, The Currier Gallery Of Art, Manchester, NH Rhode Island School of Design, Summer Faculty Show, Providence, RI Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Show, Woods-Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI A Singular Place, Santa Monica, CA Convergence Gallery, New York City Art ‘85, East Hanover, NJ Jackie Chalkley Gallery, Washington, D.C. Clay ‘84, Perkins Center for the Arts, Moorestown, NJ Convergence Gallery, New York City Cup Invitational, Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago, IL Del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Interview:

WTFFF, Podcast on 3D printing Robot Pottery Golden Age, Slate.com

Video:

Networks: Rhode Island Artist, Produced by Joseph Chazen

Publications:

500 Figures in Clay, Lark Ceramic Books. 2004. pp. 52–53 The Next Generation of Ceramic Artists in America by Judith Schwartz Kerameiki Techni International Ceramic Review Issue 41 pp.31–36 SexPots: Eroticism in Ceramics by Paul Mathieu. Rutkers University Press 2003 Flesh and Emotion by Mary K. Cloonan. Ceramics Art and Perception Vol 49 2002 pp41–44 Once Upon a Glaze. Detroit Metro Times December 4–10th, 2002 p. 42 Human Histories: Recent Work by Kate Blacklock and Dharma Strasser by Kate Bonansinga Ceramics Monthly Magazine. January 2002 pp51–53. Distorted Beauties: Ceramic work by Kate Blacklock, by Conan Putnam. Ceramic Art & Perception Vol.41 Fall 2000 The Great Convergence: Chronicling The Contemporary Ceramics Movement by Karen Chambers American Style Magazine. Vol. 4 . Pps.28-37 Erotics & Aesthetics: Ceramics and Sexualities by Paul Mathieu. NCECA Journal, 1995 Pp. 46-58 Up Front, Ceramics Monthly Magazine. Oct./Nov. 1995 Judgment Call by Robert Ellison. American Craft Magazine. Oct./ Nov. 1993 Philadelphia Rolls out The Clay by Robert Ellison. American Craft Magazine. June/July 1992

SELECTED PUBLIC & PRIVATE COLLECTIONS Museum of Ceramic Arts, New York City The Rhode Island School of Design Museum Musee Nationale De Ceramique, Sèvres, France The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC The Fuller Museum of Craft, Brocton, MA Joseph Chazan, Providence, RI Rick Rogers, Akron, Ohio Sandy and Norman Mitchell, Washington, DC David and Clemmer Montague, Alexandria, VA Judith Schwartz, New York City Marc and Diane Grainer, Washington, DC Sandy Besser, Santa Fe, New Mexico Francis Lewis, New York City Charles Diker, New York City Richard Maybruck, CT Joseph Yurcik, New York City Jerome Shaw, Bloomﬁeld Hills, MI Foster Goldstrom, San Francisco, CA Alan Chasenoﬀ, New York City Robert Ellison, Jr., New York City Lynn Myers, South Pasadena, CA

WORKS BY PAGE NUMBER Cover Chinois #5 2016 (detail) 1 & 2. Chinois #3 2016 26"H x 74"L x 2"D 3. Moon on the Mountains 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 74"H x 26"L x 2"D 5. Chinois #4 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 26"H x 74"L x 2"D 6. Chinois #5 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 26"H x 74"L x 2"D 8. Hosta Rock #2 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 22H x 30"W x 1 1/2"D 9. Yellow, Red & Orange with Glass Brick 2015 36"H x 36" W x 1 1/2" D Oil on Wood Panel 11. Collection of Vessels (detail) 2015-2016 Various sizes 3D printed Ceramic

13. Glass Brick Series: Orange Blue & Green 2015 36"H x 36" W x 1 1/2" D Oil on Wood Panel 14. Glass Brick Series: Yellow, Orange & Blue 2016 57"H x 57" W x 2 3/4" D Oil on Wood Panel 15. Qian Xuan Early Autumn 13th Century 10 1/2 H x 47 x 1/2 W Ink on Paper 16. Chinois Panel #1 (Detail) Dye Infused aluminum 17. Chinois Panels 4 & 5 (Detail) Dye Infused Aluminum 18. Chinois Panel #1 2016 Digital Image 19. Chinois Panel #3 (Detail) Dye Infused Aluminum 21. Hosta Rock #4 (Detail) 22. Hosta Rock #3 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 22"H x 30"W x 1½"D 23. Installation Shot

24. Installation Shots 26. Glass Brick Series: Landscape (Detail) 27. Untitled 2016 60"W x 72"H x 2"D Oil on Wood Panel 28. Glass Brick Series: Landscape 2015 36"W x 48"H x 1½ "D Oil on Wood Panel 29. Hosta Rock #4 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 30"H x 22"W x 1½"D 30. Flower Rock #2 Rock 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 30"H x 22"W x 1½"D 31. Flower Rock #1 Rock 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 22"H x 30"W x 1½"D 32. Dahlia Rock 2016 Dye Infused Aluminum 22"H x 30"W x 1½"D 33. Chinois #2 (Detal) 34. Studio Shot 2106

35. Vessel Collection (J, K & L) 2015 & 2016 15-17 "H x 4-5"W x 4-5"D 3D printed Ceramic 36. Computer Rendering (Right) Vessel Painting Series: White 2012 24"D x 18"W x 3/4"D Mixed Media on Canvas

Photography by Mark Johnston & Kate Blacklock Design by Kate Blacklock All artworks ÂŠ Kate Blacklock