City Sine Cera

CITY CITY CITY ITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY SINE SINE INE SINE INE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE CERA CERA ERA CERA ERA CERA ERA RA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA DAVID DAVID DAVID DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST EAST EAST EAST JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN LEWIS OLIVER JOHN LEWIS OLIVER JOHN LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS LEWIS LEWIS LEWIS LEWIS SARAH SARAH SARAH SARAH SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY LINDLEY LINDLEY LINDLEY LINDLEY BOBBY BOBBY BOBBY BOBBY BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN SILVERMAN SILVERMAN SILVERMAN SILVERMAN ADAM ADAM ADAM ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH WELCH WELCH WELCH MERRIE MERRIE MERRIE MERRIE MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT WRIGHT WRIGHT WRIGHT WRIGHT

CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE SINE CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA CERA MAY 4 – JUNE 24, 2018 NORTHERN CLAY CENTER, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

DAVID DAVID DAVID DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST DAVID EAST EAST EAST EAST JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN OLIVER JOHN LEWIS OLIVER JOHN LEWIS OLIVER JOHN LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS OLIVER LEWIS LEWIS LEWIS LEWIS LEWIS SARAH SARAH SARAH SARAH SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY SARAH LINDLEY LINDLEY LINDLEY LINDLEY LINDLEY BOBBY BOBBY BOBBY BOBBY BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN BOBBY SILVERMAN SILVERMAN SILVERMAN SILVERMAN SILVERMAN ADAM ADAM ADAM ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH ADAM WELCH WELCH WELCH WELCH MERRIE MERRIE MERRIE MERRIE MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT MERRIE WRIGHT WRIGHT WRIGHT WRIGHT WRIGHT

CURATOR AND ESSAYIST: HEATHER NAMETH BREN EDITORS: ELIZABETH COLEMAN AND FRANNY HYDE

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FOREWORD SARAH MILLFELT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

© 2018 Northern Clay Center.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information, write to: Northern Clay Center 2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, MN 55406 www.northernclaycenter.org Manufactured in the United States First edition, 2018 International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-46-1 Unless otherwise noted, all dimensions: height precedes width precedes depth.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from Wells Fargo.

City Sine Cera, the second of three special exhibitions at Northern Clay Center in 2018, encompassed examples of contemporary ceramic art vast in technique, influence, and maker. Our spring exhibition, on view May 4 – June 24, City Sine Cera, was nurtured into reality by Heather Nameth Bren, a member of NCC’s exhibitions committee, a professor at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a working ceramic artist. Intrigued by the lifestyle of some of Minnesota’s favorite country studio potters, whose pots are inspired by their surroundings, and are sincere and direct in nature, Nameth Bren chose to contemplate a group of contemporary, urban-inspired ceramic sculptors and view their work through the lens of sincerity. City Sine Cera was born from this contemplation and came to include a sampling of artists who are inspired by a sincere inquiry into the urban landscape. These artists include: David East, John Oliver Lewis, Sarah Lindley, Bobby Silverman, Adam Welch, and Merrie Wright.

Armed with the 2013 writing of R. Jay Magill, Jr., Sincerity: How a moral ideal born five hundred years ago inspired religious wars, modern art, hipster chic, and the curious notion that we all have something to say (no matter how dull), Nameth Bren assembled the work of six ceramic artists to more deeply explore the notion of sincerity in its physical form.

In addition to newly commissioned ceramic works, the exhibition enabled visits to the Clay Center from Sarah Lindley, who traveled to NCC to install her Other Brownfield Sites – Crawford Power Plant in Little Village, Chicago, a floor drawing with red and black terracotta clay piles depicting a Sanborn Map. Merrie Wright and Bobby Silverman also visited the Center the week of the exhibition opening, and they

paired for a lively discussion moderated

by Nameth Bren. Silverman later served as a guest juror for the Center’s 2018 Warren MacKenzie Advancement Award convening, and was a guest presenter for our MN NICE program. Wright led a dynamic Packing for Pros demonstration for our artists and other visitors to NCC.

These artist visits and the exhibition itself were made possible by the generosity of our exhibition funders: Continental Clay Company, the Prospect Creek Foundation, and the Windgate Charitable Foundation. Additionally, this activity was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from Wells Fargo.

All of the Center’s exhibition efforts in 2018 were made possible by the talents, time, and creative passion of our village of supporters. These include the Center’s exhibitions committee from the previous year: Heather Nameth Bren, Kelly Connole, Ursula Hargens, Mark Pharis, and Robert Silberman.

Thank you to Nameth Bren, in particular, for such a thoughtful pairing of guest artists and actualizing a show unique in scope, thought, and scale. And, to our exhibitions galleries staff, I extend yet another thank you for coming together to ensure another gorgeous installation: Emily Romens, Galleries Coordinator, thank you for your endless energy and willingness to change direction at a moment’s notice. Tippy Maurant, NCC’s Director of Galleries and Events, thank you for opening your arms and mind to this exhibition and to greeting every opportunity presented by this show with your typical optimism and grace and calm. Finally, thank you to Elizabeth Coleman and Franny Hyde for their editing of this publication.

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CITY SINE CERA

CITY SINE CERA HEATHER NAMETH BREN

1 A movement originating in the 1980s that explored the sincerity of irony.

2 Spanish for “without wax.”

3 Latin sincerus — substances and objects that are whole and unadulterated (purity of things, not an attribute of people).

Introduction From the origins of aesthetics and Platonic mimesis, humans have debated the essential attributes of form and content within a work of art. The call for integrity and sincerity within the art encounter (a term used here to describe the complex role of humans in the making of art and in the interpreting of art) has dominated the landscape of discourse throughout human history.

Prior to my research for City Sine Cera, I had defined the word sincerity with an image of the earnest studio potter living in the country — every time I thought of sincerity, Linda Christianson’s smile, pottery, and working hands came to mind. The simplicity, directness, and honesty that are evident in the spirit of her wares, and similar studio potters of her status, reflect rural architecture, thoughtful economy, and familiar landscapes.

As an exhibition concept, City Sine Cera began with curiosity about what a “Linda Christianson caliber,” urbaninspired, sculptural ceramics show would look like. How would sincerity of space and place manifest in sculpture and what could be learned from that manifestation? Contemplating each artist through the lens of sincerity, the exhibition explores Bobby Silverman’s deconstructive social-political installation; Adam Welch’s ironic New Sincerity 1 glam bricks; Merrie Wright’s “sine cera” 2 landscapes, or modernist impressions of place; David East’s suburban, spatial-abstraction sculptures and prints; Sarah Lindley’s poetic, industrial-residential “temporal earth print;” and John Oliver Lewis’s flirty, “sincerus,” 3 skinny-fat, figurative abstractions.

Unearthing Sincerity Unearthed early, when planning a contemporary ceramic urban landscape exhibition, was the serendipitous relationship between the etymology of sincerity and the urban ceramist.

The narrative goes, in Ancient Rome, a booming city center, pottery vessels for food and beverage storage would occasionally be lined with wax to seal otherwise flawed, leaky pots. Eventually the wax would deteriorate, revealing the inferior-quality vessel as lacking in integrity, exposing the defunct attributes of a now unusable and worthless object, not able to complete the one function for which it was made.

As one can imagine, master craftspeople and skilled artisans whose wares reflected the nobility of their humble craft — unlike their deceitful and less skilled colleagues — were outraged.

The master artisans collectively responded to the dubious practice of selling cracked wares disguised with wax by stamping their wares with a mark of authenticity or guarantee. This stamp, sine cera, meaning “without wax,” was applied to artworks that were found worthy of this marking. This practice of marking quality craftsmanship was not limited to potters; marble miners and sculptors of the same period used wax to fill the cracks in marble and marble sculptures. Similarly, master sculptors began to mark their work with sine cera to distinguish quality from an inferior imitation. Thus, the birth of the concept of sincerity to imply honesty, seriousness, earnestness, authenticity, candor, and genuineness.

Further investigation into the etymology reveals more contextual insight. As with Latin, in Spanish, sine

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translates to without and cera translates to wax, but another more interesting Spanish translation for “sine” captures another impression of sincerity. In this other translation, sine translates to sorrow, or sorrow wax. Thus, the marking also served to encourage lessskilled artisans to refrain from selling “sorrowfully” cracked wares, while also encouraging the consumer to purchase bona fide wares. This version of the concept sincerity moves beyond the purity of things and objects, implying that people can be measured as sincere or insincere. The internalization of sincerity as a human ideal is suggested through the implication of an emotionally mournful response to an artist’s “faking” artistic integrity.

Object Integrity Artist Merrie Wright honors the idea of object integrity in her reductive and constructive abstract series called, This is Where I Live. In this series, Wright combines a horizontal landscape form with a monolith and “cup” form. The commingling of these forms creates a dialogue about what it means to contain, hold, embody, and inhabit. The impeccably composed and executed surfaces entice the viewer with the visual activation of layered precision, reminiscent of shadows, textures, graffiti, space, and time. The contrast between Wright’s tight surfaces with her organic forms seems to marry an illusionistic exactitude with raw attributes of forms that celebrate the spontaneity of torn and broken edges. The precisely glazed surfaces create spatial sensations that interact with the reality of presence and place; the two-dimensional glazed surface reaches beyond an illusion of space, creating a new reality of form previously beyond comprehension. The flat horizontal plane upon which the other artworks reside captures a sense of time and memory in the overlapping interaction between surface and form.

Wright’s artwork approaches the concept of presence, of location, while obfuscating the distinction between form and surface.

Wright seems to be inventing new ways of conceiving of space and place.

Her artworks refer to both Op Art and

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Analytic Cubism in the sometimes high-contrast vibration of surface with changing perspectives. Curiously, Wright captures a kind of new modernist impression, illustrating the complexity and intimacy tied to an accumulative experience of place.

Cities of Belief In cities, unlike in many small insular rural communities, diverse tribes of belief are forced to interact in everyday encounters and peacefully co-exist. Within these very intersections of neighbors and strangers, one is confronted with varying degrees of cultural, political, spiritual, physical, and conceptual ideologies. Living within these conditions of diversity invites artists to observe and contemplate a holistic understanding of otherwise seemingly dualistic ideologies through regular exposure, challenging and expanding awareness, and cultivating empathetic understanding.

It should be no surprise, then, that urban centers have inspired artists and artisans throughout human history. From Ancient Rome, the Italian Renaissance, and the age of Modernity in Paris, to contemporary Los Angeles, Manhattan, Berlin, and beyond, population density and forced proximity have provided and continue to provide opportunities for intersections of differing opinions.

In ideal circumstances, regular interaction with opposing beliefs can yield opportunities for innovation — the unique coming together of supposedly disparate ideas.

In his wall installations, artist Bobby Silverman explores communal living structures and systems, through the abstraction of form and image.

His deconstructive installation in City Sine Cera responds to the idealistic equity presented with the architectural movement of socialist Brutalism. Silverman juxtaposes the subjects of government-established, forced communal living with those of an organically formed squatting system. He contrasts conformity to freedom, compliance to self-reliance, and a one-size-fits-all solution to an individual family solution. Socialist ideals are presented alongside the ideologies of personal freedom and

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4 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Aristotle (384–322 B.C.).”

SparkNotes LLC. 2005. http://www. sparknotes.com/ philosophy/aristotle/ (accessed June 1, 2018).

5 R.J. Magill, Jr., Sincerity: How a moral ideal born five hundred years ago inspired religious wars, modern art, hipster chic, and the curious notion that we all have something to say (no matter how dull), (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 20 – 44.

6 Magill, 11 – 22.

7 Sanborn Maps was a publisher of city maps that included valuable city planning information like population, economy, and prevailing wind direction, for example.

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independence. Comparing conformist with opportunistic solutions, Silverman considers how cultural values influence political ideologies, how those ideologies form legislation, legislation informs policies, and policies have phenomenological effects on cohabitation.

Silverman’s artwork is left open to the interpretation of the viewer, condemning neither solution arrived at after a humanitarian crisis. Instead, he creates an opportunity for sincere dialogue about the results of two seemingly disparate solutions to a basic human need: housing and community.

Silverman notes that he interpreted the squatting community of Venezuela, the “right” side of the composition, as having created a stronger sense of community and culture; they seemed to have taken ownership of the space as a thriving, solution-driven environment, while the Brutalist commune, the “left” side of the composition, yielded more oppressed inhabitants.

Unlike in his previous works, Silverman displayed this artwork without a glazed surface, revealing raw and exposed industrial tiles as if unfinished and a work-in-progress. In its vulnerable and exposed beauty, the unglazed porcelain seems both a living network and/or the remains or bones of an eroding structural entity. Either way, the constructivist-inspired composition presents Silverman’s political commentary as both balanced and imbalanced visually and ideologically.

Virtue Via Construct Despite noble intentions, sincerity has not always been regarded as a virtue throughout human history, and as a result, has been center stage to duplicitous historical debates. In one of the first recorded arguments on the merits of sincerity, Aristotle deliberated on whether or not sincerity is an essential attribute of moral virtue, which he defined as a “disposition to comport oneself in the appropriate manner as a stratagem to balance the vices of deficiency and excess as developed by habit rather than through reasoning.”4 Later, in the Romantic period in Europe, sincerity was declared to be the highest

artistic and social virtuous ideal, but by the Modern era, sincerity as an ideal was again a hotly contested concept.5

Part of the “confusion” about sincerity has come from the understanding and misunderstanding of the definition of sincerity: the quality of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy. This definition brings about misperception of sincerity because of closely related overlapping concepts.

Common ambiguities include frankness (to communicate personal judgment despite injury to audience or self), truth (objective things or events), honesty (truth regardless of personal opinion), objectivity (universal fact), and subjectivity (personal opinion). 6 In fact, sincerity is the careful integration of all of these concepts in the pursuit of selfreflective moral virtue.

All this considered, there is still one fairly large obstruction to fully comprehend the sincerity debate: subjectivity. Subjectivity, or personal opinion, obfuscates universal determiners that validate or invalidate the presence or absence of “pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy.” So then, as Aristotle suggested, is sincerity limited to a social construct, or is it a tangible virtue? Is sincerity a concept that is limited to the purity of physical objects — substances that are unspoiled and whole? Can humans achieve sincerity?

Mapping Sincerity Artist Sarah Lindley indicts human nature in her poetic, industrialresidential, temporary earth print installation. Her artwork, entitled Other Brownfield Sites: Crawford Power Plant in Little Village, Chicago, explores urbanspace mapping as the inspiration for deconstructing meaning, values, and belief. Similar to a footprint, Lindley’s installation creates an aerial image of the interaction between industry and residential occupation. A detailed floor drawing of pulverized clay piles depicts a Sanborn Map, 7 which also tells another story related to the interconnectivity of each individual unit with the earth.

Ephemeral in nature, Lindley’s work is fleeting and references a physically scarring memory that remains in the

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earth and in the body. Using crushed red and black terracotta to represent the human (red) and the industrial (black), Lindley illustrates a codependent interaction. The pulverized clay is used symbolically to represent the regenerative nature and healing capacity of both the body and the earth. The red terracotta is carefully contained to represent the residential gridded spaces, while the black terracotta represents the dominating forces of manufacturing, machinery, and pollution. Both the red and black clay signify the reliance on the other as the supportive counterpart.

The strong diagonals of the dark masses overpower the precise equal gridding of the residential areas, yet the quantity and detailed gridding of the residential areas have created their own internal structures of support. The composition reveals a visually obvious truth that both areas could not exist alone and require the other to survive. Underlying themes in Lindley’s work question the power of the few as formative dictator versus the collective power of the individual. She notes, “Neighborhood activism contributed to the 2012 closure of the coal-fired Crawford Power Generating Station, which still sits on the southern edge of the community and looms large in the past, present, and future landscape of the area. As redevelopment efforts move forward, the community is asking about the legacy of contamination on the site and whether redevelopment will ameliorate these wounds or bring new challenges.” 8

Lindley’s aerial abstraction focuses on moral virtue and brings awareness to the altruistic actions and ultimate power of the masses. Using the most basic material, Lindley uses the earth to contemplate earth. Her conceptual focus on moral virtue and purity of material reflects a sincerity of form and content.

Spatial Non-space Lindley brings the viewer an objective consideration of place. In contrast, David East plays with an objective inspection of the subjectivity of perception.

Employing conventions of representing space to explore manmade structures, East creates meaning and references systems. He brings a morphological

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approach to inert spaces and structures as a means to deconstruct the ontology of forms and structures that support and sustain contemporary life. Using mattglazed surfaces, East reveals a somber heaviness that seems both grounding and spatially contained.

Monument of the Second Class and other domestically ambiguous artworks in the exhibition represent serious contemplation of the construct and virtues of the American middle class. The work appropriates the language of manmade structures, familiar yet ambiguous, referencing multiple facets of suburban life through reductive amalgams. Using abstraction to disseminate ideas about absence, presence, and existence, East combines the mundane attributes of our daily environment such as mailboxes, driveways, parking curb design, architecture, and furniture.

The horizontal forms are physically present, yet they communicate a phenomenological dialogue about the impact of experience through form.

In addition to the spatialabstraction sculptures, East also exhibits collages on paper that are somewhat opposite and somewhat essential to describing his sculptures. The collages represent simple architectural forms, such as the Romanesque arch. In print, this illusion of form is isolated, the illusion of space is restrained, and the spatial image appears floating in blank space. The opposite to the arch is the positive mailbox form that East explores in physical space.

The work in totality forces the viewer to confront contingent realities.

The two-dimensional works on paper and the three-dimensional sculptures subtly suggest preconceptions of hierarchy and imbedded bias. East toys with the irony of flat and dimensional belief through the juxtaposition of flat, contained spacelessness and dimensionally realized forms.

The Sincerity of Irony By the mid 19th century, modernist thinkers wrestled with the notion of universal ideals, moving away from moral dictates toward the empowerment of the individual to determine morality

8 Sarah Lindley, Artist Statement, May 11, 2018.

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within sincerity. Even though this re-framing occurred, still some rejected sincerity, pursuing the purity of irony as a valid substitute.

The questions surrounding whether sincerity is a social construct embedded in form, or a tangible virtue as communicated in message, continues to fuel debate about the contemporary pursuit of sincerity. Because art is a form of communication, there is an implied understanding that both the maker of communication, the artist, AND the receiver of communication, the audience, have a moral responsibility to engage one another with integrity and sincerity.

Both the maker and the viewer bring the ontological attributes of inquiry because one can infuse integrity and sincerity into communication. Only then can a purity of communication be achieved resulting in art instead of corrupt art.

In anticipation of his intellectual adversaries and the popularizing of modernist ideologies, Leo Tolstoy seems to simultaneously dismiss and clarify his conceptual understanding of the necessity of the purity of communication in art. Tolstoy knew his theory of art would “be considered an irrational paradox at which one could only be amazed.”9 His definition accommodated both its purity of form and sensitivity to ontology — the philosophy of being — suggesting that “doing art” requires integrity plus sincerity. Without sensitivity to “being” Tolstoy suggests that the results will only lead to “corrupt art.” Corrupt art, as Tolstoy defined, seemed to forestall and enflame the sincerity of the modernist exploitation of irony as first seen in the Dadaist’s use of appropriation.

9 Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?, trans. Aylmer Maude (Toronto: George N. Morang, 1899), 151.

10 J. Gallaher, “Whatever happened to The New Sincerity?”

November 21, 2010, http://jjgallaher. blogspot.com.

Ironically Sincere In contemporary times, the perception of irony in art is essential to the satirical poignancy of cultural critique. Artists employ irony as a means to address subject matter with the complexity of sincerity, integrative of false pretense.

Irony and humor are evident in the ambiguously figurative and alluring sculptures of San Diego-area artist John Oliver Lewis. In a similar way that food engineers have carefully created the most satisfying, yet nutritiously empty

foods for mass-consumption, Lewis has created sculptures with mass visual appeal. The soft, bulging, horizontal rolls, folded and stacked vertically, communicate a desirable sensuality of form. Playfully saturated Pop art colors, carefully applied in acrylic paint, help to camouflage and beautify the figures as “skinny-fat” (a person who appears to be healthy but, beneath the surface, is not of optimal health). Here, skinny-fat describes a commitment to the exterior appearance of an object in spite of the internal integrity as indicated by the camouflaged mismatch of the decorative painted areas. Addressing cultural gluttony and consumption through references to decadent desserts, melting fatty sugar, and a shamelessly plastic identity, the ironically beautiful sculptures reflect the intersection between embodiment, consumption, indulgence, and identity.

New Sincerity Irony in relationship to sincerity is a product of more recent thinking.

Originating in the 1980s, later popularized in the 1990s, and still pursued today, New Sincerity strives to tangibly access sincerity through the integration of earnestness and irony. New Sincerity as a contemporary movement was an originally off-handed and derogatory label that describes the earnest efforts of post-postmodernist art and philosophy.

Contemporary thought continues to vacillate on both the classification and valuation of sincerity. In a 2010 blog post, John Gallaher wrote that New Sincerity “is marked by a revival and theoretical re-conception of sincerity, challenging the emphasis on authenticity that dominated twentiethcentury literature and conceptions of the self.” Gallaher summarizes: More recently, sincerity has been under assault by several modern developments such as psychoanalysis and postmodern developments such as deconstruction. Some scholars view sincerity as a construct rather than a moral virtue — although any virtue can be construed as a ‘mere construct’ rather than an actual phenomenon.10

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Here, phenomenology is used to describe a holistic perspective on sincerity. Focusing attention on the philosophical study of experience, (the ways in which things present themselves in and through direct experience),11 integrates the experiencing subject and the object experienced through rationalism and empiricism. Sincerity understood as phenomenology accounts for the first-person perspective of intentionality. Rather than limiting sincerity to either a construct or a virtue, New Sincerity resists the duality that many thinkers have concluded: sincerity also sanctions insincerity much as light sanctions dark.

Sincerely Insincere The most-sincere and most-insincere moments in City Sine Cera are embodied in the same artwork by artist Adam Welch. As with New Sincerity, Welch explores the ironic side of sincerity in his attempts to confuse fake and real, the physical and the experiential. Since his graduate school days, Welch has thoroughly explored the impact of a fairly obtuse and utilitarian unit, working with the history and language of the singular brick and a collection of bricks.

Usually used to construct or repair, the bricks in this exhibition are rendered useless in their shallow, gratuitous “readymade glaze” decoration.12 The bricks included in the exhibition are freshly considered as they exude an unnecessary glam. Ironically glazed with hobby crystal glaze and gold luster on the bottom quarter, the bricks are displayed on mirrors that interact with the reflective luster surface to create a reflection on the wall that transcends the inert qualities of a brick. The sincerity of the reflection on the wall expands the ontological and phenomenological considerations of a brick.

Conclusion When an earnest curiosity is embedded in inquiry, in this case, an inquiry of space and place, the physical results manifest in sculpture and installation worthy of contemplation. Considering how humans interact with political policy, accessibility, codependent communal living, conventions of

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belief, gluttonous consumption, or irony as sincerity, can yield insight and reveal philosophical inconsistencies in collective cultural thinking. Reflecting on sincerity as an attribute of artwork, as opposed to reflection of the sincerity of an individual attribute, permits the viewing audience to engage the artwork with a level of sincerity that can begin to challenge traditional conventions. In this way, sincerity can eke its way back into mainstream culture in both form and function. In form, sincerity can host important conversation. In function, sincerity can operate as conceptually guiding principles that can transform how we interact with others, personally, communally, and culturally.

Acknowledgements I would like to offer sincere gratitude to Tippy Maurant for her time, organization, communication, professionalism, and talent. Without her dedication and efforts, this show would not have been possible. I also want to thank Emily Romens for her role in making arrangements and installing the exhibition and all-around awesomeness.

I am consistently awed by the quality of work that this power-duo produce.

I would like to offer gratitude for the editing prowess and insightful suggestions of Elizabeth Coleman.

Finally, I would like to personally thank NCC’s executive director, Sarah Millfelt, for her exceptional leadership, supportive role, and implicit trust.

Works Consulted Daniels, Charles B. “Tolstoy and Corrupt Art.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 8, no. 4 (1974): 41 – 49. doi:10.2307/3332027.

Simmons, Ernest J. “What Is Art” from Introduction to Tolstoy’s Writings.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. www.ourcivilisation.com /smartboard/shop/smmnsej/tolstoy /chap8.htm.

Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972.

11 David Woodruff Smith, “Phenomenology”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2016, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https: //plato.stanford. edu/archives/ win2016/entries/ phenomenology, (accessed June 1, 2018.)

12 Adam Welch, Artist Statement, http:// jcacciolagallery.com /fetish-brick.

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DAVID EAST

David East’s most recent work is installation-based, focuses on digital technologies, and is an exploration of the contradictions between inane human patterns and originality. He examines “the science of the mundane, a tension between the generic and the highly personal.” He earned his BFA in ceramics from the University of Wisconsin– River Falls (1997) and his MFA from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (2000). East currently serves as Chair of Ceramics at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

David East Yellow Impediment 2014 Ceramic 14" x 35.5" x 13"

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JOHN OLIVER LEWIS

John Oliver Lewis currently lives and works in San Diego, California.

A Wisconsin native, he earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin­–Eau Claire and his MFA from the University of North Texas in Denton. Lewis’ work was selected for inclusion in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s exhibition Here Not There: San Diego Art Now and the exhibition Uberyummy at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art at Cal State San Bernardino. Lewis’ sculptures, drawings, and installations have also been exhibited nationally at venues such as the American Museum of Ceramic Art, as well as the Amarillo Museum of Art. His ceramic sculpture is featured in 500 Ceramic Sculptures by Lark Books.

John Oliver Lewis chunk-a-nella 2016 Ceramic, acrylic 18" x 14" x 8"

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SARAH LINDLEY

Sarah Lindley records the environmentally violent history of the industrial communities that surround her through installations that call attention to the materials employed and how they relate to the permanent scarring of a location, as well as a visual reference to both the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our ecosystems. Lindley earned her BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (1996) and her MFA from the University of Washington (2001). She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where her teaching focus is ceramics and sculpture.

Sarah Lindley Other Brownfield Sites — Crawford Power Plant in Little Village, Chicago 2018 Pulverized vitreous black and red clay bodies 4" x 90" x 60"

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BOBBY SILVERMAN

Bobby Silverman’s work forces the marriage of the visual experiences of the body with the more personally intuitive perceptions of the mind. His commitment to the inherent properties of clay plays alongside text in various forms including graffiti, Braille, barcodes, and Morse code to compel the viewer to experience the work less covertly.

Silverman trained in Japan with the master potter Samejima Saturo before receiving his BA in social geography from Clark University (1978), a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute (1980), and his MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (1983).

Additionally, Silverman has been the director of the Ceramic Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City since 2007, where he recruits working artists and manages the ceramics facilities.

Bobby Silverman Untitled 2018 Formica porcelain, aluminum, automotive paint 50" x 31.5" x 25"

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ADAM WELCH

Adam Welch employs the brick at the core of all of his sculptural and design work; as a foundation for creating a structure; as a commentary on and character within history; as a material object in and of itself. “I find limitless and liberating potential in the fixed structure of the brick. My interest stems from it being a thing in itself, existing as universal, iconic, and ever-present.”

He earned his BFA from Northern Arizona University (2000) and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2003). He teaches at Princeton University where he was appointed Lecturer in the Visual Arts Program in 2010. Additionally, Welch is the director of Greenwich House Pottery in New York City.

Adam Welch Fetish Series: Paradise Punch 2017 Porcelain, glaze, gold luster 4" x 7" x 3"

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MERRIE WRIGHT

Merrie Wright’s precision is at the center of her work. The surfaces, landscapes, and forms are painstakingly created and demand inquiry into their production and origin. Is it digital industrial technology or is it handmade? Color and pattern play an unavoidable visual role and have their foundations in her surroundings as well as cultural context and art history. Wright earned her BFA in ceramics at Kansas City Art Institute (2000) and her MFA from Louisiana State University (2004). She currently serves as an Associate Professor and Department Chair at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Merrie Wright Abstracted Landscape 004: Edom (This is Where I Live Series) 2018 Earthenware, stoneware, low-fire glaze 4.5" x 11.5" x8"

CITY SINE CERA

NORTHERN CLAY CENTER

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CITY SINE CERA

NORTHERN CLAY CENTER Northern Clay Center’s mission is to advance the ceramic arts for artists, learners, and the community, through education, exhibitions, and artist services. Its goals are to create and promote high-quality, relevant, and participatory ceramic arts educational experiences; cultivate and challenge ceramic arts audiences through extraordinary exhibitions and programming; support ceramic artists in the expansion of their artistic and professional skills; embrace makers from diverse cultures and traditions in order to create a more inclusive clay community; and excel as a nonprofit arts organization. We strive to meet our goals through ongoing exhibitions that feature contemporary and historical ceramics by regional, national and international artists; classes and workshops for children and adults at all ages and levels of proficiency; studio facilities and grants for individual artists; and a sales gallery representing many of the top ceramic artists in the region and country.

Staff Sarah Millfelt, Executive Director Tippy Maurant, Director of Galleries and Events Emily Romens, Galleries Coordinator Board of Directors Craig Bishop, Chair Bryan Anderson Nan Arundel Mary K. Baumann Heather Nameth Bren Evelyn Browne Nettie Colón Sydney Crowder Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill, M.D. Patrick Kennedy Mark Lellman Brad Meier Rick Scott Paul Vahle

Director Emerita Emily Galusha Honorary Directors Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Legacy Directors Andy Boss Joan Mondale

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by Peter Lee. Design by Joseph D.R. OLeary, VetoDesign.com.

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2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org