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September 20 – November 3, 2019
Jill Foote-Hutton, curator and essayist
Horror Vacuı̄
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Sarah Millfelt, Executive Director
I’m sure if I dig deep enough on the World Wide Web, I’ll be able to find studies confirming my theory that people who work together for long periods of time start to dress alike. I’d like to believe that in the case of Northern Clay Center staff, we are all collectively influenced by each other’s fashion: from jeans and combat boots to coveralls, the singular flashy accessory to the fanny pack, the commitment to taking athleisure wear to new heights of office professionalism, the denim jackets and vests paired with peasanty sensibilities, and the marriage of more fabrics, textures, and prints than should be legal to wear outside of the house.
© 2019 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. http://www.northernclaycenter.org Manufactured in the United States First edition, 2019 International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-52-6 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 Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Additional funding comes from Continental Clay Company, the Prospect Creek Foundation, and the Windgate Foundation. A special thanks to Pascoe Gallery and Easywallz.
It’s this last one that, I’d like to believe, long scratched at the subconscious of the NCC staff and curator of Horror Vacuī: Across the Margins. Jill Foote-Hutton just had to be influenced by the fashion sense of NCC’s Technology and Marketing Manager, Amanda Dobbratz; I mean, come on already! How else could a concept as complicated, visually overwhelming, yet simultaneously so stimulating as ‘horror vacuı̄’ find its way into the head of our curator? We’ll likely never know the real beginnings of this fantastic exhibition, and we don’t need to as the story this show tells may start out appearing like one of Dobbratz’s typical Tuesday outfits, but Foote-Hutton adds so much more to that story in our Fall 2019 exhibition. In her essay included in this catalogue, FooteHutton offers up this story-bit: Notions surrounding emptiness or fullness, as any idea we bandy about and chew on, are ancient. Aristotle is credited with stating, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” A position asserting that even nothing IS something. Note the air surrounding forest flora and fauna. It is alive with microbes and particles of water and dust! Back and forth, across constructed margins of morality, the use of visual space has been debated, and likewise expanded or restrained, depending on what time of any given century, or what spot on the globe, you found yourself. Horror Vacuī most certainly explores the idea of fullness and most definitely asserts itself
as something, so much so that the exhibition installation deliberately includes a “safe room,” or a space in which to breathe, rest the eyes, see examples of the work in a quiet place, sans the layers of the exterior path of the installation. One of NCC’s most dynamic exhibitions (most certainly in my tenure as Director), Horror Vacuī seems to take the traditional model of a gallery exhibit — with carefully placed pedestals and didactic material, measured spaces between work samples, painstakingly selected wall colors that seem to fall away when viewing the artwork, plenty of breathing room — and throw it in the laundry basket. But, be not fooled by Horror Vacuī with its printed wallpaper, bold colors, dramatic layering of textured/decorated/ energized work; this exhibition too is carefully considered, measured, and painstakingly installed, every single piece layered intentionally and meticulously juxtaposed to work made by another. With such vibrant and energetic work from the likes of Ardmore Ceramic Art Studio, Patrick Coughlin, April D. Felipe, Molly Uravitch, Benjie Heu, Yana Payusova, Lindsay Montgomery, Melanie Sherman, Virgil Ortiz, and Valerie Zimany, this exhibition was bound to be memorable. And, installed at the very same time as Horror Vacuī, in our Emily Galusha Gallery, AnT Sculpture and Design, LLC, added to the energy with their installation of architectural brick and tile sculpture, and gigantic knotted “necklaces,” which consume the entire exhibition gallery. AnT generously spent over a week with NCC
Sarah Millfelt
during the show’s install to work with community members on a custom tile piece to adorn NCC’s facility permanently. And they built their installation in the galleries in their down time. Thank you to the myriad local artists who not only supported AnT’s design and production of the lovely mural that now graces NCC’s facility permanently, but also went well beyond the call of duty. Thank you for ensuring our mural was completed and that the artists’ every needs were tended to. In addition to creating new bodies of work and sending previously made work samples, select artists were able to visit Minneapolis in the days prior to the official public reception for the show, in October. Ortiz, Payusova, Sherman, Uravitch, and Zimany presented a discussion with curator FooteHutton. Payusova also shared her artistic journey in The Museum of Russian Art and in our studios. Financial support was provided by several entities and we are greatly appreciative of the Windgate Foundation, Continental Clay Company, and the Prospect Creek Foundation. Additionally, support was also 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. A special thanks as well to Eazywallz Inc. for making our pattern dreams accessible with their technology and support team. Additional thanks to Ed Pascoe and Tom Munro at Pascoe & Company for facilitating access to the incredible world of Ardmore Ceramic Art in South Africa. On the heels of the Clay Center’s 21st American Pottery Festival, which took place in the days prior to the two-week installation period allowed for Horror Vacuī and AnT Sculpture and Design, the production of these exhibitions and the enabling of the accompanying activities was truly nothing short of an autumn miracle. While I have long and very publicly boasted about the talent and tenacity of my colleagues here at NCC, their efforts never cease to amaze me. Early mornings, late nights, countless pots of coffee made and consumed, rides provided,
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tile murals crafted and fired and installed, artists’ children cared for as if they were our own, heavy pedestals hauled, hundreds of feet of walls freshly painted, deliberations made, labels finally stuck to walls and lights tilted from the rafters — Team NCC demonstrated their unmatched dedication, skills, and perseverance during this particular exhibition production. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank a few of them here: Our curator, Jill Foote-Hutton, danced the dance of one who was both employed by NCC to oversee all things artist service related while serving as curator, artist host, and installation assistant. Thank you, sincerely, for conceptualizing such a challenging, multi-faceted exhibition and related artistic programming. Horror Vacuī and AnT Sculpture and Design carried with them layers of creative and simultaneously complicated ideas and execution. Thank you for your tireless work in the days leading up to the opening of the exhibitions and for bringing such a beautiful exhibition concept to NCC. Our exhibitions team: Emily Romens, you have proven to be such a critical piece of our exhibitions team and you bring this unbelievable energy and maturity to the galleries each day. Such long hours worked with unmatched cando-it-ness. I’m indebted to you for all you’ve done for this exhibition. Finally, Tippy Maurant, there are literally no words to articulate how special you are and how much of yourself you share with NCC each day. Horror Vacuī was, as Jill said, a collaboration between curator and our amazing exhibitions team. Grace, knowing, intuition, and eye to detail — you layered all of these qualities in every inch of the exhibition you touched. Lucky is NCC to possess such a strong and talented team. To my other colleagues who supported these individuals’ efforts in one way or another: you are truly the best in the business and I congratulate each of you for the absolutely amazing work you’ve done this calendar year!
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Installation view.
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Jill Foote-Hutton
To know water is to be immersed in water. Feel your toes clinging to pebbles in a riverbed while your legs, pressed against a boulder, worn smooth, hold you in place. The pressure of water’s tonnage will try to push you through the boulder. The cool moisture of water on your tongue pleasantly swells the membranes inside your body, alerting every cell as it moves down your throat and into your stomach. Bring your fingers together and your muscles have to tense against the flow to maintain their position. Allow your palm to relax and fingers become like moss – water ripples past each digit. Releasing yourself from the confines of the pebbles and boulder will take your knowledge of the material deeper, as you are carried by the current and pushed into unrelenting flow. The very same flow introduces materials to each other with destructive velocity. Driftwood ramming against the banks carves out a new profile. Now you are beginning to know water and yet, you are not immersed. Water has many seasons. Water has many states. Imagine the overwhelming experience of gathering the knowing of a river at full flow, the interior of a glacier or a frozen lake, the varying degrees of stillness to be found in a warm bath, on a summer pond, or in the stagnation of the doldrums — imagine gathering all of this knowing simultaneously. To experience the objective of Horror Vacuī: Across the Margins, it will help if you can imagine a complete and immediate immersion, as if you are experiencing all the states and seasons of water at once. If you are able to invoke the overwhelming feeling of drowning in a material while reveling in its abundance, you will have fully grasped the intention of the exhibition and are prepared to dive into the history of conversations surrounding the concept of horror vacuı̄. Parsing the Reactionary The term, horror vacuı̄, was memorably penned by Mario Praz, a critic who was born the same year William Morris (Pre-Raphaelite, Victorian, founding proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement) died. Unlike Morris, who landed on the side of romance and handmade over
machine made, Praz believed the Victorian desire to fill interior spaces with unrestrained ornamentation was tantamount to visual clutter. Quite literally horror vacuı̄ means “fear of empty space.” And while Praz gets credit for coining the phrase to admonish the Victorian aesthetic with the authority one can only call upon by invoking Latin phrases, he cannot have credit for the idea that we fear emptiness. Notions surrounding emptiness or fullness, as any idea we bandy about and chew on, are ancient. Aristotle is credited with stating, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” A position asserting that even nothing IS something. Note the air surrounding forest flora and fauna. It is alive with microbes and particles of water and dust! Back and forth, across constructed margins of morality, the use of visual space has been debated, and likewise expanded or restrained, depending on what time of any given century, or what spot on the globe, you found yourself. Let us focus our attention, to begin, on the time preceding the man who uttered the phrase, horror vacuı̄. Praz, born right at the
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1 Lynn Federle Orr, “The
end of the Victorian Era, threw his barbaric YAWP down, weighing in on the tensions between reason and romance. He clearly sided with reason. It wasn’t that the Victorian age was without reason. Quite the contrary, Queen Victoria’s reign saw much advancement for the British Empire, with global ramifications, including the first Industrial Revolution, many social reforms, the introduction of vaccinations, and the development of the first modern railroad line. Praz was reacting to a reaction. It was, in fact, the same said advancement, which motivated Morris and his brethren of Pre-Raphaelites, to embrace romance, detail, ornament, and the hand of the maker. The Aesthetic Movement of the Victorian Era “was also the wellspring of the International Arts and Crafts Movement. In its four-decade run, the Aesthetic Movement initiated sweeping artistic and design changes, and its modern concepts of middleclass lifestyle and domestic environment reverberate even into our own time. Today Aestheticism is acknowledged for its revolutionary renegotiation of the relationships between the artist and society, between art and ethics, and between the fine and decorative arts.”1
Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde in Context,” in The Cult of Beauty: the Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860–1900, Eds. Lynn Federle Orr and Stephen Calloway (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2012), 14.
One side pushes. The other side pushes back. In a way, this to-and-fro is evidence that nature does truly abhor a vacuum. The need to fill every gap with effort and information is a fear-based need, synonymous
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with the human condition. We have never been collectively content to let the pendulum rest. We still aren’t. Through the Western lens, we have bounced between margins of extremes in pursuit of rightness. The ancients pursued idealism; then medieval art was motivated by religion and was highly adorned; next the Renaissance and a return to classical form, while embracing observation and celebrating the self; after which we bounced to the darkly detailed and ominous Baroque; and quickly followed with the lighter, but no less adorned Rococo.
Classic. Idealized. Reason. Science. Prescriptive. Ornament. Detail. Romance. Morality. Prescriptive Classic. Idealized. Reason. Aloof. Accurate. Ornament. Detail. Romance. Essence. Accurate.
The tense conversation around elaborate detail has only ever shifted slightly, although it feels monumental in the moment. The moral appetite of the populous, historically, decides if we are grossly excessive as opposed to being joyously abundant, or are we a model of pluralist inclusivity as opposed to being barbarously unscrupled?
Who is in the Details? Excessive ornamentation and highlydetailed visual information have been evidence of, and accessory to, both superior and inferior morality. Consider the colloquialism, which may have originated with novelist Gustave Flaubert, or with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; whomever said it first, it has been absorbed by society and inverted. God is in the detail has evolved to The Devil is in the details.2 In an attempt to sort our experience of the sublime, we have convinced ourselves of the need to be qualitative about the intangible. One doesn’t have to scratch the surface of art history too deeply to see how quickly we can fall from grace. Islamic calligraphy, ornamentally sacred text, entwined to the point of illegibility, covers the surface of many a plate and bowl. The densely organized information brings the viewer closer to Allah, a meditation of line. Conversely, Hieronymus Bosch’s famous Garden of Earthly Delights is a cacophony of images, and we’ve never been quite sure if the unease we feel looking at it is a warning of what’s to come or a warning of what we’ve lost. However, both, in their substantially crowded planes, invoke a distinct feeling in the viewer. Whether the feeling is categorized as sacred or profane may not be the most important task, but learning to accept the ferocity of a sublime experience without qualifiers is a difficult brief. Art Historian Ernst Gombrich, who believed the advent of the machine age devalued complexity, drew our attention to the psychology of details. He was obsessed with the “why” and felt compelled to define
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reason in the busyness of ornament. One conclusion he made was that the richer the elements of the frame, the more the focal point gains dignity.3 Certainly this holds up in some instances, when scale is shifted so that central features of a composition push forward, but does his advocacy for complexity remain true when all visual elements compete equally? How do we follow a narrative when there is no hierarchy? Horror Vacuī: Across the Margins is a celebration of visual excess with the luxury of pluralism. That is to say, the artists featured in the exhibition have broad access to philosophies and interpretations of art and storytelling structures. The downside of pluralism is that cultural nuances may become indistinct4 and the maker may, consciously or unconsciously, hide inside formalism. Perhaps the viewer could be cautioned to avoid forcing a maker (who, in the task of creation, pursues evocation) into a defensive position, by refusing to analyze and refusing to seek definition or morality. Rather, shall we let pluralism guide us to embrace a perspective, long savored in the East, wherein the embodiment of effortless expression finds favor over theoretical analysis? The objects presented, as well as the organization of the space within the exhibition, transcend literalness to convey an experience. If viewers can embrace the unrelenting visual flow of information presented, then perhaps they can acknowledge, if such categories are required to quantify the experience, that the scholar and the artist are one.5 As George Rowley explains,
2 T.D. Weldon, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 266. 3 Loretta Vandi, Ornament and European Modernism from Art Practice to Art History (Abingdon-onThames: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018). 4 Richard L. Anderson, Calliope's Sisters: A Comparative Study of Philosophies of Art (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), 285–290. 5 George Rowley, Principles of Chinese Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 31.
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By sheer multiplicity of parts, piling mountain upon mountain, the artist created an overwhelming sense of the majesty and vastness of nature. By moving focus from part to part, by opening up the views at the sides, the designs suggested a sequential experience in time and a movement beyond the limits of painting into the boundless infinity of the universe.6 Every object on display in the exhibition begs not to be distilled, but to have the “sheer multiplicity” it presents taken in simultaneously. To do so is to be rewarded with a holistic tome that reflects volumes about our current human experience. Inversely, reading in a linear fashion, or isolating singular images to act as a lynchpin of the narrative, will reduce the experience to mimesis, and all will become reductive. Whether or not God or the Devil shows up, is entirely in the viewers’ minds as they wade through these details.
6 Ibid. 7 As quoted in Anderson, Calliope's, 204–208.
Adjacent to the conversation on morality is a conversation on representation, and again, morality shows up to be hung on realism and idealism in varying degrees. Plato would have pushed out the poets in order to focus on the concrete. Aristotle, it is told, pushed back arguing, “art can accomplish far more than literal imitation; it can convey the essence of the subject matter at hand.” He believed, “poetry is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.”7
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Mirror, Mirror Again, we find ourselves in a cyclical discourse of absolutes when really the truth (or God or the Devil) usually resides outside absolutes. While the Industrial Revolution could have liberated us with its automation and mechanical exactitude, the discourse as to the purpose of art remains. Can unrelenting visual data, compressed by the architecture of a constructed space, push us toward grasping the essence of our collective experience? Can a decadent installation push the viewer away from singularity through immersion in a whole, only to find the sublime experience may reveal a single universal truth that speaks to the individual? Before Praz called those of us with a penchant for visual excess “chicken,” the aesthetic leanings of the Victorian age gave rise to Art Nouveau and the Decadent Movement. (Oh, how humanity likes to organize under a manifesto!) Paul Bourget, a novelist and critic in support of decadence, summed up the, shall we say, meditative path of immersing oneself in a river of dense details where one experiences the whole to arrive at a singular point. Bourget was speaking of literature, but his point runs parallel to visual compositions; he thought that in a style of decadence, the unity of the book decomposes to give way to the independence of the page, then the page decomposes to give way to the independence of the sentence, and finally the sentence decomposes to give way to the independence of the word. He also suggested that decadence may stimulate new
creativity of a morbid, melancholy, refined, sensual kind.8 Perhaps we will find an experiential visual melee is more imitative of life than rigorous scientific replication. Perhaps we will only find that all art does indeed reside on a mimetic spectrum. Ultimately, any work of art relinquishes its definition to interpretation, as defined by the viewer. The resulting definition is an unflinching reflection of said viewer. John Ruskin, a Victorian critic, wrote in a letter to the editor of the London Times, “The Pre-Raphaelites will draw either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of picturemaking. [They seek] to paint fair pictures rather than represent stern facts, of which the consequence has been that from Raphael’s time to this day historical art has been in acknowledged decadence.”9 Let us advance by not only acknowledging the decadence present in this exhibition, but also by reveling in the gloriously unbridled abundance. We find ourselves in one of those historical moments where it’s easy to focus on darkness and malaise. Let’s choose, in this instance, to look at the concept of horror vacuı̄ as deliciously indulgent potential. The multivalent content presented by each artist is never gratuitous. Their abundant indulgence holds substance of history and action in the layers. In the end, it may not matter where Praz’s original
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intentions lay in memorializing the words "horror vacuı̄". It, like many historical phrases, has grown to encompass much more and we can be happy to have it as something to consider on many levels, a point to begin our contrasts and comparisons as we plot a course forward. The history of art is full of riffling tributaries that feed the main channel. When we follow them, we find confirmation that few are unexplored and there, we may find some comfort. We will definitely find exquisite worlds of potential we may have forgotten, worlds that more wholly express our human experience than the refined discourse occupying the main thoroughfares. All in all, Horror Vacuī: Across the Margins is a collaboration between the artists, the curator, and the exhibition designers. Each level of the exhibition machination doubled down on decadence to create an immersive experience, leaving the viewer drenched in knowing. Visitors will have to weigh their own interpretations against the various degrees of morality in play today. Or, you could just leave that piece be and accept the deluge as it is — a flood of experience. 8 Andrew Huddleston, Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 87–94. 9 John Ruskin, “Letter to the Editor,” London Times, May 13, 1851, 8–9.
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Ardmore Ceramic Art Studio A thriving artist community in the Natal Midlands of South Africa, the studio was founded by FĂŠe Halsted, in 1985. In the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains, she has helped educate many young artists in South Africa. The Ardmore Ceramic Arts Studio has empowered the local population through skill development and provision of a living wage to artist-makers, thanks to the development of a global market. The AIDS epidemic has taken the lives of many in the community; the horrors of the disease are as tangible in their lives as is the lush beauty of the natural world in which they live. The vessel is a structure to be celebrated to the point of near obliteration with the dynamism of the African jungle and plains, or with fantastically intense renderings of the HIV virus. The ecosystem is translated into stylized patterns, sometimes subverting hierarchies of predator and prey. In 1996, Ardmore established the Ardmore Excellence Fund which wholistically addresses the needs of a community deeply affected by AIDS by offering education, basic nutrition, medical expenses, ARV medications, assistance with funeral costs, and support for children whose parents died from the disease. The works have been on exhibition in museums in the US, South Africa, London, and Switzerland. Recent successful collaborations with marquee brand Cole & Son and fashion icon Hermes have taken the Ardmore brand to new heights. NCC is working with Pascoe & Company out of Miami, Florida, to facilitate the exhibition of Ardmore works in Minneapolis.
Ardmore Ceramics, Zebra Leopard Vase, 2019, Ceramic, 17 x 9 x 5 Patrick Coughlin, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Patrick Coughlin Pluralism. Underscored. Coughlin’s motivations may have become refined as he investigated Victorian decadence and found resonance in the commitment of handwork upheld by the Arts and Crafts Movement. But, he saw parallels on either side of the globe, and pared down decadent ornamentation to indulge in the specific techniques found in the East and West. He says, “My work is both elegy and ballad, aiming to depict the hidden beauty and value in the knowledge of process, and the joy of committing it. The act of making becomes a performance of my own heritage; working with dirt, tool and sweat of brow.” An artist and educator currently working in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Coughlin lived and worked in Jingdezhen, the ceramic center of China, in 2010 and 2011. As an assistant in the design studio, he worked with local craftsmen in the production of ceramic design goods for a global market, while also assisting in the management of the Education Center, facilitating international exchange and instruction. As a third generation onion farmer from Upstate New York, Coughlin has always had a fascination with a society’s fruits of labor and their relation to material culture. Coughlin’s studio practice incorporates a wide spectrum of craft and design practices. He has exhibited work in China, Italy, and throughout the United States.
Patrick Coughlin, Delft Drip, 2019, Earthenware, fabric, foam, paint, 10.5 x 16.5 x 11 Ardmore Ceramics, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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April D. Felipe Never choosing a moral side, the details of Felipe’s work create a crushing impact as her work questions the qualitative nature of identity as defined by layers of memory. Plantains are laurels or burdens, maybe both. The gravity of choice, even when the details feel predestined in all directions, frames the query of her struggle. Nostalgic pattern-on-pattern is an embraceable caution, perhaps the epitome of the sublime universal search for self. Born in Queens, New York, Felipe recalls the city was an amazing place to grow up, exposing her to a wide variety of characters, constant action, and energy compacted into small spaces. Reflecting on her struggle to fit in among different groups in her life caused her to question the way we construct personal history in service to our desire to belong. In her more recent work, she considers the tale of The Ugly Duckling, a narrative that perpetuates if you do not visually belong. Felipe received her BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and then worked for Greenwich House Pottery in New York City. In 2007 she enrolled in the ceramics graduate program at Ohio University, receiving her MFA in 2010. She currently lives in Ohio, working for the Dairy Barn Arts Center and working in her studio.
April D. Felipe, Still to Feel You, 2019, Porcelain, underglaze, cotton thread, felt, pastels, acrylic paint, 10 x 5.5 x 1.75 Molly Uravitch, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Molly Uravitch Consistent themes in Uravitch’s art are color, pattern, texture, and a sense of whimsy. Here we witness a decided commitment to romance over representation, in order to accurately invoke an essential aspect of function, which is more than the sum of its parts. Drawing influences from the natural world, studying flora and fauna that have unusual forms and surfaces, Uravitch multiplies nature toward the absurd in pursuit of evocation. She is continuously inspired by the “more is more” style of Baroque and Rococo architecture and art objects, driven by the sense of awe one feels when overly stimulated by intricacies. She takes the notion of usefulness to places Mario Praz would likely have considered absurd — literally invoking toys for the dining experience. The works function as spectacularly decorative, stand-alone sculptures when not in use, but the full theatrical effect rises to the point of glorious excess when she commits to a narrative tableau. Then we begin to fully experience the completeness of Uravitch’s world. Individual objects, once removed from their environment, become tangible memories we carried from a dream.
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Uravitch received her MFA in ceramics from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a BFA from College for Creative Studies Center for Art and Design in Detroit. She currently is a lecturer at the University Wisconsin– Stout. Uravitch was part of the 2016 Lydon Emerging Artist Program at the Pittsburgh Society of Contemporary Craft.
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Molly Uravitch, Chugara's Offering, 2019, Earthenware, 14.5 x 23 x 11.5 April D. Felipe, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Benjie Heu Using the device of multiple-panel sequences found in a graphic novel (a notoriously indulgent format that is frequently accused of suspect motivations by more conservative voices in our culture), Heu conveys relatable, yet often overlooked anxieties of everyday life — the frailty of our bodies, the specter of chemical dependency, religious uncertainty, family dynamics, and cultural differences — into portraits to be faced by the viewer. Heu prefers simple line carving and mark making because of their concise nature: time sits still or zigzags through a composition. The most outlandish adventures are recounted with an eye fixed on the bare essentials. Translating oral narrative into a visual narrative reveals the significance of the story. Heu’s stories present the sublime drama of the hero’s journey, an expedition whose true destination is the realm within each of us. He says, “Battles against time, against the obstacles that prevent the fulfillment of desire, or the repossession of something cherished but lost were themes that provoked me. Revealing truth and humor in the face of horror and the seemingly absurd was my answer.” He is a professor of ceramics in the Art and Design Department at Southeast Missouri State University. Heu’s artwork is exhibited nationally and internationally in juried, invitational, and solo exhibitions. He conducts visiting artist workshops at universities and institutions across the United States.
Benjie Heu, Baby Bully, 2015, Clay, slip, underglaze, glaze, 8.5 x 7.5 x 7 Yana Payusova, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Yana Payusova “By sheer multiplicity of parts, piling mountain upon mountain, the artist created an overwhelming sense of the majesty and vastness.”1 Payusova’s oblique perspectives convey the imperfect journey of the anti-hero, rife with the sacred and the profane. So evenly divided is morality, here, that viewers have no choice but to give over to the essence of the experience. Payusova writes, “The tropes and allusions presented in the works cannot be separated from the ongoing debate over female body rights concerning birth/abortion, circumcision, body coverage/ exposure, contraception, and obligations within matrimony.” Payusova was born in 1979, in Leningrad, USSR. Classically trained as a painter at the St. Petersburg Fine Art Lycée, she later immigrated to the US, where she received an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. Payusova’s paintings and sculptures blend the styles and symbols of folk art, Russian icons, graphic poster art, illustration, and comics, and reflect her cultural heritage and her training in traditional Russian realist painting. She exhibits both nationally and internationally, including recently at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, Massachusetts), Howard Yezerski Gallery (Boston), Mimi Ferzt Gallery (NYC), and Galerie Caprice Horn (Berlin). Payusova currently teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Yana Payusova, Complication, Revolution Series s, 2017, Ceramic, 15 x 15 x 14 Benjie Heu, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42 1 George Rowley, Principles of Chinese Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 6.
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Lindsay Montgomery Much earlier than the Arts & Crafts Movement, Medieval manuscripts were intentionally loaded with symbolic ornament and purpose, very much with the intent of pushing a moral agenda. Montgomery pushes back. She says, “My recent NeoIstoriato series re-imagines Italian Maiolica ceramics and Medieval manuscript illustrations to create narratives, myths, and cautionary tales. My imagery and forms explore pagan rituals, animal archetypes, modes of power, and encounters with the dead or supernatural to highlight the persistent tensions with monarchy, colonialism and feminism that continue to perpetuate destruction and inequality on Earth. The Istoriato, or ‘story painted’ vessel from Renaissance Italy provided an opportunity to reclaim a device that propagated patriarchal [and] classical, social norms.” Once again, we receive the delicious gift of an artist capitalizing on a pluralist perspective. Montgomery works across a variety of media. She looks not only to ceramics, but also to painting and puppetry to create narrative videos, performances, and objects. She earned a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and received her MFA from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally, with exhibitions at the Gardiner Museum, The Archie Bray Foundation, and The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Helen Copeland Memorial Award, The Joyce Carlyle Memorial Scholarship in the Crafts Endowment, and an individual project grant from The Canada Council for the Arts. She lives and works in Toronto, and is currently an assistant professor at Concordia University in Montreal.
Lindsay Montgomery, Monster Faience Charger #2, 2018, Porcelain, cobalt paste, clear glaze, 18 x 18 x 2 Melanie Sherman, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Melanie Sherman Operating well within the realm of functional beauty that William Morris upheld, Sherman states, “I am attracted to the enameled and lustered surfaces of the Baroque, Renaissance, and Rococo porcelain designs, as well as to elaborations on structural elements of these time periods. Studying the history of ceramics, I have been captivated by the relationship between East and West. Although there might be considerable differences between two civilizations, the cultural exchange between them is an important connector of history and has produced a long and rich exchange of ideas between artists and makers. Asian craft traditions have been handed down to the West and the handmade aspect, even within the factory setting, is still an important concept that allows for control of design and quality by the artist, which is essential within craft of the West.� Sherman is a ceramic artist, born in Germany, and currently residing and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Her background is in graphic design, where she developed an eye for pattern and decoration. She combines a love for ornamentation with her fascination of ceramic history, referencing 18th century European porcelain. Sherman has been a resident at The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana; Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado; and Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. She has exhibited her work internationally, including in Hungary, Canada, and the US, and was awarded the 2014 Windgate Fellowship by The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design. Melanie Sherman, Sake Cup, 2019, Porcelain, glaze, china paint, gold luster, platinum luster, 2.5 2 x 2 Lindsay Montgomery, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Northern Clay Center
Virgil Ortiz Ortiz has shared with us his interpretation of a traditional storyteller, a figurative vehicle that came about as the railroads brought “civilized culture” to the American West. Storytellers were reflections of opera singers, circus performers, railroad workers, or clergy, and they were very popular until the objects of inspiration realized the storytellers were interpretations of them. Displeased with the reflection, the storyteller figures lost favor, lost momentum, and were almost lost. Even now many texts suggest that Pueblo storytellers originated in the 1960s. Not so! Now Ortiz pushes the storyteller figure through a muchloved sci-fi lens. If you feel the power of scale and implied movement in the surface decoration, you are seeing the history of sacred geometry, the history of a clan once removed in order to simultaneously protect, preserve, and celebrate a people, and a craft, which has been repeatedly threatened with extinction. There is something intangible yet visceral about the weight of this kind of history. We are witnessing an interpretation, but we are also witnessing an ordained lineage that is altogether separate from the pluralism underscoring many of the other works in the exhibition. The youngest of six children, Ortiz grew up in a creative environment in which storytelling, collecting clay, gathering wild plants, and producing figurative pottery was part of everyday life. His grandmother, Laurencita Herrera, and his mother, Seferina Ortiz, were both renowned Pueblo potters and part of an ongoing matrilineal heritage. “I didn’t even know it was art that was being produced while I was growing up,” he remembers.
Virgil Ortiz, Incubator, 2017, Clay, underglaze, acrylic paint, 25.5 x 11.5 x 9.5 Valerie Zimany, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Northern Clay Center
Valerie Zimany Like soldiers of Arts & Crafts Cavalry, there are regiments of makers working to keep the hand busy, filling space by subverting the machine. Zimany says, “My recent work explores curiosity about hanazume — or “packed florals”— a pattern which incorporates Asian and European botanical patterns into the traditional wares of the region of Japan where I lived, and that stemmed from feudal era commodity exchange with Europe, representing the translation of cultural codes through ornament. Digital manufacturing tools have created a resurgence in dense, delicate, or improbable decorative patterns and forms, which replicate the artisan virtuosity required to craft them in earlier eras. In this work, details of precisely rendered, 3D-printed objects become hazed through the hand processes of press molding and repetition, or overlaid with handmade components and the matrix of glaze. By layering colors, forms, and imagery, I explore temporal and technological incongruencies, and parallel a feeling of wandering out of place at just the right time.” Wouldn’t Gombrich be pleased to know the advent of the machine age actually increased our desire for complexity? How unwaveringly reliable humanity’s contrarian nature can be. Zimany is chair and associate professor of art and ceramics, at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. She received her MFA in crafts/ceramics at Kanazawa College of Art as a Fulbright Fellow and Japanese Government Scholar. After graduate studies, Valerie was awarded a three-year residency at the Utatsuyama Craft Workshop in Kanazawa, Japan, during which she researched contemporary craft and Kutani overglaze enamels. Zimany’s work is held in multiple public and private collections, including the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, California; the World Ceramic Museum in Icheon, Korea; and the National Museum of Slovenia – Metelkova.
Valerie Zimany, Hanazume (Three-Ears), 2018, Wheel-thrown and handbuilt porcelain with press-molded sprigs from threedimensional model prints, glaze, 16 x 9.5 x 9 Virgil Ortiz, Wallpaper, 2019, Polyester, 104 x 42
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Northern Clay Center
Nørthern 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 non-profit arts organization. Staff Sarah Millfelt, Executive Director Jill Foote-Hutton, Coordinator of Artist Services and Storytelling Tippy Maurant, Director of Galleries and Events Emily Romens, Galleries Manager Board of Directors Bryan Anderson Nan Arundel Mary K Baumann Craig Bishop Heather Nameth Bren Evelyn Browne Nettie Colón Sydney Crowder Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill, M.D. Patrick Kennedy Mark Lellman Kate Maury Brad Meier Debbie Schumer Rick Scott Paul Vahle
Director Emerita Emily Galusha Honorary Director Kay Erickson Legacy Directors Andy Boss Warren MacKenzie Joan Mondale
Edited by Elizabeth Coleman and Franny Hyde Photographs of ceramic works 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