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Northern Clay Center presents
SEXUAL POLITICS Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics Jeremy Brooks
Mark Burns
Ron Geibel
Kathy King
Christina West
Dustin Yager
March 13 – April 26, 2015 Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Curated by Kelly Connole Essay by Kelly Connole Edited by Elizabeth Coleman
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Foreword Sarah Millfelt, Director
“Artists have the potential to freeze a moment in our collective cultural history, record it, interpret it, and help us breathe in the truth of our own time. This is the goal of Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics.” — Kelly Connole
© 2015 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, 2015 International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-34-8 Unless otherwise noted, all dimensions: height precedes width precedes depth.
In the spring of 2015, Northern Clay Center continued its long tradition of producing thought-provoking exhibitions that challenge viewers’ assumptions about the material and our world. Curated by Kelly Connole — long-time member of NCC’s exhibitions committee; professor of ceramics and small metals at Carleton College in Northfield, MN; and ceramic artist herself — Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics has assembled objects that navigate complicated expressions of sexuality, gender identity, and queerness in contemporary ceramics. Viewers of the exhibition can clearly see a series of functional vessels, tiles, and sculptural forms, all of which use humor or irony or tension to explore the politics of sex. What cannot clearly be seen, but can be discovered through conversation with the artists or curator, are the stories of these participating artists, and countless other artists, who are currently or who have in the past explored similar topics, but who were not given a voice, who were marginalized for attempting to speak their truth, or who couldn’t find their place in what was once a male-dominated, macho field of art. Northern Clay Center is proud to host Sexual Politics and to continue a conversation about the changes in the visibility and social acceptance of sexual and gender identities and expressions.
In addition to the exhibition, on view March 13 – April 26, several artists were invited to visit the Center to share techniques, stories, and inspiration with our students, artists, and the greater community. In January of 2015, Ron Geibel visited NCC for a 2-week residency and lecture; Mark Burns visited for a lecture and the exhibition’s opening reception; and Kathy King presented a public workshop during the closing weekend of the exhibition. These particular activities, and the exhibition in general, were made possible through support from many individuals and institutions. Thank you to the Continental Clay Company, George Reid, and the Windgate Charitable Foundation. Additionally, support 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, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Finally, special thanks to Kelly Connole and NCC’s other exhibitions committee members: Heather Nameth Bren, Ursula Hargens, Mark Pharis, and Robert Silberman. And, thank you to Mike Arnold, NCC’s exhibition manager, and Iren Tete, who assisted with the installation of the exhibition.
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Essay Kelly Connole
Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics
Sexual Politics, installation view.
Fired clay has a unique ability to capture specific points in time and preserve them indefinitely. In subtle and overt ways, ceramists embrace the expressive nature of clay to record both the profound and the quiet moments of life. A glaze drip perched at the edge of an object isolates the moment when a viscous liquid, molten and alive, is frozen a millisecond prior to letting go of its post. Decorative plates straddle the convoluted line between kitsch and craft as they mark anniversaries, presidencies, and memorable places. Ceramic figures and figurines offer viewers a glimpse into a wide range of human experiences, from historic battles and mythological tales, to personal struggles and triumphs. The exceedingly long life span of fired clay renders ceramics an ideal medium to record events, express opinions, and start conversations that can play out over generations. Art, and ceramics in particular, can unite us in what it is to be human. Part of that “being human” is the acknowledgement of the biology of sex and the social construction of gender within intersecting identities. Using clay as a visual language, artists have the potential to freeze a moment in our collective cultural history, record it, interpret it, and help us breathe in the truth of our own time. This is the goal of Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics. The six artists in this exhibition are compelled to address gender and sexuality, in response to their own lived experience, within the changing (or not) attitudes of our society. Many of the social movements that form contemporary American culture have officially reached what we might call “middle age.” The struggles of disenfranchised people, and the questioning of societal norms, most certainly did not begin in the 1960s, yet it
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1 P. T. Clough, “The Hybrid Criticism of Patriarchy: Rereading Kate Millett’s ‘Sexual Politics’.” The Sociological Quarterly 35.3 (1994): 473. 2 Paul Mathieu, Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2003), 9. 3 “Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative.” David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. (New York: Oxford UP, 1995), 62.
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is the critical voices that shaped Women’s Liberation, the Sexual Revolution, and the Stonewall Riots that set the stage on which Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics stands. The exhibition borrows its main title from Kate Millett’s seminal 1969 book, Sexual Politics, a classic feminist text said to be “the first book of academic feminist literary criticism.”1 Our subtitle brings the exhibition up to date, for the term “sexual politics” no longer refers solely to feminism. Feminist thought informs much of the work presented, and so does queer theory and its focus on discourse in social and cultural areas from a non-heteronormative perspective. The idea for Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics “came out” in a brainstorming session among members of Northern Clay Center’s exhibitions committee. First posed as a question regarding the impact of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (1974 –1979) on contemporary ceramics, the discussion quickly became a broader conversation about expressions of sexuality, deviance, and identity within ceramics. In his 2003 book, Sex Pots, ceramist Paul Mathieu filled in a substantial gap, unaddressed by the dominant art world’s discourse on sexuality and art, by offering readers his personal reflections on eroticism in ceramics. He sums up the exclusion of ceramics in the mainstream discussion as such: There have been a plethora of books on the subject [of eroticism], dealing with various aspects, from the general ‘Art and Sexuality’, to the more particular, ‘Erotic Art’, ‘Art and Homosexuality’, ‘Lesbian Art’, ‘Erotic Folk Art’, ‘The Male Nude’, ‘Art and Feminism’ and countless
others…. Considering the unique, significant, extraordinary, and continuing contributions ceramics and craft have made, from the Neolithic to the present day, to the world of art, culture and civilization as a whole, and yes, to sexuality, [the exclusion of ceramics] is quite baffling…But as ignorance, prejudice and discrimination are slowly disappearing from our understanding of sexuality, this is not the case yet for ceramics… Ceramics, it often seems, is quite simply an invisible practice.2 Is this still the case — is ceramics still invisible in 2015? Has our understanding of sexuality shed its ignorance, prejudice, and discrimination? Has anything changed since 2003? Well, it has and it hasn’t. Ceramics, and the art-world politics that surround it, has encountered significant changes in the past decade. Mathieu’s Sex Pots has informed a new generation of makers, providing them somewhat of a Who’s Who of LGBTQ makers, especially for gay men. The influence his book, along with Judith Schwartz’s Confrontational Ceramics and several other critical texts, has had on a new generation of queer3 ceramists cannot be overstated. The Institute of Contemporary Art, at the University of Pennsylvania, launched ceramics into spaces traditionally offlimits with their 2009 exhibition, Dirt on Delight: Impulses that Form Clay. The exhibition traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis later that year. In her New York Times review, Roberta Smith closes with: It can’t be said enough that the art-craft divide is a bogus concept regularly obliterated by the undeniable originality
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of individuals who may call themselves artists, designers or artisans. But this timely, satisfying show proves it once more. It also suggests that while ceramics is just another art medium, there is no art medium quite like ceramics.4 Revered by some and cursed by others,5 there is no denying that Dirt stirred the pot while bringing ceramic art into fine art venues. The field of ceramics appears vigorous: the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) nears its 50th anniversary and membership remains strong, despite tenure-track teaching positions favoring new media over the very old media of ceramics. In Philadelphia, The Clay Studio’s 2013 exhibition HERstory focused our eyes on contemporary feminist voices in clay,6 and their 2015 exhibition Eroticlay “carries on the tradition of erotic imagery in art that can be traced back to the Paleolithic Era, through the explicit imagery of Ancient Greek pottery, the racy images of Indian miniature paintings, Japanese shunga, objects found in European cabinets of curiosity, and many other zones of the art world.”7 Sexual Politics is in good company. Yet the complicated terrain between public and private remains full of landmines as the real world politics that surround gender, sexuality, and queerness are far from settled. With Pat Buchanan at the helm, the Culture Wars of the 1990s spilled into the 2000s, with reproduction rights, censorship, crudity in popular culture, and homosexuality among its core issues. Many of the national conversations, spurred by the 2008 Presidential race, clearly demonstrate that these cultural battles in America are far from over. The ongoing discrepancy in equal pay for equal work
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and outcries of rape culture on college campuses make it painfully clear that women’s struggle for equality (and safety) is also a work in progress. All that said, however, the past decade has witnessed the most acute flux in the last century around acceptance of people who have been oppressed by the patriarchal heteronormativity of the larger culture. For LGBTQ people, especially those over 40, the dramatic changes have created a distinctive kind of cultural whiplash. Our relationships (and very existence) have been at once paraded as sinful abominations and then as joyful expressions of love. Simply living as a member of the LBGTQ community has been a political statement — it still is in many parts of the country. And while gay rights and social attitudes are certainly not defined by the right to marry, the cultural rearrangement of something as recognizable and coveted as marriage, demonstrates the profound shift in American attitudes towards gays. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) denied federal recognition of same-sex marriages and solidified a place for gays as secondclass citizens in America, while other countries — the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada — began to grant all their citizens the same civil rights and protections. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex marriage. Some states followed their lead, while others passed constitutional amendments “protecting” straight marriage. California legalized same-sex marriage in 2008, only to strike it down with Proposition 8 just four months later. In 2013, DOMA was declared unconstitutional and California reinstated marriage equality. At the time of this exhibition, 37 states allow samesex marriage and 13 states have marriage
4 Roberta Smith, “Crucible of Creativity, Stoking Earth Into Art.” New York Times, 19 Mar. 2009, New York ed.: C25. 5 See Paul Mathieu’s brilliant essay, The Dirt on Dirt on Delight in Ceramics: Art and Perception, 86 (2011/2012): 74–77. 6 http://www.theclaystudio. org/exhibition/herstory 7 http://www.theclaystudio. org/exhibition/eroticlay
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8 http://gaymarriage.procon .org/view.resource.php? resourceID=004857. 9 Judith Stein and Wanda Bershen, “Mark Burns at Helen Drutt,” Art in America, May – June 1977: 119 –20.
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bans. Sometime in 2015, The US Supreme Court will respond to the question of whether the 14th amendment requires states to license marriage between two people of the same sex, and whether the same amendment requires states to recognize same-sex marriages licensed and performed out-of-state.8 Though equally significant, let’s leave the discussion (and neck trauma) of gay divorce, adoption, and inheritance rights for another time. It is often said that a polite dinner guest avoids the potentially controversial topics of politics, sex, and religion. While this may still be good advice to follow in the chilly homes of our northern state, Minnesotans have been near the progressive forefront on issues of gender expression and sexual identity. Minnesota law on hate crimes has included the basis of sexual orientation since 1989, and gender expression since 1993, making Minnesota one of the first states to protect transgender citizens. In 2012, the people of Minnesota were among the first to vote down an antimarriage equality amendment to the state constitution. Just one year later, Minnesotans voted to make Minnesota marriage law gender neutral, officially allowing gay people to marry. The Twin Cities are often noted in the best places for gay vacations and top cities for LGBT Americans, due to our inclusive laws, civic resources, and the tolerance and acceptance of LGBTQ people by Minnesotabased corporations and the general public. However, in a state known for modesty, there remains inherent risk in presenting an exhibition that focuses on taboo topics and imagery that may be challenging to some viewers. The inclusion of Mark Burns’ dynamic and provocative work, grounds Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics, as he has,
whether directly or indirectly, influenced every other artist in the show. Burns has helped to legitimize sex, politics, and homoerotic themes for generations of makers — he is America’s Fairy Godfather of Queer Ceramics. A student of the legendary Howard Kottler at the University of Washington–Seattle, Burns has used teapots, figurines, and other domestic objects to serve up imagery of gay culture with an unapologetic fervor. His 1977 exhibition at Helen Drutt Gallery, in Philadelphia, was favorably reviewed in Art in America as a fine example of his “precise and sardonic sensibility”— a point of view as critical today as it was then.9 Through his dedicated and visible involvement in NCECA, Burns solidifies the notion that there is room in the ceramics community for queer perspectives. In keeping with the influence of the Funk Movement, Burns’ persistent flair for commercial glazes, paint, and mixed materials also codifies an illustrative aesthetic through the cyclical rise and fall of low-fire ceramics. Uncle Mark’s Celebrity Sexcapades Collectible Series depicts the artist himself cautioning viewers on the dangers of sex. Told through the tragic demise of Marilyn Monroe and Ramon Navarro — two of the world’s greatest sex symbols — these works serve as visual, public service announcements for both gays and straights. Whether delivered through an overdose of pentobarbital or suffocation by a lead dildo, the message is clear: sex kills. Who better to tap the omnipresent pointer at this subject than an out gay man who has survived the age of Stonewall, the AIDS epidemic, and the ugliness of homophobia for more than six decades? The Technicolor tones of Marilyn and the silent film, gray subtleness of Navarro are indicative of Burns’ meticulous attention to detail and his nimbleness in navigating references to popular culture,
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Mark Burns, Uncle Mark’s Celebrity Sexcapades Collectible: Ramon Navarro, 2015, ceramic, 14” x 5.5” x 9”.
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Mark Burns, Uncle Mark’s Celebrity Sexcapades Collectible: Marilyn Monroe, 2015, ceramic, 14” x 5.5” x 9”.
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Dustin Yager, Minneapolis Boys Cycle Series, 2012 – 13, porcelain, luster, each approximately 12” x 12” x 1”.
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kitsch objects, and over a thousand years of ceramic figurines. His 2003 work, Pipe Dream, pulls imagery from Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, spinning the pipe in question into a dream state of oral fixation. Much like Burns, Kathy King’s mark on feminist and queer ceramics reaches far beyond the hundreds of students she has influenced directly. King’s Sue Plate (2008) and her Labels I Have Enjoyed Series (2008) are explicitly queer. Her work positions both the artist and the viewer at odds with societal norms by making us feel simultaneously comforted and uneasy. Through text and image, graphically presented in black and white, King’s work takes on a social justice political stance, while questioning the way we label each other and ourselves. Oh Please investigates the evolving language used to describe gender and sexual identity, teaming with loaded LGBT signifiers as backdrops to rich portraits, reminiscent of cameo brooches and oversized images of distant relatives behind bubble glass. Replacing the Kinsey Scale, which ranges from 1 to 6, a new generation describes the fluidity of sexuality (and gender) in percentages — say 80% gay and 20% straight, or 60% female and 40% male. Oh Please allows us to assign labels to King’s subjects, based on our preconceived ideas about how a “bear” or an “outdoorsy gal” should identify, and whom he or she should desire. King’s figures, as well as selfreflective viewers, have the power to reject labels, to queer words, and to shed shame as they find love. In this case, real love is represented by the oversized, anatomically correct depiction of a heart that separates the viewer from the subject like a shield. The work in Sexual Politics blurs the line between public and private by exposing flesh, referencing intimate objects like sex toys, and revealing our vulnerabilities in our
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search for love, lust, and sex. Dustin Yager’s work picks at the itchy scab of vulnerability with his Minneapolis Boys Cycle Series. He brings us face to face with erotic images taken from online dating/hook-up sites, by serving them up on porcelain platters. Users of Grindr might recognize themselves in the awkward compositions of solicitous selfies, as Yager “likes the act of taking this ephemeral experience (of sex and texting) and making it a laborious process and permanent object.”10 In contrast to the precise commercial plates Jeremy Brooks situates his recontextualized decals on, Yager’s platters are hand thrown with all the variation and imperfections that porcelain has to offer — both the imagery and the objects present their truths — warts and all. The wall text accompanying Yager’s Untitled (Trashcan) instructs viewers to engage in a potentially cathartic performative act of writing down intimate memories and desires on butcher paper hung on the gallery wall. By doing so, participants temporarily expose themselves, only to have their intimate bits tossed into a porcelain trashcan by the next player. The trashcan, lovingly inlayed with the reflection of lovers in the intimate environment of a bathroom, becomes a mass gravesite for vulnerability. Christina West masterfully merges public and private dimensions by presenting unknowable human subjects in malleable situations. Using highly-charged sexual imagery, West’s Guarded draws us into the interior space of a female figure who is caught somewhere between exposed nakedness and empowered liberation. Literally dripping with a luscious glaze that performs as a sheath over the body, Guarded freezes both the gesture of resistance and its ceramic-ness as the object of our gaze. The figure’s unconcealed
10 Taken from the author’s email conversation with Dustin Yager on March 5, 2015.
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Ron Geibel, Strike, 2015, porcelain, luster, wood, 31” x 31” x 8’.
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hands attempt to push us away, but, instead, lure us closer through West’s use of color and the intimate evidence of their construction. Exquisitely constructed topiary-like objects double as bowling pins in Ron Geibel’s Strike. This work subversively employs elegant objects and seemingly benign scenes that project a sense of “everything is perfect”— like a family night at the bowling alley — to expose deviant behaviors.11 Though his forms refer to sex toys, Geibel’s ideas can often “pass” purely as expressions of beauty captured in the traditional trappings of porcelain and luster. To a knowing audience, these forms take on an entirely different meaning. Familiarity hits on several levels — how might we “pass” as middle class or ordinary, as straight or queer, as cisgender or not? A perfectly groomed exterior can disguise a messy interior. When Jeremy Brooks deconstructs and reorients ceramic decals on sterile commercial plates, he relies on the same knowing audience to read his subtle alterations of the familiar. Any viewer knows that something is amuck with the recognizable imagery he splices into queer scenes, but entitled insiders immediately see more. Reminiscent of Howard Kottler’s more covert plate series from the 1960s – 80s, Brooks’ works are openly embedded in gay subtexts, historical references, and inside jokes. In accompanying statements and titles, Brooks provides straightforward didactic material for each work on view, acting as a tour guide through 150 years of gay lingo. For example, Brooks’ intentions are clear in his striking piece, Rim Ware. He explains, “These works depict a variety of male cyclists along the rims of several ceramic plates. This series is a play on the word ‘rim’. They reference the rim of the
11 Ron Geibel, Artist Statement, http://www .rongeibel.com. 12 Jeremy Brooks, Artist Statement for Rim Ware.
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Jeremy Brooks, Rim Ware Series (detail), 2015, commercial porcelain plates, decals, each 10.25” x 10.25” x 1”. Photo courtesy of NCC.
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plate, the rim of a bicycle wheel, and the sexual act of rimming (licking someone’s anus with your tongue). The illustrations were created using a collage of commercial / hobby ceramic decals and are presented upon commercial blank porcelain plates.”12 Brooks’ personal freedom to create, and write about, such provocative imagery is indicative of just how little anxiety he experiences in outing himself to his viewers. Brooks has not only come out of the proverbial closet, he has invited the public to help unpack his clothes. In Sexual Politics, personal politics and intersecting identities play some role in all of the work in the gallery, whether these factors are the creator’s conceptual intent or the audience’s primary read of the work. The work of Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Félix González-Torres — art world stars whose influence infiltrates queer art in all mediums — adorns Dustin Yager’s Untitled (Conversation Piece: Lips and Legs). Similar to Robert Arneson’s Portrait of George (1981), one of the most politically charged ceramic objects ever made,13 Yager’s garden stools invite viewers to sit down and start a conversation. He gives us visual clues of a history of oppression, the violence of silence, and the brutal messiness of life. Signifiers from the 80s and 90s walk us through the Culture Wars and AIDS epidemic, while an image of CeCe McDonald14 delivers us right back to the present where issues of race, class, and identity converge under harsh conditions. The evocative work in Sexual Politics, invites us to talk about sex, politics, art, life, and queerness for a moment. In doing so, we mark this time of radical change, while acknowledging the work still left to be done.
12 Jeremy Brooks, Artist Statement for Rim Ware. 13 Robert Arneson’s controversial Portrait of George was commissioned as a public artwork for the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, to memorialize fallen mayor, George Moscone. Due to the highly charged political imagery on the bust’s base, the commission was rescinded, a political firestorm ignited, and the work was later sold. It should be noted that the same man who killed Moscone also murdered LGBT legend, Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay person elected to public office. For more information, see the exhibition catalogue for Arneson and Politics, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, June 2 – August 15, 1993. 14 CeCe McDonald is an African-American trans woman, who was sentenced to prison for manslaughter following an altercation outside a Minneapolis bar in 2012.
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Jeremy Brooks
Jeremy Brooks received his BFA in art and design from Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, and his MFA in ceramic art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He currently resides in Carbondale, Illinois, where he is a visiting assistant professor of ceramics at Southern Illinois University. He has been honored with receiving the emerging artist award by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), and has been a guest of honor at the XXIst International Biennial of Vallauris, France.
There is a space that exists upon the tip-of-the-tongue, one characterized through a sense of elusive certainty. Taste aside, it is concerned with imminence and inaccessibility, language and memory. Sometimes the first word out of our mouth is hardly a word at all, but rather this inarticulate sound that is more closely related to what we would identify as gesture. Suspended, held at the cusp of verbalization, there is something there and you feel it strongly. It is a haunting moment; it is a structure of feeling. The investigation of such a quality, one that is (at times) more properly sensuous than cognitive in its scope and depth of inquiry, is at the core of my work and studio practice.
Jeremy Brooks, installation view.
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Mark Burns
Mark Burns, an MFA graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, has had a long and distinguished career as a teacher and maker. He has held teaching positions all over the country, working at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, among others. He most recently taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was head of ceramics and chair of the department. Burns’ work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and is held in numerous public and private collections. Burns has a keen sense of ceramic history and pop culture, which he uses to express complex cultural notions of sexuality and identity.
My work has always been the diary of my life.
Mark Burns, Pipe Dream, circa 2003, ceramic, 17” x 9.5” x 5”. Collection of Robert L. Pfannebecker.
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Ron Geibel
Ron Geibel, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, now resides in White Plains, New York, where he works as an adjunct professor of ceramics at Hofstra University. He received his BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and his MFA from the University of Montana, Missoula. He has exhibited across the United States, most recently with the solo exhibition picture-perfect at the KOA Art Gallery as part of the Spectrum Art Series at the University of Pittsburgh–Bradford.
How do we choose what to expose and what to conceal about our personal lives? What are the consequences when secrets are revealed publicly? Who are the chosen recipients of this information? These questions form the foundation for my artistic process. I investigate the possibilities of using the “private” to examine the “public.” How does the public react when confronted with what is usually kept private? Through an artistic process that explores the intersections of the public and private spheres, I strive to question our awareness of self and of others. During my middle-class American upbringing, the term strike was used often. Whether discussing a layoff or the thrills of the Friday night bowling league, a strike represents both victory and defeat. Much like rolling a twelve-pound ball down a slippery lane, or revealing one’s sexual orientation, politics is a gamble. When it appears that all of the pins have fallen, one is left standing. Topiaries represent the domestic realm, where the core of most issues commences. Open dialogue is the means by which individuals can alter the veneer of normalcy. Working with multiples obscures the sexual references that influence the installations and objects I create. Creating an inconspicuous exterior is a strategy used to display objects that reference the private parts of people’s lives, issues concerning sexuality, gender, and identity that are typically kept hidden.
Ron Geibel, Strike (detail), 2015, porcelain, luster. Photo courtesy of NCC.
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Kathy King
Kathy King, currently the director of education and an instructor at the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, has lectured and exhibited extensively across the United States. King received her BA in studio art from Connecticut College, New London, and an MFA from the University of Florida–Gainesville. She has had solo exhibitions at Mudfire Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Erie Museum of Art, Erie, PA; and Spacelab in Cleveland, OH, among other venues. King’s ceramics have been published in a variety of books, such as Sex Pots by Paul Mathieu and Controversial Ceramics by Judith Schwartz, and in periodicals, such as Ceramics: Art and Perception.
Within modern social constructs, self-labeling of sexual preference has traditionally used the terms “homosexual” vs. “heterosexual”, “gay” vs. “straight”. The growing understanding and acceptance of the fluidity of sexuality, as well as the rejection of such narrow terms, has brought about a method of selflabeling that includes percentages. The method of using identifiers that reflect the percentage you may be “straight” or “gay” has, with some individuals, replaced the idea of “bi-sexuality”— a sometimeschallenging place to exist on the spectrum of sexuality. Those that identify as “bi-sexual” may be asked to “choose a team,” thus feeling that they are living outside a social group with a dedicated support system. The installation, “Oh Please,” plays with this grey area by presenting portraits in oversized brooches that bring to mind the precious quality of our own selves, regardless of sexual-identification. Though included symbolism in the portraits may sway the viewer to place the individual somewhere along the sexuality spectrum, the answer is up to interpretation. The audience is invited to place the appropriate label of percentage that each person may identify with in terms of percentage — thus exercising their ability to label others. The trick is, one does not know what the percentages represent —“straight” vs. “gay”, “female” to “male”, etc. The remaining “oh please” voices are those that exercise their right to reject this social game and exercise the right to not participate in the conversation at all.
Kathy King, Oh Please, 2015, porcelain, glaze, luster, aluminum, each approximately 20” x 14” x 3”.
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Christina West
Christina West received a BFA from Siena Heights University, Adrian, Michigan, and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She has also been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; and the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT. Exhibiting extensively, she most recently had a solo exhibition, Misfits, at the Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, and has been the recipient of many awards including the Georgia State University Scholarly Support Grant, and the emerging artist award through the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA).
I use the sculptural human figure in my work as a way to question our relationships to other bodies, while underscoring our desire to understand the minds that inhabit those bodies. Sometimes these figures exist as single, independent objects and sometimes they are a part of an installation that suggests relationships among multiple figures. Regardless of the format, the work begins with questions about the relationship of the exterior to the interior, the limits of what we can know about other people, given that we never have direct access to their interiority, and how our physical encounters with spaces and with representations of bodies can affect perceptions of our own bodies. The resulting work often merges notions of the public with the private by depicting naked bodies in vulnerable poses while on display, and overlays the serious tone of the work with a playfulness derived from scale shifts and bold, unnatural coloration. The figures are rendered with a high degree of realism, but I often think that it’s their resistance to simple, concise interpretation that is their most realistic quality; to intimately know someone is to begin to understand how endlessly surprising and mysterious and complex s/he is. My figures invite our gazes with their bodies frozen in mid-gesture — ultimately offering a space to play with assumptions and projections we place on other people and their bodies.
Christina West, Guarded, 2014, glazed ceramic, pigmented Hydrocal, paint, epoxy, 27” x 18” x 15”.
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Dustin Yager
Dustin Yager, a Minnesota based artist, received his BA in studio art from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and his MA in visual and critical studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited his work most recently in the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction’s juried art show in Bloomington, Indiana, and in the solo exhibition Waste Not, Want Not, at The Ledge Gallery, Minneapolis, MN. His “work draws attention to the fact that we are both consumers and producers of culture. Culture exists on a variety of scales, from incredibly personal experiences to the values embodied by our material belongings, creations, displays, and actions.” Yager is Northern Clay Center’s head of education and artist services programs.
The central theme of my work as a potter, artist, educator, and writer is the production and use of ceramics and other pieces of everyday life. Through daily interactions with objects on our table, in the mall, and on the screen, we attach meaning and status to the “stuff” around us. Drawing upon personal experience, I create large and small interventions to disrupt and question the normal flow of propriety in domestic spaces. My work is emotional. It is aggressive, demanding, bitter, and sardonic, but also joyful, resilient, thoughtful, and funny. I juxtapose my understanding of craft and process with unusual, narrative, and sometimes highly-personal illustrations and collages. My experiences of encountering gender, sexuality, class, urban/rural divisions, and art/ craft distinctions influence my choice of form and surface manipulation. The seriousness of pottery studios, dining rooms, art galleries, and social taboos are frequent subjects of my dissatisfaction. Each intervention and audience requires a different kind of engagement, and I actively range from tightly controlled to highly gestural, and from sly to offensive. With traditional materials and methods, I create work that highlights the social status of pottery and industrial tableware — the comfort and intimacy we are taught to expect when we open our cupboards. By organizing events and installations, I am able to show dishes in variations of their natural environments. Through this alteration of the familiar, I hope my work becomes more alive to the participants and brings new consideration for the design, production, and meaning of objects in their own homes and memories.
Dustin Yager, installation view, foreground to background: Untitled (Conversation Piece Lips & Legs), 2014, porcelain, luster, vinyl, 24” x 75” x 80”; Untitled (Trash Can), 2015, mixed media, 67” x 65” x 21”.
Sexual Politics
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Northern Clay Center
Northern Clay Center
Northern Clay Center’s mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts. Its goals are to promote excellence in the work of clay artists, to provide educational opportunities for artists and the community, and to encourage and expand the public’s appreciation and understanding of the ceramic arts.
Board of Directors Ellen Watters, Chair Mark Lellman, Vice Chair Rick Scott, Treasurer/ Secretary Lynne Alpert Nan Arundel Mary K Baumann Craig Bishop Robert Briscoe Linda Coffey Debra Cohen Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill Sally Wheaton Hushcha Christopher Jozwiak Alan Naylor Mark Pharis T Cody Turnquist Robert Walsh
Director Sarah Millfelt Exhibitions Manager Michael Arnold Interim Exhibitions Assistant Iren Tete
Honorary Members Andy Boss Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Joan Mondale Director Emerita Emily Galusha
Cover: Christina West, Guarded, 2014, glazed ceramic, pigmented Hydrocal, paint, epoxy, 27” x 18” x 15”.
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by Peter Lee. Design by Joseph D.R. OLeary, vetodesign.com
International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-34-8
SEXUAL POLITICS Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics Jeremy Brooks (Carbondale, IL) Mark Burns (Las Vegas, NV) Ron Geibel (Port Chester, NY) Kathy King (Boston, MA) Christina West (Marietta, GA) Dustin Yager (Minneapolis, MN)
2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org