2014 REGIS MASTER: WALTER OSTROM
and
CANADIAN CERAMICS
TRUECONTEMPORARY NORTH
Robert Archambeau Bruce Cochrane Michael Flaherty Léopold Foulem Xanthe Isbister Rory MacDonald Alwyn O’Brien Amélie Proulx Brendan Lee Satish Tang
Curated by Robert Silberman Essay by Robert Silberman Edited by Elizabeth Coleman
Robert Archambeau Bruce Cochrane Michael Flaherty Léopold Foulem Xanthe Isbister Rory MacDonald Alwyn O’Brien Amélie Proulx Brendan Lee Satish Tang
2014 REGIS MASTER: WALTER OSTROM
and
CANADIAN CERAMICS
TRUECONTEMPORARY NORTH
September 26 – November 9, 2014 Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN
Unless otherwise noted, all dimensions: height precedes width precedes depth.
International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-33-X
First edition, 2014
Manufactured in the United States
http://www.northernclaycenter.org
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.
Š 2014 Northern Clay Center. All rights reserved.
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Cover Image: Rory MacDonald Vase 5, 2014, cone 6 oxidation, whiteware, black slip, terra sigillata, chalk, 17.5" x 8.5" x 8.5".
Foreword
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Foreword
Sarah Millfelt, Executive Director
As has long been the tradition at Northern Clay Center, our exhibition program gives a voice to clay and to ceramic artists — from around the world, to our own backyard. Work and artists from across the ceramic spectrum can be found in our exhibitions, whether functional, sculptural, or installation in nature; whether created by a novice, an emerging or mid-career artist, or a master craftsperson. In the fall of 2014, we continue our exploration of contemporary ceramics, as we step across the Canadian border to discover a kiln’s worth (and more) of ceramic art made by artists working in, or from, this amazing country. True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics is the first of two Northern Clay Center exhibitions highlighting the countries that share borders with the United States. The second exhibition, in September of 2015, will feature the works of contemporary Mexican artists. True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics invites the viewer to cross the border, no passport needed, to discover the clay treasures of nine artists. Curator Robert Silberman, a long-time member of NCC’s exhibitions committee, an avid writer about ceramics, and an educator, worked closely with NCC staff to identify a range of artists whose work and demography span the clay spectrum and the Canadian border. In the quest to appropriately represent this great land and its plethora of talented ceramic artists, Silberman determined, “There is no ‘Canadian School’ in ceramics, and why should there be? Collective identity may be an appealing critical construct, but it need not be an empirical fact.” So, instead we have gathered a rich mix of approaches to the material — from honest, wood-fired wares, to outrageous and satirical pots, to a multi-media exploration of Canadian history, all of which meet CanCon requirements. And, appropriately paired with True North is our exhibition, Regis Master: Walter Ostrom, which honors one of the great masters of tin glazing and an inductee into the official Order of Canada. In the Emily Galusha Gallery, Ostrom’s pots represent a span of some 40+ years of
making. Ostrom is Northern Clay Center’s 27th Regis Master and is one of two of the ceramic artists bestowed with the title in 2014. The other, Adrian Saxe, was featured in an exhibition and catalogue in the spring of 2014. The Regis Masters Series began in 1997 and continues to recognize ceramic artists, over the age of 65, who have had a major impact on the development of ceramics in the last century and this century. The artists bestowed with the title of Regis Master are from this country and from across the world. They receive an honorarium, participate in an exhibition at NCC, and deliver a lecture about their life and work. In doing so, they add to the limited stock of oral history of a senior generation of ceramic artists. Our partner in this program is the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Regis Masters Series was originally supported by Regis and Friends and continues today through generous support from Anita Kunin and the Kunin Family, in honor of the late Myron Kunin, a philanthropist and former owner of the Regis Corporation. Funding for True North and Regis Master: Walter Ostrom comes from Continental Clay Company, George Reid, and the Windgate Charitable Foundation. Both exhibitions were made possible through the generosity and cooperation of many individuals and institutions. Special thanks to David Kaye Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Consulate General of Canada in Minneapolis, Cheryl Tissington, Karen Schwartz, Carol Dancer and Bill Captain, Charles Rebello, and Marie Foulem. Additionally, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Finally, much thanks to Michael Arnold and Jamie Lang, NCC’s exhibitions team, Robert Silberman, and NCC’s entire exhibition committee members: Heather Nameth Bren, Kelly Connole, Ursula Hargens, and Mark Pharis.
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True North, installation view.
True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
CANADIAN CERAMICS
TRUECONTEMPORARY NORTH
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Essay: Robert Silberman
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True North by Robert Silberman
1 For a history of Canadian craft from an institutional and ideological perspective, see Sandra Alfody’s Crafting Identity: The Development of Professional Fine Craft in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). See also Crafting New Traditions: Canadian Innovators and Influences, ed. Melanie Egan, Alan C. Edler, and Jean Johnson (Canadian Museum of Civilization, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, in collaboration with Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Quebec: 2008), especially Ch. 2, “Married to Pottery: A Life of Uncertainty” by Rachel Gotlieb, 15 – 24, and Ch. 3, “A Place in Ceramic History: Roseline Delisle and Walter Ostrom” by Susan Jefferies, 25 – 34; and Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory & Critical Writing, ed. by Jean Johnson, (Coach House Books and Harbourfront Center, Toronto: 2002), especially “Several Ideas about Ceramics” by Walter Ostrom, 51 – 53. For a recent exhibition of contemporary Canadian art, see Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North America, ed. Denise Markonish, (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press, 2012). The main elements in Clint Neufeld’s mixed-media installations from that exhibition are ceramic (pp. 154 – 57); Gisele Amantea uses plaster and ceramic to create a long wall section topped by lights and small figures (p. 241), and Shary Boyle uses plaster and porcelain to fashion portraits in her work Canadian Artist (p. 199), where she also expresses her admiration for Vivian Hausle’s World of Porcelain. But these works are far from the studio craft tradition, except in its postmodern mode, where the fascination with historical ceramics, including ornate court styles as well as kitsch figurines and other popular forms, comes into play (as in the work of Foulem, MacDonald, and Tang in True North).
Most United States citizens probably would be hard-pressed to name the current prime minister of Canada, list all the provinces, or give the title of the Canadian national anthem (“O Canada!”). They might, however, be able to identify some famous celebrities as Canadian, such as Wayne Gretzky, Celine Dion, and Mike Myers, or place on a map a few major cities, such as Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal. Coming the long way around via England, they might be able to sing a verse or two from “The Lumberjack Song,” even without putting on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniforms worn by the performers in the old Monty Python skit. Leaving out what now amounts to ancient history — Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald singing “Indian Love Call,” Expo 67, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau — in the United States, knowledge about Canada is definitely a hit-or-miss affair, mainly miss. In Minnesota, which shares a border with Canada, there may be a higher degree of familiarity, depending on how big a hockey fan one is, or whether one has crossed the border into Canada on a canoe trip or fly-in fishing adventure, taken an excursion up to Winnipeg for the folk festival, or gone to Churchill to see the polar bears. In the realm of the arts, the test gets more difficult. The architect Frank Gehry, though a long-time Los Angeles resident, was born and raised in Montreal and holds dual citizenship; the fascination with the pianist Glenn Gould survives even decades after his death; and Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize in literature. There is also the Group of Seven, which sounds like something from the Cultural Revolution in China, but is the label for the best-known painters in Canadian history, if we include two individuals, Tom Thomson and Emily Carr, not among the seven but always associated with them. In cinema, Guy Maddin, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan all have devoted followings, and James Cameron is, in fact, from Canada, yet unlike the others, he does not make his films there and seems pure Hollywood. There are other important contemporary Canadian artists, including Michael Snow, Stan Douglas, and Rebecca Belmore, but they are not household names in Canada, let alone in the United States.1 And ceramics? The ceramics world operates with its own sense of geography, with some key spots determined by institutions. In the United States, the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, and the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in upstate New York would be on top of any list, but there are other famous schools, workshops, and clay centers, and some areas, such as Minnesota and Vermont, that have more than their share of independent potters. The annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) helps bring people together outside of
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
the Internet, in real time and real space, and in 1996 did have a Canadian ceramics exhibition as part of its program — the last such exhibition in the United States.2 Canada also has institutions that provide a foundation of support, including the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax, the Gardiner Museum (devoted to ceramics) and the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. Yet Canadian ceramics still remains too little known in the United States. The exhibition, True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics, is meant to help remedy that unfortunate situation, at least for the Twin Cities and surrounding environs. No small selection can do justice to the full range of contemporary studio ceramics in Canada, let alone the entire history of ceramics north of the 49th parallel. But True North should make it clear that in Canada, ceramics is alive and well, with excellent work being done in a diversity of styles. The Canadian border may pose an annoying obstacle in terms of the free flow of work: customs is customs, shipping costs are shipping costs, ceramics is ceramics — meaning, here, all too breakable. But the movement of people is mercifully free: Linda Sikora, Canadian-born, teaches at Alfred, while the US-born Linda Swanson (featured in NCC’s Elemental exhibition) is now teaching at Concordia University in Montreal. Walter Ostrom and Robert Archambeau, both born in the United States, are major figures in Canadian ceramics, and Canada has reaped benefits from other countries as well: in the twentieth century many of the best-known Canadian ceramicists were European émigrés. Robin Hopper, the first winner of the prestigious Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in Fine Crafts, was born and educated in England. It would be foolhardy to get carried away with grand generalizations about the Canadian character and the relationship between the US and Canada, or between US and Canadian ceramics. Canadian ceramics obviously need not be burdened with being 100% representative of Canada 100% of the time, although Léopold Foulem has made an especially outrageous series, entitled Returning from Brokeback Mountain, that plays off the Annie Proulx story and Ang Lee film by recasting the cowboys in the tale of love, sex, and the West, as a pair of Canadian Mounties, those great icons of Canadian identity. As in the United States, in Canada, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reveal, and revel in, internationalism and a multiplicity of influences and styles. There are artists whose work recalls French neo-classicism, British vernacular and industrial pottery, the great Asian traditions in ceramics, Scandinavian modernism, and movements in modern art such
2 Canadian Clay Currents, Pyramid Arts Center, Rochester, New York, held in conjunction with the 1996 NCECA conference.
Essay: Robert Silberman
3 Formally Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island are referred to as the Maritimes, although, informally, Labrador and Newfoundland are often included.
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as Dada, Op Art, and Pop Art. Ostrom, featured at NCC in the 2004 From the Garden exhibition, and now honored as a 2014 Regis Master, with an exhibition that runs concurrently with True North, has given new life to an important European tradition through his brilliant creations in majolica. In addition — why not East as well as West? — he has worked in China and fashioned his own dramatic version of chinoiserie. In Nova Scotia, where he taught at NSCAD for four decades and influenced countless students including Bruce Cochrane, Ostrom pioneered the use of local clays, providing a fitting example of how global cosmopolitanism and localism (not provinciality, except in the Canadian sense of the term) can be united. Canada is often described as suffering from a permanent identity crisis. There are any number of reasons for this supposed problem: the relation to Great Britain, France, and the colonial past, with the unresolved tensions between Frenchand English-speaking citizens, and between Quebec and the rest of Canada; the broader separation and political tug-ofwar between the Maritimes,3 the corporate cultures of Quebec and Ontario, and the resource-rich provinces of the West; and, of course, the burden of being overshadowed by the United States. If Chicago suffers from a Second City complex in relation to New York, Canada perhaps suffers from a Second Country complex in relation to the United States. Periodically the question of national identity reappears in discussions of Canadian art and Canadian crafts, including ceramics. There does not, however, appear to be any identity crisis among the artists in True North. Their individual artistic identities are strong, and their work displays the richness of Canadian ceramics rather than conforming to one particular approach. There is no “Canadian School” in ceramics, and why should there be? Collective identity may be an appealing critical construct, but it need not be an empirical fact. The nine individuals featured in True North include both established and emerging artists, and represent the full sweep of Canadian ceramics — geographically, from the Maritimes to the West Coast, as well as artistically, from traditionalism to postmodernism and beyond. “True North” is a phrase in the Canadian national anthem, but geographically and technically speaking, it distinguishes the actual, accurate direction from any misleading divergences and false compass readings. It can therefore also refer to values and character. From Minnesota to Canada, the direction is usually north (except in that geographical-political curiosity, the Northwest Angle), but not always due north. There are a variety of directions to be taken, from northwest to northeast, a spectrum of possibilities that all lead to these artists and the individual truths of their art.
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Robert Archambeau really should be an honorary Minnesotan— or Mingei-sotan. Who might confer that honor? The governor? Garrison Keillor? Warren MacKenzie? Archambeau’s functional ceramics do seem to fit right in with the kind of work identified with MacKenzie and many other local and regional potters: straightforward, unpretentious, yet in their own way, refined. Archambeau’s art also has distinct personal elements. He sometimes uses cast bronze lids on his vessels, an idea inspired by the lacquer tops used with porcelain bases in Japanese teaware. He is fond of a leaf motif, which brings nature directly onto the surface of his works. And during the last decade, he has been doing drawings, exquisite images that highlight the lyricism of his pottery and indicate his endless fascination with forms, surfaces, and possible groupings. Archambeau has achieved a recognizable style indebted to Asian ceramics without any too-literal copying. His teapots, plates and platters, vases and pouring vessels, cups and bowls, at this stage represent not so much a catalogue of individual variations on basic forms as a kind of self-portrait. As a committed wood-fire potter, Archambeau is a committed gambler, willing to set his desire for control against the wild cards that come into play when the work is surrendered to the fire. He has said, “Woodfiring is difficult, expensive and labor intensive. A more prudent and less compulsive artist might consider it not worth the effort to fire with wood, but the total aesthetic is what I am after and woodfiring is the only way to achieve it.” Fortunately for us, Archambeau continues to make the effort, and the results are a magnificent display of his total aesthetic. Bruce Cochrane is a classical artist. That does not mean he makes ceramic versions of Greek columns, or busts of Cicero. He does, however, make works that demonstrate a sense of intelligence and order, and betray no signs of romantic agony. Raw, expressionistic pots are clearly not for him. Cochran is widely admired because of his technical skill, but above all for his sense of form, which always seems restrained, yet has energy and flair. The Cochrane works in True North suggest a purist modernism in their relative absence of ornament and spare surface decoration, although the tureen’s lid and side handles show how Cochrane can make small touches contribute to overall success. In some of his recent pots, the elegant geometry, spare surfaces, and glistening black elements recall Art Deco, while in others there is a simplicity and physicality reminiscent of archaic artifacts. All are architectonic in their structural and spatial aspects, as Léopold Foulem has noted,4 but without appearing architectural through simple quotation.
4 Léopold Foulem, “Process and Access: Pottery by Bruce Cochrane,” Ceramics Art and Perception, 54 (2003), 55 – 57.
Essay: Robert Silberman
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The teapot is a perfect demonstration of his concern with the basic relationship between form and functionalism. Cochrane says he wanted “to create a lidded form that involved conscious attention to the act of lid removal and replacement — increasing awareness and attaching importance to it.”5 A small matter, perhaps, but Cochrane always keeps the user and the use in mind, and makes his ceramics a continuous exploration, with all aspects open to reconsideration and change. The results never fail to communicate a sense of proportion, coherence, balance, and dynamism — the classical Cochrane virtues. Michael Flaherty, of all the artists in True North, most directly addresses Canadian history, Canadian geography, and that mystical sense of the north so often said to be an essential part of Canadian identity. He created his Grey Island works during, and after, a period of living alone on islands off northern Newfoundland. Flaherty deliberately engages the isolation, desolation, and splendor to be found in Canada outside of the large cities and established agricultural areas. The ceramic hybrids he fashions bring together the domestic artifacts discarded by modern settlers when they abandoned the islands, and the weathered antlers of the caribou that now inhabit them. That combination, Flaherty says, draws “a connection between past and present, human and animal, presence and absence.” Flaherty works in many media: ceramics, video, still photography, performance, and site-specific installation. Given his fascination with the past and the passage of time, it is not surprising that he should be drawn to moving images. He uses them, and photographs, to record his own activities in the landscape. With ceramic shards and other relics from the cycle of settlement and abandonment, he creates poignant site-specific works that he then records, as when he notes the working of the tide on a line of shards on the shore. It is in part an exercise in optics, a study in refraction. It is also an expression of that great romantic subject, the fragility, even futility of human action when exposed to the forces of nature and the passage of time. Yet Flaherty’s work suggests that any sense of loss can be countered by the preservative powers of art.
5 Bruce Cochrane, “Thoughts About Recent Work,” artist statement, August 2014.
Léopold Foulem, like Walter Ostrom and Robert Archambeau, is a recipient of the Saidye Bronfman Award (now one of the Governor General’s Awards), the highest Canadian honor for a craftsperson. Honors aside, however, there is really no one else like Foulem, north or south of the border. He has created works that range from a cool, conceptual treatment of the silhouettes of basic forms, to a use of popular culture icons such as Mickey Mouse and Colonel Sanders that can seem almost silly — at first glance, before the satirical, often sexual, aspects become
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
clear — to an engagement with the most rarified traditions of European decorative and fine art, as when he sends up iconic images such as Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. Recently, he has created outraged and outrageous works that use the bibelot tradition as the basis for an aesthetic assault on pedophilic priests They represent something of a summary of his art to date, being simultaneously funny, over-the-top, skillfully executed, historically informed and, not least, unforgettable. Foulem is a writer as well as a maker. Articulate and incisive, he says that ceramics has “its own language and proper concepts,” adding, “My ceramics are about ideas … never about self-expression or the pursuit of beauty.”6 In fact, his teapots and other vessels contain no interior spaces or openings; his floral works are primarily made with decals, not painstaking petalby-petal china painting; and his metalwork uses re-finished, reconfigured elements from flea market finds. Every Foulem creation is both a critical examination of the history of ceramics and a provocation, challenging any and all assumptions about ceramics, art, and society. Xanthe Isbister created her most recent works after a pair of dramatic events: the death of her father and the birth of her son. These wall sculptures were, she says, inspired by the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. It is no wonder that they are at once lyrical and disturbing. Formally, they use shapes that fall into the borderline region of the semi-abstract, and recall the biomorphism of Arp, Miró, Gorky, and Baziotes. They do not offer up any easily identifiable subjects, yet still manage to suggest life forms that are presented, not so much in terms of scientific imagery, but rather as symbolic allegory. Their drama begins with their multiple elements, and the tension established between the contrasting physical elements. That tension is reinforced by the differences in surface and color: between relatively simple, smooth, closed shapes and more complex folded, torn, fragmented ones, and between shiny white and matte black. These sculptures, although still focused on human psychology, mark a shift to more immediate personal experiences from Isbister’s earlier sculptures and installations with their interest in “the impact of the natural environment … on human identity.” As wall works, they also move away from the sense of monumentality and physical weight in Isbister’s freestanding works. Yet they still reveal a compelling sense of the material, physical qualities of clay. They hold together because of a kind of force field, and display a fully realized imaginative coherence. Without ever being too literal as images of seed and womb, flesh and ashes, wholeness and separation, life and death, these sculptures possess unmistakable psychological force and artistic strength.
6 Léopold Foulem, “Ceramics Paradigms and Paradigms for Ceramics,” Third Annual Dorothy Wilson Perkins Lecture, Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art at Alfred University, October 24, 2000. http:// ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/perkins_ lect_series/foulem/
Essay: Robert Silberman
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Rory MacDonald represents a new spirit often found in contemporary ceramics where the creations are historically informed yet break new ground. His Curb Work project takes ceramics out of its usual haunts — the studio, the gallery, the museum — and into the streets. In this ongoing effort, McDonald repairs decaying curbs with decorated ceramic patches, an artistic touch in spots where plain gray concrete and unornamented functionalism usually dominate. In addition to providing a happy bit of pattern, this activist art, like the French artist JR’s interventions in the favelas of Rio, calls attention to marginal neighborhoods and non-benign neglect. MacDonald’s fancy patchwork draws upon history, in particular the Japanese tradition of using gilded lacquer joinery and shards to repair ceramic vessels. Recently, he has been making vessels that recall both classic Asian pottery and the inexpensive chalkware used as carnival prizes in the days before plush toys and inflatable action figures. The vessels are made of black porcelain, sanded to become like black boards so that they are receptive to the drawings MacDonald executes with actual chalk. Their basic shapes invoke showpieces in celadon or blue and white porcelain, and MacDonald’s surface designs suggest straightforward preparatory outline drawings or quick, rough sketches. The chalkboard-sidewalk character of the matte surfaces invites viewers to add their own marks. The works in the Chalkworks Series share in MacDonald’s interest in site specificity, because they are generally customized to incorporate references to the locations where they are displayed, and they challenge notions of permanence and detached appreciation. For all their easygoing, popular qualities, they leave no doubt about MacDonald’s formal and conceptual intelligence. Alwyn O’Brien creates sculptures that use open forms rather than the continuous, closed surfaces that usually define ceramic vessels or figures. Her intricate lattice structures have a playfulness and irregularity that sets them apart from the kind of geometrical order found in cell models in biology or chemistry, or in the Minimalist structures of an artist such as Sol Lewitt. A sense of process is made visible — these are constructed works, created with care and delicacy. At their most elaborate, they can seem at first glance like something organic and growing, an exotic species glimpsed on a coral reef, or a micro-organism seen through an electron microscope. Yet they are also deconstructive, resembling remnants of baroque vessels whose walls have dissolved to the point where only a skeleton is left, along with bits of linear tracing from the surface ornamentation. As the artist puts it, the works present “Fantasy in motion, a constant becoming … somewhere between disintegration and realization.”
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Poised between decay and growth, frozen in what O’Brien calls “the moment of transformation,” these sculptures suggest an expressive form of drawing or weaving; the emphasis is on line, not mass, on fluidity, not rigidity. The application of color reinforces that ambiguous sense of being at once a work-inprogress and a ruin-in-progress. In the trio of new works made at Northern Clay especially for True North, each is a response to the sensations the artist experienced during a walk in the Twin Cities. As in all of O’Brien’s work, the tension between order and entropy animates these new creations. They draw viewers into a parallel universe governed by its own rules of order — O’Brien’s rules — where what we behold is altogether enticing, lively, and original. Amélie Proulx The title of Amélie Proulx’s work Encyclopédie d’Orogenèse, in plain English is “Encyclopedia of the Origins of Mountains.” “Encyclopedia,” here, recalls not Wikipedia or the Britannica, so much as the great Enlightenment project of eighteenth-century France, edited by Diderot and D’Alembert, and claiming to be “a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.” Proulx’s creation, like Siah Armijani’s sculptures from his “Dictionary for Building,” combines an analytical intelligence with a touch of Marcel Duchamp’s playful modernism. It may be reminiscent of the scientific and industrial diagrams in the original French Encyclopedia, yet it is no more devoted to practicality than a Rube Goldberg fantastical contraption. The sculpture, inspired by pendant lamps, displays Proulx’s fascination with nature by presenting what she describes as a kind of metaphorical landslide, with “a series of porcelain strata representing the topography of a mountain … suspended and kept in balance with a counterweight containing hundreds of letters printed onto porcelain.”7 The work addresses the physical and geological as well as the linguistic and cosmological. The idea of a device made of porcelain may seem unusual, even absurd. Yet the purity of the porcelain carries a hint of Enlightenment idealism, while resembling the unadorned whiteness of neoclassical sculpture. In all her art, Proulx engages in a meditation and practical demonstration concerning language and meaning. And she always returns to the fundamental metamorphosis of clay into ceramic material, a process that, as she suggests here, is subject to slippage, and a product that is not necessarily immutable. With its formal inventiveness, intellectual depth, and elegant wit, Encyclopédia Orgogenese would no doubt have enthralled that most acute of thinkers, Diderot, just as it should please viewers today. Brendan Lee Satish Tang If Michael Flaherty’s work evokes Canada’s past, Brendan Lee Satish Tang’s work looks back
7 http://amelieproulx.com/en/ encyclopedie-dune-orogenese/
Essay: Robert Silberman
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to ceramic history, before moving rapidly from the present toward the future. His art is a radical hybrid: Ming dynasty meets cybernetics. Tang models his vessel forms on classic blue and white ware, as passed through the European ormolu tradition, which gave Chinese imports a makeover by adding gilded, highly ornamental decorations. Tang also incorporates contemporary additions inspired by Japanese anime and the imagery of electronic equipment. The contemporary culture clash in Tang’s art is a response to globalization, new technologies, and the significance of Asian culture. At the same time, it expresses Tang’s multicultural heritage, as an AsianCanadian man and artist. Tang’s ormolu-like additions to the traditional Chinese vessels have the aggressive in-your-face boldness of a summer blockbuster action movie. In this meeting of brightly colored high-tech components and the most conventional of vessel forms and decorative styles, it is not clear whether the final product should be regarded as part of a horror movie death struggle or as a sign of techno-idealism. In Tang’s early works, the contemporary elements, like the ornamental decoration in ormolu, were an accretion. But in recent versions — numbered, appropriately enough, like new software releases — the traditional vessel appears to be giving birth to a futuristic offspring. Alien monstrosity or utopian fantasy? Either way, each sculpture is a daring combination, at once grotesque and beautiful, disturbing yet satisfying. In bravura fashion, Tang manages to hold opposites together through his undeniable skill and inventiveness.
Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to thank Sarah Millfelt, Director, and the staff of Northern Clay Center, for contributing so much to the success of this project. Their cooperative, collaborative spirit has once again made serving as guest curator a great experience. I must offer special thanks to Michael Arnold, the gallery director, for his invaluable work in handling the logistical side of the project. He went more than the proverbial extra mile by taking a round trip drive to Winnipeg to secure many of the works, and then he and Jamie Lang did an outstanding job with the installation. Thanks also to my fellow members on the Exhibition Committee; to Dustin Yager, for his work on the supplementary programs; to Elizabeth Coleman for being such a patient, careful, intelligent editor; and to Anedith Nash for all her support. Above all, as always, I am grateful to the artists.
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Robert Archambeau Most of my ceramic work has been wood fired. Wood firing is difficult, expensive and labor intensive. A more prudent and less compulsive artist might consider it not worth the effort to fire with wood, but the total aesthetic is what I am after and wood firing is the only way to achieve it. Wood firing is often a shared activity. Over the years I have worked with Dan Anderson, Chuck Hindes, John Neely and Torbjorn Kvasbo, all internationally known artists with long experience in wood firing. Each of their respective kilns yield results quite particular to the type of basic structure of their kiln, the type(s) of wood burned, and the idiosyncrasies and firing technique of the owners. Torbjorn Kavasbo’s kiln, located in Venabygd, Norway, gives firing results that have an extraordinary range of color, light auburns flash to pinks and beige, black browns grey into deep purple. I have worked closely with Dan Anderson for many years. His anagama wood kiln in Edwardsville, Illinois, is well known and a veritable mecca for potters all over North
Robert Archambeau, installation view.
America. He is quite knowledgeable regarding wood firing and very altruistic with his large kiln and all that he has learned from firing over several years. It is also a 2500 mile round trip for me to fire with Dan, but I always have a productive time and find it well work my effort. Some of my very best work has come from this wood kiln. John Neely’s (Logan, Utah) and Chuck Hindes’ (Iowa City, Iowa) wood kilns and firing techniques give softer hues tending to blues and greys. I am fond of this palette and enjoy working with both artists, who are also friends, and I am always “pumped up” and ready for new things after working with them. I might point out that my studio and home in Bissett, Manitoba, is at the end of a road surrounded by total forest. Because of the almost constant risk of forest fires, a wood-fire kiln could only be fired in the winter, which is very difficult at minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit and a wood-firing crew would not be readily available. However, I do have an unusually large supply of native softwoods to burn.
Robert Archambeau
Bottle, 2014, wood-fired stoneware, crackle slip, shino, 12" x 6.5" x 6.5".
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Bruce Cochrane After 25 years of working in clay, utility continues to serve as the foundation for my ideas. The pots I make, no matter how simple or complex, are meant to be experienced on a physical and visual level. The way an object carries, lifts, cradles, pours, and contains are properties that I strive to make engaging for the user, offering more than just convenience. After an initial stage of concept drawing, the idea evolves by working in multiples. The serial approach not only keeps me focused on progressively solving the immediate problems, but also presents, at various stages throughout the process, numerous possibilities for other work. Contemporary potters whose work has impact and a strong sense of the maker are those who make connections to ceramic history. It is such a vast source of inspiration — it’s hard to ignore. I live in a
Bruce Cochrane, installation view.
house that is filled with folk pottery from our own North American tradition and from China, and a lesser number from Europe. I have been to Europe three times and to China twice, primarily to get close to the museum collections for a better understanding, not to mention the thrill of being in the original makers’ environment. Ancient Chinese bronze vessels have recently inspired a more formal attitude in my work. In addition, I have been including rural architectural references that suggest a sense of monumentality within a functional scale. The use of press-molded forms, combined with thrown elements, has facilitated the development of some of these new ideas. The process is a refreshing change from 25 years of throwing and has generated a new way of thinking about form, which has few limitations.
Bruce Cochrane
Box Form, 2014, wood-fired stoneware, 8.5" x 12" x 12".
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Michael Flaherty During the summer of 2009, I lived alone for three months on the isolated Grey Islands off the north coast of Newfoundland. There I lived among the remains of an abandoned community, Grey Islands Harbour, a once bustling place now empty because of the
1960s government policy of resettlement. Few remnants of the human population remain — a cemetery, a handful of ruined houses, pottery shards on the beach, and very little else. But it would be inaccurate to say the island is uninhabited: shortly after the people left
Michael Flaherty
in 1961, a herd of caribou was transplanted there. For more than half a century they have successfully persisted where humans could no longer — they have inherited the island in an ecological, physical, and spiritual sense. The caribou leave their own record on the land.
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They carve trails through the brush with their footsteps and shed their antlers every fall. It is through these artifacts — antlers, shards, architecture, gravestones — that I draw a connection between past and present, human and animal, presence and absence.
Michael Flaherty, installation view. Center: 1845 – 1893, 1847 – 1899, 2014, white earthenware, terra sigillata, underglaze, glaze, found materials, 7.5" x 17.5" x 12". Right: 1888 – 1894, 1890 – 1894, 1893 – 1894, 2014, white earthenware, terra sigillata, underglaze, glaze, found materials, 6" x 26" x 16".
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
LĂŠopold Foulem I believe that authentic art is a matter of concepts, certainly not of the means of expression or of style, or even of execution. My work in ceramics expresses ideas.
Adonis in Rose Garden, 2012, ceramic, found objects, 14" x 12" x 5.5". Courtesy of the artist and David Kaye Gallery.
My artistic production has nothing to do with individual expression or a quest for beauty. I see myself as a composer and a theorist, not as a virtuoso.
Léopold Foulem
Bouquet of Blue Hydrangeas, 2008, ceramic, found metal objects, 13" x 7.5" x 6". Courtesy of the artist and David Kaye Gallery.
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Xanthe Isbister I seek to capture and express a “sense of place” in my work. I have spent a great deal of time immersed in the wilderness of Canada’s boreal forests, and those experiences have impacted, and continue to impact, my creativity. In recent years, my visits to any wilderness area have been minimal. This absence has created a drive within me to employ memory, perhaps idealized, as source material in my
current ceramic sculptures. Most of us exist in an environment that is removed from the wilderness. In her book Identity and the Natural Environment, Susan Clayton claims that “the degradation of this human dependence on nature brings the increased likelihood of a deprived and diminished existence. Much of the human search for a coherent and fulfilling existence is intimately dependent
Land Organ II, 2014, low-fire ceramic, multi–glaze fired, 7.5" x 9.5" x 13".
Xanthe Isbister
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upon our relationship to nature”.* My large ceramic sculptures and installations explore the psychological significance and impact the natural environment has on human identity. * Susan D. Clayton and Susan Opotow. Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
Land Organ III, 2014, low-fire ceramic, multi–glaze fired, 9.5" x 17" x 31".
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Rory MacDonald Chalkworks is a larger collection of works, which began with a rethinking of the conditions of fragility and longevity in the history of ceramics, and the role of ceramics as an archive of cultural information. Ceramics holds this ability to resist the ravages of time, maintaining colour and texture like no other material. At the same time, ceramic objects are entirely fragile and capable of destruction with little effort. Untitled explores the longevity of the surface of a work, the rules of engagement in the gallery, and the capacity for tactile engagement with viewers. There is an attempt to create the image of a pot and a pot stuck in the contradictions of the material. The surfaces mimic, but do not copy traditional glaze and surface relationships such as blue and white figure-ground. The objects are brought together with symmetry and order, though the nature of the surfaces questions the finish of the drawings and the completeness of the group. The haptic chalk surface provides the ability to extend the process of the work into the gallery and extends the engagement and interpretation of the work with the viewer. The ability of the
audience to consider sidewalk chalks or grade school blackboards makes the surface at once strange and accessible. Almost everyone has some connection with chalk and fundamentally understands its fragility. The chalk surface is left unfixed and thus, susceptible to touch, circumventing the rules of the gallery and calling into question the longevity and fidelity of the ceramic archive. Most importantly, as a record of handling, the chalk literally records its interactions with hands. What is gained by losing the archival surface is a dynamic surface capable of recording change. The gesture to draw is just as important as the impact on the surface; from shipping or handling, to the interaction of the audience with the work, the surface maintains an energy. These conditions of the work also lay bare for me a question of commitment in the maintenance of the image. As the works break down, the images can be redrawn or reimagined. This exposes, both an endless possibility and a lack of commitment to permanently fixing the surface. The works are engaged as long as I can revisit a surface again and again or the audience engages with them.
Rory MacDonald
Vase 4, 2014, cone 6 oxidation, whiteware, black slip, terra sigillata, chalk, 23" x 10" x 10".
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Alwyn O’Brien I strive to create objects that embody a sense of the richness of life and time, memory, longing, and loss. Beyond the immediate subjective, I also draw on “memory traces” at large in our visual culture (commercial decals, shards of industrial plaster molds, drawn images) and those of ceramic history (Persian ceramics, blue and white Chinese export ware, Delft ware, Sèvres Porcelain, 19th-century Canadian underglazed printware). The feelings and impressions evoked
Alwyn O’Brien, installation view.
by the objects we encounter in our lives, and our ever-changing relationships to them, is a central concern in my work. The felt (tactile/ emotional) experience of ceramics is integral to the reading of it, where surface and form combine to become Braille, a bridge between maker and user, a storied surface conveyed between hands. The contemporary ceramic object can be understood as a souvenir — a simultaneous overlay of our histories, our present, and our presence.
Alwyn O’Brien
Pitch / for Michelle, 2014, earthenware, glaze, 22.5" x 11.5" x 10".
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Amélie Proulx I create objects and environments inspired by the natural world that merge with architectural environments to point to and reopen our perception of natural phenomena. I believe that language fundamentally shapes our perception and the focus of my recent works has been on the metaphors that reify natural phenomena through familiar images such as “fog veil,” “forest carpet,” and “river bed.” Through writing and material exploration, I analyze these metaphors, establish new connections, and explore the outward signs of this new interaction. I start with the premise that before its firing, clay is a soft material that can be perpetually transformed if it stays wet. When clay is fired, it irreversibly becomes ceramics. The process of firing renders this material
stable and permanent, thereby conserving its characteristics of stability and immutability for millennia. My explorations with this material lead me to develop different strategies for unsettling the inherent characteristics of ceramics and suggesting that this material could be perpetually transformed. My sculptures and installations are hence propositions of potential movement in a material considered immutable. The use of different materials and techniques, combined with ceramics, allows me to multiply the possible relations among elements occupying a given space. Thus, I activate ceramics in different ways to create kinetic sculptures and installations that suggest a perpetual slippage of meaning in language and in the perception of natural phenomena.
Encyclopédie d’une orogenèse, 2011, porcelain, steel structure, nylon rope, hardware, 67" x 26" x 16".
Amélie Proulx
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
Brendan Lee Satish Tang People throughout history have bought, adopted, or pillaged technologies from one another, often through the mechanisms of war, trade, and espionage. “Nations” and “cultures” are not discrete entities, but are rather continually evolving expressions of social history, economic imperialism, and geopolitics. Viewed in this way, globalization is a historic trend, but one that is accelerating. The rate and extent of globalization has increased exponentially through increasingly complex technological revolutions — agricultural, industrial, and now, digital. Yet, simultaneous to this technological convergence, the cleavages between populations defined by race, religion, and nation are being redrawn, redefined, and reinforced. Clearly, “we” (patriots, developed, democratic) are not like “them” (insurgents, under-developed, oppressed). Globalization, as translated through capitalism and nationalism, has not yielded cultural uniformity. Manga Ormolu enters the dialogue on contemporary culture, technology, and globalization through a fabricated relationship between ceramic tradition (using the form of Chinese Ming dynasty vessels) and technoPop Art. The futuristic update of the Ming vessels recalls 18th-century French, gilded ormolu, where historic Chinese vessels were transformed into curiosity pieces for aristocrats. But here, robotic prosthetics inspired by anime (Japanese animation) and
manga (the beloved comics and picture novels of Japan) subvert elitism with the accessibility of popular culture. Working with Asian cultural elements highlights the evolving Western experience of the “Orient.” This narrative is personal: the hybridization of cultures mirrors my identity as an ethnically-mixed Asian Canadian. My family history is one of successive generations shedding the markers of ethnic identity in order to succeed in an adopted country — within a few generations this cultural filtration has spanned China, India, Trinidad, Ireland, and Canada. Cultural appropriation and assimilation seem like a natural part of my identity, a survival technique not uncommon among ethnic minorities. While Manga Ormolu offers multiple points of entry into sociocultural dialogue, manga, by nature, doesn’t take itself too seriously. The futuristic ornamentation can be excessive, self-aggrandizing, and even ridiculous. This is a fitting reflection of our human need to envision and translate fantastic ideas into reality; in fact, striving for transcendence is a unifying feature of human cultural history. This characteristic is reflected in the unassuming, yet utterly transformable material of clay. Manga Ormolu, through content, form, and material, vividly demonstrates the conflicting and complementary forces that shape our perceptions of Ourselves and the Other.
Manga Ormolu 5.0-N, 2013, ceramics, mixed media, 16.5" x 10.75" x 5".
Brendan Lee Satish Tang
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2014 Regis Master: Walter Ostrom
WALTER OSTROM
2014 REGIS MASTER:
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2014 Regis Master: Walter Ostrom
2014 Regis Master: Walter Ostrom The Regis Masters Series began in 1997 and continues to recognize ceramic artists, over the age of 65, who have had a major impact on the development of ceramics in the last century and this century. The artists bestowed with the title of Regis Master are from this country and from across the world. They receive an honorarium, participate in an exhibition at NCC, and deliver a lecture about their life and work. In doing so, they add to the limited stock of oral history of a senior generation of ceramic artists. Our partner in this program is the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Regis Masters Series was originally supported by Regis and Friends and continues today through generous support from Anita Kunin and the Kunin Family, in the name of the late Myron Kunin, a philanthropist and former owner of the Regis Corporation. Walter Ostrom is Northern Clay Center’s 27th Regis Master; he is one of two ceramic artists bestowed with the title in 2014. The other, Adrian Saxe, was featured in an exhibition in spring of 2014. Ostrom added his story to a limited oral history of a senior generation of ceramic artists on Saturday, September 27, at 2 pm, with a free public lecture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, in the Pillsbury Auditorium. In honor of his nearly 40 years of teaching, Walter Ostrom, C.M., was recently appointed Professor Emeritus of Ceramics by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1997, he was awarded an Honorary Professorship at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China. One of Canada’s most highly respected ceramic artists, in 2003, Ostrom was also named the 27th recipient of the Saidye Bronfman Award and in April 2006, he was inducted into the Order of Canada. From Beijing to Amsterdam and New York, he is considered one of the most profoundly influential ceramists of his generation and a giant in the field of contemporary ceramics. Curator Susan Jeffries writes that Ostrom has a “profound interest in, and understanding of, the history of ceramics.”1 “His own work,” she notes, “is easily recognizable and of the highest order, both technically and conceptually … The white background often serves to record his vast knowledge and love of ceramic history and botany.”2 According to former NSCAD President, Paul Greenhalgh, his work is a “‘discourse on the history of ceramic ornamentation.’”3 Ostrom is regarded internationally as a technical and academic expert in tin glaze, an ancient ceramic technique that he has personally tailored, through innovations and decorative methods, to reflect the geography of the places where he has lived — whether in Nova Scotia or the Far East. His body of
1 Susan Jefferies, “A Place in Ceramic History: Roseline Delisle and Walter Ostrom,” Crafting New Traditions: Canadian Innovators and Influences, edited by Melanie Egan, Alan C. Elder, and Jean Johnson, (Quebec, Canada: Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, 2009): 25 2 Jefferies, “A Place in Ceramic History,” 30. 3 As quoted in Jefferies, “A Place in Ceramic History,” 30.
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work has developed across many aspects of ceramics in the span of his nearly 50-year career — from experiments in high conceptualism in the 1970s to his later exploration of the vast history, hybridization, and social foundation of ceramics. Robin Metcalfe, author of Studio Rally: Art and Craft of Nova Scotia (1999), claims that “in the polarized context of contemporary clay discourse in Halifax” — and, we would add, throughout the contemporary clay world — Ostrom’s work represents a “clay practice that orients itself toward the pot, rather than to clay as a more generally sculptural medium, and thus towards craft and function and away from the gallery as its primary site.”4 Nonetheless, Ostrom has exhibited extensively and lectured internationally. He has participated in more than 100 group and solo exhibitions throughout North America and has presented over 150 workshops and lectures in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics, Toronto; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; and the Claridge Collection, Montreal. Born in the United States and educated there and in Europe, Ostrom moved to Canada in 1969 to teach at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (now NSCAD University). An outstanding educator, he is committed to craft practice and theory. Widely recognized as a seminal teacher for generations of ceramic artists and for using the local red clay of Nova Scotia, he has been instrumental in reviving such tenets of craft as utility, decoration, and function, and he continues to champion the role of fine craft within the visual arts.
4 Robin Metcalfe, “Tempest in a Teapot: Walter Ostrom and the Clay Wars,” ARTSatlantic, issue 56, Fall/Winter 1996: 4 – 5.
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2014 Regis Master: Walter Ostrom
Walter Ostrom I really believe pottery is the signifier of civilization. When we came out of the trees, what made us special is that we could make pottery. It’s no mistake that all through the history of the world, ceramics have been the record of mankind. Every piece, even the most humble, has been a container for social, cultural and aesthetic information. My pots are made to function in the everyday complex world of the home, rather than the one dimensional world of the gallery or museum. A pot should never stop working. In use,
it should function to contain, present, and enhance both its content and its context. A pot comes with all sorts of cultural information: social, economic, aesthetic, etc. I try to keep in mind both the utilitarian and informational role. Many contemporary potters follow the industrial model of uniform treatment and decoration of the pot regardless of its intended function. As craftspeople, we should take advantage of our freedom (means of production) to explore alternatives.
Flower Brick in the Shape of a Tortoise, 1987, earthenware, glaze, 6" x 10.5" x 9". Collection of Elaine Ostrom.
Walter Ostrom
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True North: Contemporary Canadian Ceramics
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, Interim Vice Chair Rick Scott, Treasurer/Secretary Lynne Alpert Nan Arundel Robert Briscoe Philip Burke Craig Bishop Mary K. Baumann Linda Coffey Debra Cohen Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill, M.D. Sally Wheaton Hushcha Christopher Jozwiak Bruce Lilly Alan Naylor Mark Pharis T Cody Turnquist Robert Walsh
Director Sarah Millfelt Exhibitions Manager Michael Arnold Exhibitions Installer Jamie Lang
Design by Joseph D.R. OLeary, VetoDesign.com
Director Emerita Emily Galusha
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs by Peter Lee
Honorary Members Andy Boss Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Joan Mondale
Foreword
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2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org