Home: Woodfire Interpretations
Signature Shop and Gallery
Atlanta, Georgia
December 8, 2006-January 6, 2007
Curated by Simon Levin, who includes his own work, together with that of Bede Clarke and Liz Lurie, Home: Woodfire Interpretations at Atlanta’s Signature Shop and Gallery offers the viewer first a frisson of perceptual delights. But in the face of such understated refinement of contour and subtlety of coloration, the visual pleasure soon leads to ruminations on the rich archetypal associations of the hearth, fire, and containers.
Favoring pitchers because they are “active and look like a working form . . . as though they’re ready to do something,” Bede Clarke presents several stunning examples. One—tall, altered from a wheel-thrown round into an ellipse—sports a handle that echoes the oval body. A decidedly angular spout raised above the lip offsets the curving shape. Assigning the pitcher distinct sides—as opposed to a sphere, which “always moves away from you”—the elliptical form renders a three-dimensional object virtually two-dimensional. And a flatter surface, the artist believes, is more “confrontational . . . hitting the viewer more directly.” Complementing the mannered geometry of the vessel is the restrained flamboyance of the surface: splashes of smoky black set against brilliant orange, recording, as it were, the vagaries of wind and flame within the kiln.
Clarke also makes other “working forms.” An agreeably plump teapot, for example, repeats his predilection for altering a round into an oval. Graced by a curving handle and a charmingly aborted, angular spout, the vessel is enlivened by Clarke’s signature orange, here accented with brown, together with an oblique grid paddled onto the body before firing “to add a dash of spontaneity.” The artist returns to the round in two resolutely spherical jars: one with thick gray rivulets pooling down into the orange sphere below. For both, he opposes the jar’s circularity with shallow, peaked lids, somewhat reminiscent of Chinese coolie hats.
Identifying the bowl as her place of “home,” engendering a “sense of belonging and security,” Liz Lurie multiplies interpretations of the form, incorporating varying nuances in each series. Limiting her palette to rich, earthern browns with mere suggestions of brighter hues such as gold and soft orange, Lurie highlights form rather than color, the latter always ancillary to the former.
Altered from the round, the series Oval Bowls shows four slight projections around the rim. As if noting the cardinal directions, these “blips” point toward a quaternity or square. Lurie’s elegantly simple containers therefore embody a visual meditation on shapes: first, the circle, from which the vessels evolved; next, the oval, to which they were transformed; and, last, the square, adumbrated on the lip.
Lurie’s other versions of the bowl form are also engaging. Fashioned with broad “handles” growing as though organically from the rim, the series Baskets plays on the notion of inside and out. Indenting slightly the two sides from which the wide handles stem, the artist signals attention to the exterior of the container; but at the same time the generous twinned openings call to mind the interior. The artist reveals wry humor as well, especially in Flying Bathtubs. Rounded at the base, these bowls become almost square at the rim, which flares out into “wings” on two sides. And five angled projections on the lip of Cog Bowls lead the eye around the edge, somewhat like a pinwheel.
Declaring that “artistic potters are privy to a unique and subversive role in contemporary art, Simon Levin urges ceramists to capitalize on . . . [their] place in the home. . . . A cup,” he continues, “is one of the first things we hold in the morning and often one of the last things we touch at night. By reintroducing artistic ware into the home we reconnect art and the everyday.”
True to his own admonition, Levin’s finely crafted, utilitarian objects—bowls and beakers—all bear an unquestionable aesthetic “signature.” But he also translates “useful” objects into artifacts suitable for contemplation, as, for example, his trivets. In a myriad variations on this theme, these slightly rounded, somewhat irregular squares display the classic eccentricities of woodfiring: flashes of brightness overlaying dun colors; pock marks, granular surfaces. Into these disarming inconsistencies born of accident in concert with human intention, Levin introduces purposeful markings: four centered rectangles, a circle of dots, a linear striation of dull silver—this latter inspired by the Japanese custom of filling an imperfection with gold before refiring. Reminiscent of the mysterious notations on the scraggy walls of prehistoric caves, these marks bespeak man’s symbol making. Now grouping the trivets together as wall hangings, Levin has annexed them from their practical function, presenting them as “paintings” in clay. He has, indeed, “reconnected art and the everyday.”
Never intended to be functional, Levin’s little houses are especially intriguing in view of the exhibition’s theme. Although he originally thought of the miniature dwellings as individual, he now arranges them in “neighborhoods” since his three-year-old daughter began to assemble them in clusters. Sharing only a peaked “roofline,” the tiny structures are dissimilar in almost every other aspect. Each has a distinctive, curving “contour,” a different color—from lavender to gray to brown, to amber—and an atypical surface: attractively grainy, covered with bold, slightly curving striations, or smoother with only variations in hue. Undersized squares in non-uniform numbers stand for windows, and slit-like rectangles imitate doors. Evocative both visually and symbolically, the shadowed indentations suggest unseen interiors, the inside that defines a home rather than merely a house. It is there that one imagines the hearth around which gather the family, generating love and community.
Not only does the exhibition showcase superb craftsmanship; it also gives visual expression to the interlocking archetypes of hearth, fire, and dwellings. “A solar center,” according to Jean Chevalier, the hearth is honored in most cultures. Giving off light and heat, it draws people to itself. As the site of food preparation, it is the epicenter of existence, nurturing and enhancing life. Analogous to the hearth, the woodfired kiln employs fire to make containers designed to cook and to consume food. These vessels record that mysterious interchange between chance and intention that constitutes human life.
Dorothy M. Joiner
Lovick P. Corn Professor of Art History
LaGrange College
LaGrange, GA 30240
E-mail: djoiner@lagrange edu