2008 Exhibitions 

'tis a gift... the 18th Annual Holiday Exhibition and Sale

November 16 - January 4
Sales Gallery and Gallery M


Now through January 4th, enjoy 20% to 50% off selected items in our gallery.
It's time to celebrate!  There is no better place to find beautiful and functional gifts this holiday season than Northern Clay Center.  Once again, NCC has a spectacular selection of work from more than sixty regional and national ceramic artists.  Generous and savvy shoppers stop for pots that are tops, from figurines to soup tureens.  Everyone on your gift list will appreciate unique, hand-made objects created by outstanding contemporary craft artists.  Our 18th annual Holiday Exhibition and Sale offers quality and variety that will make your season bright! 

Please Note: NCC Galleries and Sales Desk will be closed for installation November 13 -15 during normal business hours.  Starting November 18th Extended Holiday hours are Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 10 am - 6 pm; Tuesday, Thursday 10 am - 7 pm.  On selected Mondays, the Sales Gallery will be open from 5 - 7:30 to members only, for holiday treats and special quiet shopping. 

Participating Artists in 2008 include:
Jennifer Allen, Martye Allen, Judith Altobell, Posey Bacopoulos, Chris Baskin, Margaret Bohls, Robert Bowman, William Brouillard, Kevin Caufield, Victoria Christen, Blair Clemo, Michael Connelly, A. Leila Denecke, Josh DeWeese, Marc Digeros, Paul Dresang, Gary Erickson, Jil Franke, Willem Gebben, Bill Gossman, Katharine Gotham, Ryan Greenheck, James Grittner, Sarah Heimann, Butch Holden, Bob and Cheryl Husby, Sarah Jaeger, Eric Jensen, Shirley Johnson, Matt Kelleher, Kristen Kieffer, Maren Kloppmann, Gib Krohn, Steve Lee, Lee Love, Warren MacKenzie, Tim Marcotte, Ruth Martin, Laura McCaul, Jan McKeachie-Johnston, Ron Meyers, Jeffrey Nichols, Mike Norman, Jeffrey Noska, Susan O'Brien, Jeff Oestreich, Elizabeth Robinson, Monica Rudquist, Irene Saito, Jo Severson, Laurie Shaman, Megan Bergström Shanahan, Sandra Daulton Shaugnessy, McKenzie Smith, Will Swanson, Munemitsu Taguchi, Geoffrey Wheeler, Tara Wilson, and Michael Wisner. 

Holiday Open House
Part of a long-standing tradition, NCC will celebrate the opening of 'tis a gift…with a festive Holiday Open House.  Shop our galleries for gifts or make your own in the Center's studios, where kids and adults of all ages can create and decorate colorful ornaments and candy dishes.  Kids and parents can alternate between the front and back of NCC for secret present shopping.  Clay work will be fired and available for pick-up beginning November 26.  There is a requested donation of $5 to cover the materials and firing fees.

Additionally, artists will perform demonstrations on the potter's wheels.  NCC's knowledgeable and friendly tour guides will be on hand to walk visitors through the building.  Delicious cake and coffee will be served to further indulge your senses.  Bring your friends and family!

Transformations: From Ceramics to Paper

November 16 - January 4

Gallery A


 

This exhibition pairs the beautifully minimal monoprints of David Cost with three ceramic artists, Samuel Johnson, Rob Barnard and Richard Bresnahan, working in the Japanese ceramic traditions that have influenced Cost's prints.  Following the tone and aesthetic considerations set by David Cost's monoprints, the ceramic work exhibited will focus upon themes of contemplation and austerity.

David Cost's work is informed by an appreciation of many New York Abstract Expressionists: Motherwell
for his collages and bold, Zen-like images, Frankenthaler for her color, whimsy and consecutiveness, and Mitchell for her innovative color explorations, energy and movement.  He admires the abstract energy and experimental moves of Tàpies, the contemporary Spanish artist.  However, it is the Japanese ceramic
tradition to which Cost feels a spiritual kinship and from which he derives his strongest influence.  His current work evolved from his lifelong fascination with ceramics, especially old Japanese pottery.  Cost draws an analogy
between creating a poem and a monotype.  Starting with a blank surface, he gradually fills the empty space with intuitive leaps and associations as spontaneous images begin to interplay.  Cost says his images appear out of the unexpected in the deep reaches of the mind.  He calls it a process of indeterminacy- meaning that little is planned.  The artist and his art become “partners on a journey, taking risks together, searching for the very essence that conveys my vision.”

Samuel Johnson studied painting and ceramics at the University of Minnesota at Morris, followed by a three and a half year apprenticeship    in pottery under Richard Bresnahan.  In 2000, he was invited to study Scandinavian ceramic design in Copenhagen as a guest of Denmark's Design School, while also working at the International Ceramic Center in Skaelskor and as an assistant in private porcelain studios.  Later, he traveled to Japan as a
studio guest of Koie Ryoji.  In 2005, Johnson earned a graduate degree in fine art from the University of Iowa.  He is currently an assistant professor of art at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in central Minnesota.  Johnson creates two separate but related types of pottery.  He writes: “The wood fired work is often
dark and rustic in appearance, evidence of both the process of shaping wet clay and its transformation through fire. 
These pieces are unglazed when placed within the kiln, but over the course of the firing are marked by wood and heat, melting ash, and charcoal.  The second type … is white glazed pottery.  These pieces explore color by minimizing it and may suggest purity and clarity while maintaining surface textures that seem idiosyncratic and imperfect.”

Rob Barnard began studying pottery at the University of Kentucky in 1971.  In 1974 he was admitted to the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen and accepted as a research student at Kyoto University of Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan where he studied under the late Kazuo Yagi.  While in Japan he was accepted in numerous juried exhibitions and had five solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, Otsu, and Shigaraki; he has returned to Japan several times for additional solo exhibitions.  Since 1979 he has maintained a studio and kiln in Timberville, Virginia.  Barnard has received two National Endowments for the Arts Fellowship, and exhibits widely both in the United States and Great Britain. He has work in the collections of the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Everson Museum and the Mint Museum.  In addition to making pots, Barnard has written about
craft and art for The New Art Examiner, where he was the craft editor and other publications including The Studio Potter, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, and Ceramics-Art & Perception. He is currently a lecturer in ceramics at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

Richard Bresnahan, artist-in-residence at St. John's University in Minnesota since 1979, operates the largest wood-fired ceramics kiln in North America.  He combines his expertise in Japanese ceramics with his interest in the use of local materials and natural resources to create distinctive ceramics.  Bresnahan apprenticed in the mid-1970s to Nakazato Takashi Pottery in Japan, where the Nakazato family has been producing pottery for 13 generations.  Upon completion of his apprenticeship, he was named a “master potter” by his teacher, the son of a National Living Treasure of Japan. Bresnahan's training in both the U.S. and Japan enables him to weave together regional indigenous materials and human resources with Pacific Rim pottery processes.  His work appears in numerous public and private collections, including The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota and Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo.

Pictured above: David Cost, Monoprint, 2007, printed on Arches 88 paper, 16" x 16"; Samuel Johnson, Vase, 2007, wood fired stoneware; Richard Bresnahan, Landscape 4, 2007, bottle glaze with Navy Bean Straw Ash, and Granite Dust Glaze.  Local clay, iron slip, and white slip under painting, 5.125" x 5.125" x 9.5".

 

World Ceramics: Transforming Women's Traditions

Gallery M

September 19 – November 2


The exhibition opens at NCC Friday, September 19, from 6 – 8 pm, with a free reception for the curators, resident visiting artist Helga Gamboa, and other lenders to the exhibition. 
The exhibition at the Carleton College Art Gallery opens the Saturday, September 20, from 7 – 9:30 pm, with a lecture and reception for the exhibition participants and the public.  For more information and Essays surrounding the Carleton Art Gallery exhibition, visit http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gallery/worldceramics/

Pottery made by indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, and some parts of Asia, is primarily created by women.  Ceramic practices however, are never static.  Forms, functions and methods adapt to changing tastes, new materials, and expanding markets.

World Ceramics: Transforming Women's Traditions, highlights ceramists and ceramics from points around the world where the makers are traditionally female, and explores innovative contemporary work based on transformations of older forms and designs.  With old and new pots and sculpture from Ecuador to Indonesia, this exhibition features work by women who maintain strong links with their indigenous identity and lifestyle but shape their ceramics in response to new markets and audiences.  World Ceramics also presents work by artists raised and educated in the First World who effectively reinvent traditions to which they are connected by ethnicity or ancestry.  Moira Vincentelli, noted scholar from Aberystwyth University and author of Women Potters: Transforming Traditions and Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels, is the lead curator on the project.  Kelly Connole, assistant professor at Carleton, and Laurel Bradley, Carleton art Gallery director, have also participated as guest curators.

Magdalene Odundo, Reduced Black Piece, 1990, ceramic, 15.5" x 10.75".World Ceramics will be offered in the form of two parallel and interlinked shows, jointly produced by Northern Clay Center and the Carleton College Art Gallery in Northfield.  They will bring together vessels, figurines, ceremonial objects, and sculptural forms from more than five regions around the world, including Ecuador and Mexico; African nations of Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia, Angola, South Africa; Indonesia; and the UK and the USA.  Each exhibition will be complete in itself but with exciting and complementary work at the sites.  For example, in the South African Zulu section at NCC, two beer pots by BaMncube can be seen alongside an elegant burnished vessel by Ian Garrett who originally learned his techniques from the influential matriarch, Nesta Nala.  At Carleton beer pots by Magwaza are contrasted with a refined art market version by Nesta Nala's daughter, Thembi.  The exhibition will open at Northern Clay Center Friday, September 19, from 6 – 8 pm, with a free reception for the curators, resident visiting artist Helga Gamboa, and other lenders to the exhibition.  The exhibition at the Carleton College Art Gallery will open the following evening, from 8 – 10 pm, with another reception for the exhibition participants.  During the course of the exhibition, there will be workshops and lectures at both NCC and Carleton.  Please see the workshop page for additional information about these activities.

Hilda Whitegoat, pot, earthenware, 13.5" x 14" x 14"Women dominate ceramic production in Africa, more than on any other continent.  Despite great skill and unique decorative practices, these female makers have been ignored until only the past few years by art historians and western collectors.  World Ceramics takes an extended look at Zulu pottery, notably the work of Nesta Nala and her daughters, and the spheres of influence circling around the family.

Magdalene Odundo, Helga Gamboa and Winnie Owens-Hart, artists who live and work in the UK and the USA, are connected to Africa through birth, family and ancestral ties.  Each sees indigenous traditions through the distancing and abstracting lenses of residence abroad and art school.   Born in Angola, UK resident Helga Gamboa connected to her country's ceramics through research and travel back to her homeland.  Her works are deeply political, with shapes evocative of traditional hand-built utilitarian vessels.  Magdalene Odundo's elegant vessels embody her rich life history and diverse sources of artistic inspiration: childhood in Kenya and India, art education in England, contact with the studio pottery movement and with indigenous ceramists including Maria Martinez of the American Southwest.  Winnie Owens-Hart, an African-American artist from near Washington DC, has drawn closer to her African roots through her ceramics, which honor woman's work in clay.

World Ceramics also pays homage to Maria Martinez (1887-1980) of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, who, along with her husband Julian, revived ancient black-on-black pottery.  The latest generation of makers, some men as well as women, often embrace non-traditional materials and techniques.  Figurative forms at Cochiti Pueblo date back to the nineteenth century but were popularized through the storyteller figures of Helen Cordero in the 1960s.  More recently, Roxanne Swentzell translates the storyteller figure into half-life-sized sculptures which question pueblo identity.

World Ceramics: Transforming Women's Traditions pools the knowledge and collections of many dedicated artists, scholars, and collectors.  In addition to Moira Vincentelli, this exhibition benefits from the very specific knowledge and objects accumulated by the following individuals:  Joseph Molinaro, Patricia Fay, Elizabeth Perrill; Lynne Alpert, Ervin Bublitz, Donald Redlich, Sheldon and Lilly Chester, and Winnie Owens-Hart.  The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art have enriched the exhibition with loans.  For great articles related to this exhibition, please visit Interpreting Ceramics's website at http://www.uwic.ac.uk/ICRC/contents_current.htm.
Pictured above: Magdalene Odundo, Reduced Black Piece, 1990, ceramic, 15.5" x 10.75"; Hilda Whitegoat, pot, earthenware, 13.5" x 14" x 14"; Helga Gamboa, Infants, 2003, earthenware, 15.5" x 7.5" x 7.5".

Kim Roth, White Flower, 2007, porcelain, 16" x 16".Kimberlee Joy Roth: New Work

Gallery A
September 19 – November 2


Exhibition opening Friday, September 19, from 6 – 8 pm.
This exhibition focuses on the dualities between utility and sculpture, art for the table or art for the wall, negative and positive spaces. Kimberlee Roth’s installation carries references to the repetitive patterning of formal designs in Islamic architecture and the decorative tiled facades of Antonio Gaudi. The varied negative spaces between the “dishes” activate both the walls and tables, inviting design variations and creativity in their placement for each consecutive table setting.

Kimberlee Roth received her MFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2007. In 1990, she earned a B.S. in physics and B.A. in mathematics from North Park College and Theological Seminary in Chicago, IL. She taught high school and university physics for ten years before pursuing M.F.A. Roth began studying ceramics in 1999 at the University of Alaska, Anchorage with Steve Godfrey, and was a special student at Louisiana State University and University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She currently lives and works in Minneapolis.
 

Elizabeth Lurie, platter, 2007, porcelain2008 American Pottery Festival

September 5 – 7
Galleries M and A

For more information on the 2008 American Pottery Festival, click here.

Just as the Republican National Committee leaves Minnesota, Northern Clay Center will hold its own illustrious gathering—our annual fundraising benefit and celebration of the art of the pot, the 2008 American Pottery Festival, September 5 – 7, 2008.  If you make pots, use pots, like to look at pots, like potters, want to learn more about pots and potters—this is the event for you!

This annual three-day festival and NCC fundraiser celebrates the art and use of the pot, bringing together collectors and artists and students and teachers, and lots and lots of pots.  The festival includes an exhibition and sale of pottery by 24 artists, as well as slide talks, demonstration workshops, and lectures.  The roster of invited regional and national participants ranges from well-established potters such as Gail Kendall and Josh DeWeese and Minnesota’s Warren MacKenzie, to the best of emerging talents, whose work is growing in recognition and increasingly sought by collectors.  Several new talented potters have been invited to participate this year, including Marty Fielding, Paul Eshelman, and Liz Zlot Summerfield.  Several who were new last year (and whose work was virtually sold out by the end of the Festival) are returning, including Bryan Hopkins and Betsy Williams.

The APF Benefit Sale begins Friday, September 5 at 5 pm with an Opening Night Benefit Party in NCC’s Sales and Exhibition Galleries until 9 pm.  The Sale continues Saturday, September 6 from 9:30 am to 5 pm and Sunday, September 7 from 9:30 am to 2 pm.

This year there will be a special preview event before the official start of the Pottery Festival.  Ron Meyers, the 2008 Regis Master, will deliver the 2008 Regis Lecture on Thursday evening, at 6:30 pm, at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Artists featured in 2008 are:
Chuck Aydlett (MN), Naomi Cleary (PA), Bernadette Curran (PA), Josh DeWeese (MT), Kowkie Durst (OR), Paul Eshelman (IL), Marty Fielding (VT), Kathryn Finnerty (OR), Steve Godfrey (AK), Sarah Heimann (NH), Bryan Hopkins (NY), Gail Kendall (NE), Elizabeth Lurie (MI), Warren MacKenzie (MN), Ron Meyers (GA), Sequoia Miller (WA), Jeffrey Nichols (KY), Brenda Quinn (NY), Alison Reintjes (KY), Mark Shapiro (MA), Chuck Solberg (MN), Munemitsu Taguchi (PA), Betsy Williams (NM), Liz Zlot Summerfield (NC).

To download the 2008 APF poster as a PDF, click here.

Joe Kress, cups, 2007, stoneware, 4" x 5" each. Hide Sadohara, Chalkware, 2003, stoneware and mixed media (detail).John Lambert, Continuum, 2005, ceramic, concrete, and rubber, dim. var.

Six McKnight Artists

VIEW EXHIBITION

Galleries M and A
July 11 – August 24


The annual exhibition of work by McKnight fellowship and residency recipients will include new work by 2007 McKnight Ceramic Artist Fellowship recipients Joseph Kress (Minneapolis) and Mike Norman (Minneapolis) in Gallery A.  Gallery M will feature the work of four McKnight Resident Artists: 2005 recipient Hide Sadohara (New York), and 2006 recipients Lisa Marie Barber (Wisconsin) and John Utgaard (Kentucky), and 2007 recipient John Lambert (Indiana).  The opening reception for the artists is scheduled for Friday, July 11, 6 – 8 pm.
 
Mike Norman, Korean Tomb Horse, earthenware.John Utgaard, Sentinel, 2007, earthenware, 24" x 28".Lisa Marie Barber, Three Hearts, 2007, low-fire clay, 65" x 99" x 113".Joseph Kress received his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.  He was a resident artist at Northern Clay Center from 1991 through 2008, where he created pots with complex forms and seductive surfaces that reflected his interest in making pots that go beyond function “to nourish the soul.”  Kress exhibited his work throughout Minnesota, as well as in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.  His most recent body of work, “Cycles and Sustenance”, conveys the interrelation and inseparable nature of medium, format, ideas, cyclic seasons, and time.  Throughout his fellowship year, Kress explored “the use of cup, vase, and platter forms in relation to time and measurement.”  Previously, he received individual grants from the Jerome Foundation (1993 Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant), the Minnesota State Arts Board (1999 Fellowship), and the McKnight Foundation (2000 McKnight Ceramic Artist Fellowship.)

Mike Norman studied ceramics at the University of Minnesota, and has been making pots, ceramic sculpture, and the occasional commissioned drawings since 1965.  The last of these include illustrations for a 1982 University of Minnesota Press book—Physics as Metaphor—and graphics and illustrations for NCC's ClayMobile and outreach program. He has had gallery representation throughout the country, including the Ferrin Gallery in Massachusetts, Lill Street Gallery in Illinois, and at the Weisman Art Museum and Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis.  He has received several awards, including a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and a Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant. Norman continues to exhibit his work in shows and art fairs in the Midwest.  His fellowship year included further exploration of ceramic sculpture, including the spiritual connection he has with animals, his love of boats and adventure, and the incorporation of drawing and color on the surfaces of his work. 

Hide Sadohara was an artist-in-residence at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1997 to 2006.  He received his M.F.A. in ceramics from Kent State University in Ohio and his B.F.A in sculpture and metal from the Memphis College of Art in Tennessee.  Sadohara was named an NCECA Emerging Artist in 2004 and received an Individual Artist Fellowship in 2005 from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.  His work has been exhibited throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Tennessee and has been included in such publications as Sculpture Magazine and Ceramics Monthly.  Sadohara currently teaches at Fredonia College in Fredonia, New York.  In addition to functional clay work, Sadohara makes figurative sculpture installations that are influenced by television, pop culture, family dynamics, and thrift-store finds.  It tells dramatic and exaggerated stories of his own encounters and experiences.

Lisa Marie Barber received her B.S. in sociology and art from Northern Arizona University and her M.F.A from the University of Texas at Austin.  Her work has been exhibited widely, including at CUNY Hunter College Studio Gallery in New York,  the Zoller Gallery at Penn State, and NCC, where she had a solo exhibition in 2004.  She is currently an assistant professor of art at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha, and has taught at Santa Clara University in California and lectured at a variety of arts and education institutions around the country.  Barber's recent work includes a series of sculptures (both large and small-scale) installed into diptychs, which convey the idea of how being alone can cause one to create company out of people and locations that aren't readily accessible.  Her compositions include imagery of city life—cars, buildings, and people—as well as personal narratives.

John Utgaard received his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri and his M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.  He was the recipient of a Lilian Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana and has taught at the Bray, as well as at the University of Texas at Austin, The Pennsylvania State University, and at Murray State University in Kentucky, where he is currently assistant professor of ceramic arts.  Utgaard conveys his ideas of mortality, the infinite, and the unknowable in his glazed stoneware spherical forms, which range in size from 21 inches to five feet.  He thinks of the positive and negative spaces of his work as sections of parabolas, whose curves continue on into infinity.  Utgaard worked on developing new techniques for building large-scale earthenware sculpture suitable for the outdoors during his three-month residency at NCC.
 
John Lambert received his B.F.A. from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and his M.F.A. from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.  In addition to being a kiln builder and a replicator of Greek roof tiles, he is also an assistant professor of art for ceramics at Goshen College in Indiana.  His large-scale sculptures have been included in various exhibitions, both in and out-of-doors, in Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio.  During his residency, Lambert created a modular building system of larger-than-life-size symbols that could be installed “in any given architectural situation.”  This continued his work with symbols and juxtaposition of symbols in two-dimensional and three-dimensional settings.

The McKnight Ceramic Artist program, sponsored by The McKnight Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota, reflects the Foundation's interest in supporting outstanding individual ceramic artists who have already proven their abilities and are at a career stage that is beyond emerging.  Two ceramic fellowship grants and four residency grants are awarded annually.  The fellowship awards support Minnesota ceramic artists and can be used for a variety of purposes.  In addition to the cash stipend, the residency grants provide non-Minnesota ceramic artists with three-month residencies at the Clay Center.

Pictured above:
John Lambert, Continuum, 2005, ceramic, concrete, and rubber, dimensions variable; Hide Sadohara, Chalkware, 2003, stoneware and mixed media (detail); Joe Kress, set of cups, 2007, stoneware, 4" x 5" ea.; Lisa Marie Barber, Three Hearts, 2007, low-fire clay, 65" x 99" x 113"; John Utgaard, Sentinel, 2007, earthenware, 24" x 28"; Mike Norman, Korean Tomb Horse, earthenware.

 

Architecture and Ceramics: Material, Structure, VisionRobert Winokur, The Other Side of the House, 2001, salt-glazed brick clay, 11" x 23" x 13" (in three elements).Dan Anderson, Purina Chows Tea Set, 2007, soda-fired stoneware with ceramic decals, 11" x 10" x 8".William Daley, Nuptial Vesica, earthenware.

Galleries M and A

May 9 – June 29


Guest-curated by University of Minnesota Professor Robert Silberman, Architecture and Ceramics explored relationships among clay and design, buildings and ideas through functional and non-functional works in clay as well as architectural drawings.

Gallery M featured work by Dan Anderson (Illinois), Lidya Buzio (New York), Nora Naranjo-Morse (New Mexico), and Robert Winokur (Pennsylvania).  Gallery A housed an exhibition featuring vessels by William Daley (Pennsylvania), as well as architectural drawings from a collaborative project between Bill and his son Thomas Daley (Pennsylvania), an architect.  These drawings document the project they created for the opening of the new museum Clayarch in Gimhae, Korea, which is devoted to architectural ceramics.

In Professor Silberman's words:  “Architecture and vessel-making share a central concern with structure and the enclosure of space….  In both architecture and ceramics the physical is essential, but not all: it is the visual appearance and the activities served, as much as any shared physicality, that defines the significance of buildings and ceramic vessels.  The kinship between architecture and ceramics is ultimately a matter of their shared connection with human use and human life.”  Silberman also plans to include photographs of historical pots in the shapes of buildings, from China and England.

While Anderson has made pots in many forms, his best-known—and those featured in this exhibition—are vessels and teapots that refer to industrial structures such as factories, oil storage tanks and water towers.  These wood fired pots appear as memorials to industrial architecture, with their subtle, aged surfaces and archaic shapes. 

A sculptor of painted surfaces, for twenty-five years Buzio created cityscapes of downtown New York, portrayed on the surfaces of wildly shaped ceramic vessels.  Working conceptually, she creates the sculptural form that will best address the landscape that she wishes to paint. 

Naranjo-Morse uses the various media in which she works, including clay, to make social comments on the lives of contemporary Native women.  She constructs sculptural installations that incorporate forms and ideas from traditional southwestern forms.  She also creates figurative work that comments both ironically and humorously on ideas of Native Americans held by western cultures. 

Winokur's houses distill the essential elements of domestic architecture into almost abstract geometric forms, but with enough reference points—peaked roof, chimney, windows, doors—to clearly mark them as houses.

Participating artists Winokur and Morse presented slide lectures the evening before the exhibition opened.

The architectural project displayed in Gallery A showed the collaboration between the Daleys father and son to design a (hypothetical) new building for Northern Clay Center modeled on one of Bill Daley's pots.  Daley's geometric vessels explore the synthesis between interior and exterior, volume and surface, and form and symbol.  Their unglazed surfaces accentuate architectural space and rhythm; they appear as ceremonial vessels that refer to sacred space and myth.  Tom Daley has an extensive architecture practice, which has focused on designing schools and churches.  He and his father have collaborated on sculptural installations in the past.

In addition to the exhibition of pots and sculpture at NCC, Professor Silberman worked with the University of Minnesota School of Architecture to put together an exhibition of photographs of historical terra cotta from early twentieth-century buildings and decorative ceramics from Persia, along with images of adobe buildings from the Southwest and clay structures from West Africa.  This exhibition of photographs was installed in the HGA Gallery in Minneapolis.

Northern Clay Center published a catalogue of the exhibition, with an essay by Professor Silberman.  The catalogue and the exhibition are made possible with the generous support of several donors to NCC’s exhibitions program: Continental Clay Company, Frances and George Reid, and the Windgate Foundation.

Dan Anderson (1945, Minnesota) is a native of St. Paul.  He received his B.S. in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin – River Falls in 1968 and his M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1970.  He headed the ceramic program at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville from 1976 until his retirement in August 2002.  Anderson has lectured and demonstrated at over 150 venues in the past four decades, including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School, Anderson Ranch, Watershed and Arrowmont School.  He has received numerous awards, from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, the Ford Foundation, and others.  Anderson's work is represented in major galleries across the United States, and in numerous private and permanent collections.  He has been wood firing for over thirty years, now in his “mounds” anagama wood kiln, which he fires at his rural Edwardsville studio twice a year. 

Lidya Buzio (1948, Uruguay) has lived and worked in New York for the past 30 years, creating ceramic sculptures and hanging wood assemblages that twist and juxtapose the structures and light of New York City on their surfaces and in their forms.  Now, after several years of living in the countryside, Buzio's landscapes reflect the water and sky of the North Fork of Long Island.  She studied ceramics in Montevideo with the Torres-García family, particularly José Collell, where she developed her distinctive techniques for creating clay sculpture from earthenware slabs formed into shapes made from curved patterns.  She has shown her work extensively in this country and internationally; her work is in collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Nelson-Atkins; Everson; Victoria & Albert, London; Taiwan National Museum; and many other museums and private collections.

Thomas Daley (1956, New York) received a B.A. in 1981 from Temple University in Philadelphia.  He has been a practicing architect in Philadelphia since then, with an emphasis on schools and churches.  Daley's buildings have received awards from the Philadelphia Chapter of the AIA; he has been active in professional societies and in informal educational work.

William Daley (1925, New York) is known not only for his extraordinary ceramic work, but also for a vibrant teaching career; he was awarded the College Art Association of America Distinguished Teaching of Art Award in 1991.  Part of the generation to benefit from the G.I. Bill, Daley received his B.S. from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1950, and his M.A. in art education from Columbia University in 1951, after which he taught at the Philadelphia College of Art and Design for more than thirty years.  He has received many awards for his art and his teaching, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Craft Council, College Art Association, James Renwick Alliance, and Maine College of Art.  He was named a Regis Master by NCC in 1997.  His list of exhibitions, both solo and group, is extensive, including a traveling retrospective and catalogue in 1993; his work is in major museum and private collections both in the US and abroad.

Nora Naranjo-Morse (1953, New Mexico) is a Tewa Pueblo Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, whose extended family includes many notable artists and scholars.  She is a sculptor, writer and producer of films that look at the continuing social changes within Pueblo culture.  Naranjo-Morse is best known for her work in clay.  While her forms convey an aesthetic that is non-traditional, the content of her work is always rooted in issues that concern her community.  Her work often reflects the tensions of producing art for a Western art market that consistently praises its innovative approach while, at the same, marginalizes it as "native" art.  In 2007, she completed a major commission on the grounds of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which includes five sculptures made of clay and other materials intended to erode over time.

Robert Winokur (1933, New York) received an M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and a B.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.  He was professor of ceramics at Tyler from 1966 to 2005.  He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and in 2002 was named to the American Crafts Council College of Fellows.  His work has been exhibited in many group and individual exhibitions across the country, and is in private and museum collections both in this country and abroad, including Switzerland, China, the Netherlands, and Hungary.


Pictured above:
William Daley, Nuptial Vesica, earthenware; Dan Anderson, Purina Chows Tea Set, 2007, soda-fired stoneware with ceramic decals, 11" x 10" x 8"; Robert Winokur, The Other Side of the House, 2001, salt-glazed brick clay, 11" x 23" x 13" (in three elements).

Sam Chung, teapot, Andrew Martin, glaze and firing, 2007, porcelain, 7" x 8" x 4". Photo by Peter Lee.

Exquisite Pots: Six Degrees of Collaboration

Gallery M
March 7 – April 27, 2008
Guest co-curators: Maren Kloppmann and Andrew Martin

In the 1920’s, the Surrealists invented a technique for adding to and completing compositions—in words, drawings, and collages—in which each successive collaborator built on the preceding work without fully knowing what had come before.  The process, based on an old game, celebrated unpredictable, chancy, and occasionally startling results.  It expanded the idea of collaboration from its usual consciously cooperative mode to an unconscious, accidental level.

For eight months, six artists who work in porcelain shipped bisque ware to one another, forms that were distinctive and representative of their individual work.  Their collaborators then glazed and fired the bisqued work in their particular gaze palettes.  While the potters in this exhibition were able to see the forms which they were finishing, the instruction to complete the pots in their own styles has resulted in a combination of forms and finishes that is occasionally as startling as a surrealist collage.

The resulting pots prompted the viewer to think more carefully about the relationship between form and finish, and about the idea of collaboration—and finally about the aesthetic “ownership” of a piece: Is it a Sam Chung teapot because of its distinctive form or has it become an Andrew Martin teapot because of the equally distinctive glazing?

Maren Kloppmann, co-curator and participant, described the inception and evolution of this exhibition:
“The concept to create an exhibition around the premise of potters glazing each other’s bisque ware was first introduced to me by Andrew Martin during the 2006 NCECA conference in Portland.  While a show based on this idea can be done in any clay and firing range, compatibility is a significant factor and as Andrew and I both work in porcelain, we decided to start there.

“Our correspondence about a list of potential artists was based on pairing potters whose work is recognizable through distinctive form as well as surface.  The list we ultimately decided upon was also heavily dependent on artists’ availability and their willingness to commit to this rather involved project.  Being in the dual role of curator and participant my objective was to not necessarily pick artists whose work I could artistically relate to, but to devise pairings of work that would be challenging to all potters involved.

“The process of receiving and handling other artists’ unfinished work, to become aware of all the different sensibilities of form and to do justice to someone else’s esthetic was personally the most exciting aspect.  There was also an awareness and question of ‘what will these other artists do with my pots?  How will they receive them?  What will their solutions be?’  I see this show as an opportunity to interpret, to transform and ultimately to complete another artist’s original idea.  Each potter in this group has created extensions of an original design, a new realization for completion.”

Participants in addition to Kloppmann and Martin, included Margaret Bohls (Minneapolis), Andy Brayman (Kansas City, Missouri), Sam Chung (Tempe, Arizona), Andrew Martin (Los Angeles) and Deb Schwartzkopf (Athens, Ohio).

The Clay Center is publishing a monograph catalogue of the exhibition, with an essay by Kelly Connole, Assistant Professor of Art at Carleton College.

This exhibition and catalogue were made possible with the support of several generous donors to Northern Clay Center’s exhibition program.  These include Continental Clay Company, Frances and George Reid, and the Windgate Foundation.

In addition, this activity was made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Pictured above:
Sam Chung, teapot, Andrew Martin, glaze and firing, 2007, porcelain, 7" x 8" x 4".  Photo by Peter Lee.
Andrew Martin, teapot, Maren Kloppmann, glaze and firing, 2007, porcelain, 10" x 12" x 4.5".  Photo by Peter Lee.

Eva Kwong, Lament (detail), 2005, clay and glaze, dimensions variable. Photo by Kevin Olds.Juliane Shibata, black sheep, 2007, porcelain, glaze and string, 9' x 25" x 2" (height variable). Photo by John Lucas.Bountiful Visions: Juliane Shibata and Eva Kwong

Gallery A
March 7 – April 27, 2008

Juliane Shibata (Northfield, Minnesota) and Eva Kwong (Kent, Ohio) were on location in early March, to transform Gallery A with their exhibition Bountiful Visions.  Both women create sculptural installations that use multiples: through the repetition of smaller forms arranged en masse, they created an expansive and dynamic alternative reality experience for the viewers.  As Shibata explained, “Upon entering the gallery, viewers will find themselves immersed in an environment filled with complexity, intricacy, and rhythm.”

Shibata described the thematic connections in Bountiful Visions as follows: “Abstraction plays a large role in both my work and Kwong’s….  The individual ceramic ‘units’ that repeat are abstracted so that a form cannot be read as one specific ‘thing.’  A ceramic part may resemble something familiar or comforting, but may seem foreign because the object can also be identified as something else.  In my piece Black Sheep, the folded clay forms can resemble diapers or dumplings….”  Kwong’s wall installation Lament was composed of celadon-glazed forms that could symbolize rain or tears.  The ambiguity of these abstracted forms leaves viewers free to interpret the work as they choose.

Juliane Shibata graduated from Carleton College in 2001 with a B.A. in studio art.  In 2006, she received her M.F.A. in ceramics from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.  While a graduate student, she was awarded the Aaron Macy Memorial Scholarship.  Shibata spent the summer of 2006 as the Ceramics Technician at Ox-Bow, an art school in Michigan affiliated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  After a yearlong residency at Appalachian Center for Craft in 2007, she moved to Northfield, Minnesota where she currently serves as an Assistant Visiting Professor in Ceramics at Carleton College, as a sabbatical replacement.

Eva Kwong was born in Hong Kong and received her B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, and her M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.  She has lectured and exhibited extensively throughout the country.  Her work has received awards from the Ohio Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Arts Midwest.  Her sculptures  are found in private and public collections such as the Archie Bray Foundation, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Finnish Craft Museum, Racine Art Museum, and Fuping International Ceramics Museum.

Pictured above: Juliane Shibata, Black Sheep, 2007, porcelain, glaze and string, 9' x 25" x 2" (height variable).  Photo by John Lucas.  Eva Kwong, Lament (detail), 2005, clay and glaze, dimensions variable.  Photo by Kevin Olds.


2008 Jerome Artists ExhibitionDonna Flanery, salt and pepper shakers, 2007, earthenware, 7.5" x 4.5" x 2.5" (elephant), 3" x 3" x 1.5" (teapot). Photo by Peter Lee.Peter Jadoonath, Sea Creature Urn, 2007, stoneware, 13" x 12" x 12".

January 11 – February 24
Gallery M


The 2008 Jerome Artists will feature the work of Donna Flanery and Peter Jadoonath, both of whom were awarded 2007 Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grants. 

An opening reception for the artists will be held on January 11, from 6 to 8 pm.

Donna Flanery earned an A.A. degree in art from the College of Southern Idaho in 2003 and then went on to earn a B.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Montana, Missoula, with high honors in 2005.  Her work will also be exhibited in the Fogelberg Exhibition (her biography may be found on page 4.)

Flanery says the images in her body of work come from “the stuff my parents had around when I was a kid.  [The] characters that were painted on my childhood furniture and sewn onto comforters stuck with me.  I make images that remind me of those characters.  …  I enjoy it when my pots appeal to children.  I want to share an appreciation of cartoons and mark-making with them.  This silly approach to the very serious business of my own artwork is of great value to me ideologically.  I hope to infect others with a similar playful irreverence.”

Flanery used the Jerome Grant to develop and test new materials, from clay bodies to surface treatments, with a goal of adapting the painting style that she developed working with acrylic paints into her ceramic work.  Beyond the material concerns, the Jerome Grant provided the financial stability that allowed Flanery to create work concerned with the following questions:  “What style of pots will best suit my style of painting?”  “How much surface activity can I have without distracting from the form and function of the object?” and  “What scale do these two ideas require?”  Flanery's exhibition showcases her yearlong exploration of new materials and inquiry into questions of surface and form.

Peter Jadoonath attended Bemidji State University where he earned a B.F.A. in studio ceramics and painting in 1998.  His studies at Bemidji provided the “foundation of creativity” for Jadoonath that continues to have an influence on his work process and his development of new ideas.  In 2000, Jadoonath co-founded Toppot Clay Studio in historic Lowertown, St. Paul.  Having established “roots in Lowertown,” Jadoonath currently makes pots, experiments, and learns from his participation in the regional arts community.  He exhibits work at local and national festivals as well as local galleries.  Jadoonath teaches at Northern Clay Center and at Fired Up, where he is a studio technician (source: http://peterjadoonath.com).

Peter Jadoonath creates stoneware pottery that focuses on “texture, gesture, and building a sculptural presence.”  The work he creates is narrative, animated, and open to interpretation by the viewer.  “I find inspiration from scientific mystery, unexplained history, small complex ideas, and large simple ideas,” says Jadoonath.  “Through my craft it is important for me to honor timelessness, tradition, ancestors, and predecessors.  I strive for this by following my intuition, seeking self-realization, working hard, and gathering the patience to take risks.” 

Jadoonath forms his pots using the basic clay building acts of “squeezing, paddling, throwing, pinching, coiling, folding, smashing, polishing, and carving.”  The surface treatment is then built up with layers of colored slips and stains as well as layers of “pitted glazes and thin washes of glaze,” creating a skin that transforms and enhances the textured surfaces of his work.

Pictured above: Peter Jadoonath, Sea Creature Urn, 2007, stoneware, 13" x 12" x 12"; Donna Flanery, salt and pepper shakers, 2007, earthenware, 7.5" x 4.5" x 2.5" (elephant), 3" x 3" x 1.5" (teapot).  Photo by Peter Lee..

Jerome Artists in Retrospect: Reflections on 17 years of ceramic artists project grants

January 11 – February 24
Gallery M

Northern Clay Center has awarded project grants to emerging Minnesota ceramic artists since 1991, with the support of the Jerome Foundation of St. Paul.  This year NCC has invited past Jerome recipients to reflect on the impact of the Jerome grant on their personal creative work as well as on their professional lives as artists.

51 ceramic artists have received Jerome pro-ject grants since the Foundation first started funding the program through NCC.  Visitors to this retrospective exhibition will have an opportunity to read reflective statements by past Jerome recipients and view examples of their current work.  This exhibition pays tribute to the Jerome Foundation's focus and demonstrates the transformative impact the Jerome grants have had on the immediate recipients, as well as on the state of the arts in Minnesota and beyond.  Participants in the retrospective will include such artists as Judy Altobell (1991), Monica Rudquist (1995), Kelly Connole (1998), Frank Brown (2000), Lisa Buck (2003), and many more.

Fogelberg and Red Wing Artists Exhibition

Mike Helke, Cilantro Leaf Teapot, 2007, white stoneware, 5.5" x 8" x 6". Photo by Peter Lee.

Kathy Mommsen, Seated Figure.

Donna Flanery, Dog Bowl, 2007, earthenware, 7.5" dia. Photo by Peter Lee.

January 11 – February 24
Gallery A


Northern Clay Center is pleased to present an exhibition featuring the work of 2006 Fogelberg Fellowship recipients Donna Flanery and Kathy Mommsen, and 2006 Red Wing Collectors Society Foundation Award recipient Mike Helke. 

An opening reception for the artists will be held on January 11, from 6 to 8 pm.

The Fogelberg Fellowship Program provides emerging ceramic artists an opportunity to be in residence for six months to one year at Northern Clay Center.  This residency program provides support that allows artists to develop their own work while working in a community environment that encourages an exchange of ideas and knowledge with other ceramic artists. 

Donna Flanery earned an A.A. degree in art from the College of Southern Idaho in 2003 and then went on to earn a B.F.A. in ceramics with high honors in 2005 from the University of Montana, Missoula.  She was awarded a 2007 Jerome Ceramic Artists Project Grant and is currently an artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana.  Those who visit NCC's exhibition galleries in January and February will discover her work featured in the Fogelberg exhibition as well as the Jerome exhibition.  Please read more about Donna Flanery's recent work in the Jerome exhibition article on page 3.

Kathy Mommsen received her M.A. in ceramics from the University of Minnesota – Duluth.  She has taught ceramics at Hopkins High School for the last 9 years.  Currently, Mommsen is on sabbatical, allowing her to study maiolica in Italy and to work intensely on her ceramics at Northern Clay Center.

The vessel and the human figure in motion are the two primary themes in Mommsen's artwork, which includes the practice of drawing with charcoal on paper as well as ceramics. An avid bicyclist and skier, Mommsen recognizes that “motion is important in my artwork and in my daily life.”   Over time, the human figure became more important to her and Mommsen began to work directly in clay from a nude model.  Her process includes building gestural vessels with ceramic elements along with drawing on the surface with black and white slip and incising tools.  “The quick poses are my favorite,” she says, “ because they have so much action packed into the gesture.  The need for me to create quickly excites me… .  I want the real human figure to influence the shape and exploration of the vessel.”

The Red Wing Award is made possible by the Red Wing Collectors Society Foundation, and is presented by Northern Clay Center to a deserving individual at an early stage of a career as a potter or studying or researching the historical aspects of the pottery field. 

Mike Helke is a 2005 graduate of the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities with a B.F.A. in ceramics. He is the Sales Gallery and Exhibitions Assistant at NCC, where he also maintains a studio. He makes functional pottery with surfaces covered in line drawings derived from current and personal events.  “Using and making pottery fits into my life functionally, aesthetically and socially,” Helke says.  His work was most recently on displayed in the 2007 Strictly Functional Pottery National at the Lancaster Southern Market, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the 2007 Carbondale Clay National III, at the Carbondale Clay Center, in Carbondale, Colorado.

Pictured above: Donna Flanery, Dog Bowl, 2007, earthenware, 7.5" dia., photo by Peter Lee; Kathy Mommsen, Seated Figure.  Mike Helke, Cilantro Leaf Teapot, 2007, white stoneware, 5.5" x 8" x 6",  Photo by Peter Lee.