Fox Love Art – Page foxloveart.com|page|4 – Embodied is my politic. Art is my Love.

Coil Pots

This coiled vessel was made by the late potter, Maria Martinez. Maria worked in the tradition of her families village, the San Ildefanso Pueblo. The work of Maria is notable in many ways, the first and most obvious is the elegance and mastery of the work, but possibly more significant is the way the these pots draw from a long tradition of forms and making techniques, but push those conventions into contemporary art pieces that engage a modern audience. Innovation and tradition are hallmarks of the contemporary coil pot. This video documents Maria’s making process, from digging clay to firing pots and is well work the time to watch.

The history of coiling vessels from clay is nearly as old as fired clay in the archeological record. Some of the oldest coil pots in the world come from the Jomon culture of Japan. The earliest of these pots were made around 15,000 years ago. The oldest are simple cooking pots, but as the culture continued the work became increasingly ornate.

This link is a nice discussion of the history and techniques of Jomon pottery with many good photo illustrations.

Types of pottery and how to make a Jomon pot

Contemporary ceramists use coils to create a variety of forms that include both sculpture and vessels. Many artists, such as Teresa Brooks, who made the vase pictured above , combine sculptural principals with more traditional pot forms to create dynamic art pieces that shake up the conventions that are often associated with coil made work.

http://teresabrookspottery.com/coil-pots.html

Pinch Pots

These pinch pots, by Kate Tremel, capture exactly what I love about pinched forms. Delicately crafted, the rims become landscape and describes perfectly the action of the fingers in making. Simple glazing accentuates the directness of form. The only addition to these wonderful bowls, is subtraction in the form of pierced openings in the clay wall which allows the element of light to play in the object in a way that is difficult to achieve in clay.

Simple is truly the defining characteristic of pinch pots, while it is true that making a pinch pot is relatively easy, that makes it all the more challenging to make work that displays innovation and integrity. One artist who does that perfectly is Priscilla Mouritzen, South African born and living in Denmark, Priscilla’s wood fired pinched forms are some of the finest pots I have ever seen. The quiet simplicity of form coupled with her rhythmic decorations and the touch of the wood kiln, make each bowl feel like a precious individual.

http://design-mind.blogspot.com/2012/05/priscilla-mouritzen-ceramics.html

Especially for my students, here’s a nice video done by Ceramic Arts Daily that gives a good beginning on the basic technique and suggests a direction to expand.

International Top 10: Pamela Mei Yee Leung

Early in the semester I did a lot of research for this project. Power points, web research and books. All that research went into a gray covered Moleskine note-book that i have used for my ceramic classes for a couple of semesters. Today, as I ran out of the last artists that I remembered from that list, I realized that the notebook was missing. It’s no where in my house that I can find. It may be at the studio or somewhere else and I may yet find it, but today it might as well not exist.

Rather than panic, or start the entire process over again with the research, I though I might trust fate and see what the Google gods would bring me. I put ceramic video into the search engine and got back a load of instructional videos. I changed it up slightly and added art to the already existing search. It was largely the same, except the last hit on the first page, was a video posted by The Guardian UK on the artist Pamela Mei Yee Leung.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2012/mar/08/ceramic-artist-pamela-mei-yee-leung-video

Born in China, and immigrated to England at 14, Leung seems to have been that rare third element, created by combining two different things. This is the essence of what I am working toward in my experience of collaboration and why I am so interested in other artists that collaborate. Leung is a collaboration of Chinese and Western culture, compressed into a single person. If you watch the video you will hear her speak both accents, at the same time. It is wonderful and musical and seems so rare.

Her work too is a fusion of both cultures, the content is so clearly Chinese in origin Yet her approach is that of a westerner, the work is loose and direct and has a sense of whimsy that the English tradition clearly brings.

The work is autobiographical and much of it from the last decade of her life was focused on her ongoing battle with cancer. The animal heads point to different emotional states and states of being in herself and others as she went down the long road of illness.

The video shows her working with coils to the legs of some creature. the slow attention and careful execution are delightful to watch, there is a sense in watching her make those legs that there is nothing she would rather be doing and the quality of attention reveals a devotion to the material and process so essential to its mastery. It is this quality of attention that reminded me of something that I tell all my students. I remind them that work in ceramic will outlast us, in some cases by millennia, and that to work in ceramic in a way requires a letting go of time, when considering its long history as a human material and each pieces potential longevity. Pamela Mei Yee Leung lost her battle with cancer, yet she is still enriching lives by the work she has left behind, and it will continue to accumulate story and meaning through decades and generations.

This work feels aware of that. No certainty of time, but absolute timelessness.

As I’ve mentioned before, we are only permitted two artists from any single culture in this assignment. I have two from both England and China, yet I feel certain that this artist’s work is neither and both and so an entirely new country.

Her website

http://www.pamleung.com

International Top 10: Lin Tianmiao

Though the relationship to ceramic with the work of artist Lin Tianmiao is not specific, I do feel it has a place in this group because of her strong commitment to the use of video in her installations and her ongoing collaboration with her husband, the video artist Wang Gongxin. The other obvious relationship to the ceramics discipline is her commitment to objects. Here we see common household objects , particularly those specific to her domestic life in her home in China. Using objects as a base, she winds thread, either silk or cotton to completely cover the object. This has the effect of transforming the objects into a new idea, much like the transformation of the caterpillar in a cocoon. They tare elevated in a way, stripped of individual identity and placed carefully into the gallery context, where they are then celebrated as art objects, rather than passed over as common household debris.

Tianmiao’s work is often considered feminist, and though the artist freely admits much of the work is based on her life and experiences as a woman, She asks the viewer not to judge the work based on that criteria or on that of a Chinese artist. Her request is that we see the work from an international perspective, and evaluate it there. I think this is valuable advice. When we view a man’s work, no matter how autobiographical, we never speak of it as dealing with men’s issues. Somehow pigeonholing this work as feminist, reduces its importance to the larger movement of world art making.

Here we see not all women’s bodies, or a general body, but Tianmiao’s body. Her own personal statement about life and the transition of a midlife crisis. She will admit that all women must undergo this emotional adjustment, but she does not claim to be laying a roadmap for all women to follow. This is a personal journey of a particular experience.

The placement of video within the installations is subtle and engaging. Here the video is nestled in the center of a woven nest, a place for birth, as she winds the thousands of thread balls on the screen to create the work displayed. This display of process is an invitation to consider the countless hours that go into the creation of works made with the hand. The digital reference to that hand adds layers to the conceptual message of the work.

Video about the show Bound Unbound for the Asia Society in New York

http://media.asiasociety.org/video/120920_LinTianMiao.mp4

Her Website

http://www.wanggongxin.com

International Top 10: Hayashi Shigek

It is the work itself of Japanese ceramist Hayashi Shigek that employs technology. On the surface, the work is inspired by science fiction and manga, and the look is that of mass produced manufactured goods. Looking deeper the work reveals strong associations with traditional Japanese ceramics and culture.

Shigek is from Tajimi City, a region well know for its porcelain production. And it is in porcelain that this work is created. The process is precise and time consuming. In an interview published in Ceramics Now, He describes his process. http://www.ceramicsnow.org/post/10934712126/interview-with-hayashi-shigeki-japanese-ceramic-artist

“I make the prototypes with regular clay and make plaster casts for them. Then I pour the plaster, modify those plaster masters very carefully and create second plaster casts. Then I pour the slip into them and throw the remaining slip away. After taking the pieces out from the cast, I work on some final details and then put them into the kiln for the biscuit firing. I sand the biscuit surfaces and then second fire them at 2246 degrees (F). Additional decorations with gold or silver are added and then fired again at 1472(F). All the parts are assembled with epoxide-based adhesive and bolts. The latest work consists in forty parts. I am using thirty four different kinds of casts which are from two to seven split molds. Since I don’t have any assistancy, all the processes are done by myself. For my latest work, it took me nine months to make the casting process and one month for the firing and assembling process.”

Website

http://www.geocities.jp/sheceramic/indextop.html

http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~sheceram/

Blog

http://www.geocities.jp/sheceramic/diarymenu.html

While the writing here is in Japanese, there are great photos of the works as they move through the process. In the end, Shigek does not consider the work ceramic, the narrative becomes much larger than the medium of its production, yet the intense focus on craft gives these works a validity that the same objects produced in plastic would not have. This fusion of deeply traditional making techniques to make these manufactured looking babies, which one curator connects to a Japanese story from around 900 ce about a baby from the moon found in a bamboo tree, layers these objects with profound meaning, though what that is exactly, the artist would prefer the viewer decide.

International Top 10: Aaron Nelson

The work of Canadian artist Aaron Nelson is in my mind one of the most important social commentaries happening in ceramics today. Rather than moaning that the smart phone pulls us out of our bodies, he notes the complex dexterity needed to operate a touch screen and finds that we may be growing closer to our bodies through technology. As a way of considering this complex notion he pairs thrown vessels with iPod’s to create digital features on the pieces, or in another piece he runs electrical current through luster glazes to power a radio. The work is engaging, inventive and incredibly relevant to the world we live in today.

Here is a brief video of work from his latest show

and a link to his website, which is one of the best artists sites I have seen.

http://www.aaronnelson.ca

One of the most engaging pieces of Nelson’s work is his development of a very low firing soft paste porcelain. The idea behind it was to drop the firing temp on his process to reduce the carbon footprint of the work. I love it because it shows a clear commitment to his values and showcases his ceramic skills to develop such a thing. It give the work a sense of completion, as if all the elements have been considered and placed carefully.

this work is encouraging to me personally, as the digital aspect of my work becomes so consuming and I feel pushed further and further from the craft of the work I do. Aaron Nelson is clearly demonstrating that pursuit of both is not only possible, but when done well, becomes an engaging new medium, comprising elements of both but making something all together new.

International Top 10: Grayson Perry

It is difficult to know where to begin in writing about Grayson Perry. He is such a complex and multi faceted artist, for one, ceramic is only a part of what he does, though it does seems to be his primary medium. But also that his work can not be discussed with out discussing him as well. Aside from being a transvestite he is the only ceramist to have won the Turner Prize ( 2003). Here he is above dressed as “an Italian mother of the bride” receiving a CSM from Prince Charles. This is a rather conservative outfit for Mr. Perry, his typical preference is super feminine and incredibly decorative

This style reflects the look of his work. First and most importantly for me is that they are for the most part pots, like his clothes, are well made and heavily decorated.

There are typically layers of images and text that revolve around a theme, often sex, contemporary culture and class as they relate to himself and his life as a transvestite.

On the surface he doesn’t really fit the criteria I set down in the beginning of the blog, but looking deeper, or even better, doing a google search for Grayson Perry, brings an avalanche of images, lectures, websites and articles. Not just in art journals either but many from English newspapers. Grayson Perry owns himself, his name and his images in a way that a digital media marketer can only envy. I would attribute much of this to his collaboration with British culture, and understanding the roll of the artist in relation to his culture. Sadly I can’t find a way to watch this series of television shows starring Perry, but here is the trailer to give you a feel for the depth of his influence.

He thinks deeply and is well spoken and there are many interviews and lectures that feature Perry, but I chose these 3. They are parts of a great long lecture he gave for Central Saint Martins. He gives wonderful explanation for his work and his influences. The first section features a brief stop motion video of his making process that give great insight into the importance of craft in his making.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YefKf8To9Po

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFWmmdare6M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRAa-v9eXOk

International Top 10: Keith Harrison

I have been thinking over which artist I wanted to add to my International Top 10 for a few days now. Then today I was included in a conversation that helped make up my mind. The discussion was about the intentional breaking of a work by Ai Weiwei , whom I featured in my last top 10 post, by another artist as an act of protest. This lead to an ethical conversation about some of Weiwei’s practices and for me into thinking about the destruction of ceramic as part of its life cycle. So then choosing Keith Harrison became a straight forward decision.

An English clay artists who works a great deal in performance, Harrison was banned from the ceramics studio in school and so was forced to think in unconventional ways. This has led to an incredible approach that is as much about electronics and sense experience as it is clay. Here is a 5 minute video with Harrison explaining his evolution and process for himself.

http://slowcoast.co.uk/soundslides/soundslide.php?id=92

Honestly I had been aware of this artist for a while but had never really considered looking more deeply until c-file did a web article on one of his latest pieces titled Bustleholme. In this work, Harrison collaborates with the grindcore band Napalm Death in an attempt to destroy tile and speaker effigies of english apartment blocks through sound.

Art | Ceramist Keith Harrison and Napalm Death Blast Bustleholme

Bustleholme: An exclusive video of Napalm Death’s collaboration with ceramicist Keith Harrison

Neither the music nor the esthetic of the brightly colored commercial tiles are at all what I would normally respond to, but in combination they create that magic third element that goes beyond what each might be on their own. The lack of destruction might be seen as a sort of failure but really that seems beside the point. The genius of the work is in the moments of its living, including the music crazed man tearing at it during the show. The work seems to invite that sort of act, being placed not in a gallery setting but in a metal concert, honestly its my favorite part of the video. And in fact Harrison himself seems to invite it in a previous performance titled Moon. This is a two-minute video and completely worth the watch.

For more information on this artist here is his page from his residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I personally love the intellectual rigor he brings to this fierce and strange work.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/keith-harrison/

International top Ten: Ai Weiwei

One of the parameters of this semesters assignment is that I may only choose two artists from any single country. For the most part this is no problem. There are many great artists in the world and looking for inspiration is a wonderful opportunity for growth. In the case of China though this is a real sacrifice. So many of the artists making work I admire most are Chinese. My favorite Chinese artist and possibly my favorite working artist right now is Ai Weiwei.

http://aiweiwei.com

Seems beyond the reach of an assignment to speak of favorites to emotional connection as I did in the last post, but I think this is exactly what this type of study demands of an artist. We must take art personally, and deeply so that it can penetrate us enough to change us, as makers and people. So a great artist then makes work that demands that we as viewers take them seriously. If the work is compelling, we cannot help ourselves, we look, and if we take the time needed, we see something of our world or ourselves that we may not have been aware of before.

I think that the work of Ai Weiwei does exactly that. In his deep collaboration with Chinese culture and history, we find something universal and true for all of us. The work discussed in this video documents an installation called Sunflower Seeds. The work is at once intimate and vast. Each piece receiving so much attention, though there are millions of them. The work’s content is beautiful and yet manages to be powerfully political at the same time. The name of a single artist is on the piece yet it was made by an entire village. The work of Ai Weiwei reminds me of what art is capable and demands that I push myself to find that power in my own work. So please take the 15 minutes to watch the beautifully produced video and maybe find some inspiration for yourself.

http://bcove.me/bvocamlr

Another body of work that I really respond to are his pots, ancient Chinese vessels that take a modern twist. These pots are something incredibly rare and precious that become absurd billboards. This intersection I think is incredibly stimulating as I am constantly considering how to keep pots relevant as the focus of the ceramic world becomes fine art and the importance of craft diminishes daily. Not only this but the layering of meaning and idea is rich and invites me to consider deeply not just the ancient pot or the company logo, but a world in which both those things could be so intimately connected.

Below is a link to a great New Yorker article on the artist if more information is wanted. His work is vast and I have only scratched the surface of its potential here.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/24/100524fa_fact_osnos

And to ensure that my own rules are followed, the tech piece. Here is a link to his twitter account, seemingly his main medium now, though I do not know exactly what that means so I will not make a specific comment other than It has been vital for his work in resisting the current Chinese government.

Tweets by aiww

International Top 10: Alexandria Engelfriet

The second artist in my personal international top 10 is Alexandra Engelfriet. I have a very strong personal connection to the work of this artist that relates to the way I discovered her. Almost two years ago I divorced a man who was not only marriage partner but a ceramist and a collaborator. The first few months following our separation was a very difficult time for me. Although I was in school, and so felt very powerfully connected to art and sculpture, I had lost touch with a connectedness that is so essential to work in clay. My BFF would often send me videos through this time, mostly things that were dirty or funny and lots of music, but also videos made by artists and art videos. I often think this exchange was the beginning of my obsession with video as medium. The Alexandra Engelfrit video came on a particularly difficult day, and literally resurrected something in me that I was sure had died. In the video she works alone in her studio, in silence, sculpting a glorious form. No fussy attachment techniques were needed for the very plastic natural looking clay she uses. In the course of the well edited and shot video she builds a vessel that seems to grow from the earth its made of.

In that incredible synthesis of complexity and directness, I remembered why it was I chose clay as a medium nearly 20 years prior, and though my former partner was completely woven into that experience my connection to the material could be enough to point to a future.

There also seemed to be great meaning in the form itself. So many branches coming from the central pillar. It reminded me of my connections to the people who were in my life, my friends, my children, parents, so many connections, all centered together, connected and essentially one.

Engelfriet collaborates with the earth itself. Her work is the story of the body and the earth. Her videos are a sort of sculptural performance where, like in the above video, she makes her gallery work, or in others such as the three posted below, she uses great effort and massive labor to give the same undulating form to the earth itself.

There are many videos that I love, but I will not post them all here, rather I will post three from a recent public work in Le Vent des Forêts in France. the videos follow the progress of the work through its making, firing and finished stages. The videos follow her formula. No sound track but the effort of her body in the making and the sound of the world around her.

http://vimeo.com/70952187

http://vimeo.com/85811821

http://vimeo.com/85070307