The Everyday as Art continued

I the plate image first on the guest blog last week on Design*Sponge. The plates are right up my alley--going along with an interest in creatively displaying our objects of daily use as art. The source for the images is Living Etc.

source: wool blankets

Vika Mitrichenka

Vika Mitrichenka moved to The Netherlands from Minsk on a tourist visa. While still at school in Minsk, Vika was inspired by Holland’s Golden Age, particularly the painters of the time, such as Johannes Vermeer and Pieter Hoogh. Other than knowing that she recently graduated from a very prestigious program in the Netherlands, I have been unable to find much information about her or her process. It appears that she frankensteins cast pieces together and then decorates them traditionally.



The gorgeous tea service (numbered edition) is available from the Frozen Fountain.

In the series “Grandmother’s treasures” (numbered editions):
Teaset “Victoria” no. 10.

Tea for two, “Victoria”

From the series “Grandfather’s Predilections”

Images found on the Style Files and The Frozen Fountian.

LucyD. Recycling Ceramics

Lucy D. is an Austrian Design company. One of their more recent projects were these tableware pieces. Each piece is made from reclaimed china that has been treated with luster. Click here to check out the blog entry on 2Modern where I came across Lucy D.

2d/3d: Portia Wells and Mark Cutler

Portia Wells (top images) and Mark Cutler (bottom images) are both working with a lovely sense of 2D and 3D in combination. The flatness of the drawings on the fabric lend themselves to the modernist or even minimalist forms beneath. I really enjoy the conflation of modernist and decorative aesthetics.

Broken English: Slow Movie

I have to recommend this movie to other romantics out there. It is one of the more cynical and sweet movies that "ends right" that I have seen in a while. Who would't move to Paris for love?

One lump or two?

Delft Toast

This CNC toast machine courtesy of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. They have images of people on toast in addition to this text. Personally, i am more excited about my toast matching my plate...You can view many other lovely, more decorative toast products from Minale Maeda here. This piece below is a part of their "Table Manners" series.

Aurelie Mathigot

Trash Luxe: Christine Misiak and Karen Ryan

SuperNaturale!

I have just come across an entire website that is dedicated to making art out of everyday life. Here is how they describe themselves:

SuperNaturale is an independent site dedicated to the Do It Yourself culture in all its glorious forms. From simple afternoon home improvement projects to radical lifestyle choices- we love them all. We celebrate ingenuity, creativity and the handmade.

We publish an online magazine, host an active bbs (Glitter), and have a group blog (Glimmer). Simply put we are a hybrid, a chimera, a liger—a radiant community with great editorial content.

Supernaturale is produced by Flat, a New York City-based design firm.

SuperNaturale has articles ranging from craft tutorials, digging your own root cellar all the way to the politics of drinking tea (click here to read the article). There are some really good interviews, Jenny Hart, Andrea Zittel, Garth Johnson, Annette Kesterson, and others.

Spectacular Craft Reading List

I have already purchased a couple of the books on this incredible reading list. I highly reccomend visiting the V&A site for more information about this exhibit. If you are near London or passing through, the show is up until February 17th.

READING LIST:

• Adamson, Glenn. Thinking Through Craft. New York: Berg, 2007
• Bishop, Claire. Installation Art: a Critical History. London: Tate, 2005 NAL pressmark: 603.AG.0493
• Bishop, Claire, ed. Participation. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2006. NAL pressmark: 602.AH.0102
• The Body Politic: The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft. London: Crafts Council, 2000. NAL pressmark: 603.AD.2334
• Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Presses du Réel, 2002. NAL pressmark: 73.D.211
• Buskirk, Martha. The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art. London: MIT, 2003. NAL pressmark: 602.AE.0286
• Crow, Thomas. The Intelligence of Art. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. NAL pressmark: NB.99.1512
• Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. NAL pressmark: NB.97.0386
• De Oliveira, Nicolas, Nicola Oxley, and Michael Petry. Installation Art in the New Millennium. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003. NAL pressmark: 603.AE.0595
• Dormer, Peter. The Art of the Maker. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. NAL pressmark: 22.J.165
• Dormer, Peter, ed. The Culture of Craft: Status and Future. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. NAL pressmark: NB.98.0008
• Drucker, Johanna. Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Fariello, M. Anna, and Paula Owen, eds. Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft. London: Scarecrow Press, 2003. NAL pressmark: 602.AE.0725
• The Future is Handmade: The Survival and Innovation of Crafts. Prince Claus Fund Journal 10 ( 2003).
• Greenhalgh, Paul, ed. The Persistence of Craft: the Applied Arts Today. London: A & C Black, 2002. NAL pressmark: 603.AD.1242
• Harrod, Tanya. The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. NAL pressmark: ND.99.0238
• Harrod, Tanya, ed. Obscure Objects of Desire: Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century. London: Crafts Council, 1997. NAL pressmark: 73.R.87
• Highmore, Ben, ed. The Everyday Life Reader. London: Routledge, 2002.
• Jeffries, Janis. Selvedges: Writings and Artworks Since 1980. Norwich: Norwich Gallery, 2000. NAL pressmark: 606.AE.0383
• Johnson, Jean, ed. Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory & Critical Writing. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2002. NAL pressmark: 602.AE.0806
• Jones, Amelia. Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. NAL pressmark: NC.98.1948
• Jones, Caroline A. The Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. NAL pressmark: 47.Y.2061
• Johnson, Pamela, ed. Ideas in the Making: Practice in Theory. London: Crafts Council, 1998. NAL pressmark: NC.99.0815
• Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. NAL pressmark: 602.AC.1070
• The Maker's Eye. London: Crafts Council, 1981.
• Munroe, Alexandra. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. New York: Abrams, 1994. NAL pressmark: ND.96.0480
• Peters, Tessa, and Janice West, eds. The Uncanny Room. London: Luminous Books, 2002. NAL pressmark: 602.AD.0596
• Pye, David. The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Rev. ed. London: Herbert Press, 1995. NAL pressmark: NC.95.0314
• Rowley, Sue, ed. Craft and Contemporary Theory. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997. NAL pressmark: 399.A.0011

Clare Twomey

This image is of several kids playing with porcelain birds in Clare Twomey’s “Trophy” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The birds were meant to be taken home from the museum, challenging the conventions of both museums and craft and traditional parameters of interaction with artwork. Photo/Dan Prince via American Craft Magazine Dec/Jan issue.

Definitely check out the revamped American Craft Magazine, it is a completely new rag. Much deserving of a subscription if you ask me.

Every Day as Art II

This image comes courtesy of Emma's Design Blog. Yet another wonderful image of the everyday on display. Click here to go to Emma's blog.





















This is an image of a cabinet I couldn't help but include in my recent gathering of images that are ceramic collections on display---clearly these are objects that are meant for use on a daily basis.

This image is from Fine Little Day's Elizabeth (courtesy of Camilla Engman's guest blog on d*s this week).

Slow Design

After reading the Slow Design manifesto, I find that my work is naturally gravitating towards adopting the philosophical approach to making as it is described. I have paraphrased the theory in addition to quoting several passages in an effort to remind myself to slow down in my own making and apply these most important ideas to make my work more sustainable over the long haul.

Slow Design’s 52 page ‘Slow Theory’ begins by defining the crisis in contemporary design. Concern with design’s complacency with corporate politics, globalization and a lack of attention to environmental issues sparks Slow Design’s question: “Can design rise to the challenge or is it a victim of its own success in its service to industry, consumerism…?” Slow Design encourages the design world that is enabling our rampant consumption as a society to change and slow down with the following question: “How can design deliver more sustainable patterns of production and consumption together with improvements in quality of life?”

The current beginnings of a movement towards sustainable and green-design are discussed as a marginalized aspect of contemporary design. Slow Design states that in order for this shift to slowing of design, there needs to be a larger social shift. Organizations they recommend looking at that are already subscribing to Slow Design values: Droog, Doors of Perception, o2.

In the Slow Design definition of today’s design paradigm, design is controlled by manufacture. Current design contributes to the kind of production that requires product replacement. Due to a high flow of production, short-term goals and corporate desire for growth things produced and designed now are meant to be short-lived products that do not stand the test of time—computers are a great example. “Since design is wed to both technology and economy, then design has also contributed to a perceived speeding up of our lives.” Design enables mass-production and fast turn around of new trends; this encourages consumption out of desire, not need or well-being. This in turn creates post-consumer waste and puts large demands on resources.

Slow Design asks: ”How does design respond to eco-economy challenges? How can it balance the global and the local? Will design contribute towards more sustainable ways of living, working, playing?”
“Slow Design was conceived as means to refocus an anthropocentric (individual+socio-cultural community) and environmental well-being. It is seen as a counterbalance to the existing paradigm of ‘fast design.’ It is about transforming our current materialistic and consumer vision of the world.”
“The guiding philosophical principle of slow design is to reposition the focus of design and the individual, socio-cultural and environmental well-being. Slow Design encourages those engaged in design to take a long view; envisage slower rates of consumption and production; stimulate a renewed joy in design…focus on the present rather than trying to design the future.”

Pages 18 and 39 were particularly interesting to me and I find that they clearly sum up the Slow Design Theory. I won’t include them here as I do respect their copyright on the information, but please visit their website here to download the pdf document to read all about Slow Design on your own.

In support of Slow Design I am pledging to do my best regarding the following:

1. I will set parameters in my studio practice and making of ceramic work to encourage slowness
2. Make work to satisfy real needs rather than satisfy trends
3. Minimize my ecological footprint by reducing the amount of resources I use to make my work and sell it.
4. Harness and use renewable energy sources
5. Choose to use materials in packaging etc. that can be most easily recycled or reused
6. Consider all aspects of well-being for the people using my products
7. Inform clients of the philosophy I am subscribing to in an effort to encourage education and further sustainable action
8. Avoid complacency in the design of my products through consistent re-evaluation and improvement
9. Encourage modularity

The Everyday as Art

I have been reading all about Slow Design the last couple of days in preparation for writing about it and its relationship to my own work. I have been thinking that my blog would be a great place to put my ideas down as I develop my thesis. In doing this, i have come across these three images as very good sources for my thesis project. I have been frequenting Lisa Congdon's Blog which has some images of her kitchen as you see at the left. She has this wonderful way of displaying objects of day to day use as art objects--right up my alley! I have been working on developing hooks for displaying your cup collection in a composition similar to the image below. I have also been working on engineering a cleat system for hanging bowls on the wall--making it easy to use the art you hang on the wall. Keep posted to see the work as it develops, for now it is in the developing stages...

Handmade 2.0

In my own work, I find that I am constatntly struggling to keep my interests in ceramics at the forefront of my day to day studio practice. In my time at grad school, I have been reading a lot about making art, what art is, the history of art and so on. I find that in the few minutes I have between coming home from the studio and collapsing into bed, I cant help but do a bit of catch up on the world of crafting and design that is so prominent on the web. This world of product reveiws and handmade movements seems so inline with who I would like to be as an artist. I feel as though I have been invited into a dialogue about what ceramics is for me--about the hand, about good design, about usefulness and accessibility and so on. The recent article Handmade 2.0 written by Rob Walker for the NYT was an excellent find. I cannot wait to read the book when it is published. Click here to read the article by Rob.

Back by Popular Demand

I recently deleted my original Blog titled: "Adventures of Stripes and Dots" and by popular demand, I have reposted all of my original positings from that Blog here on a new blog. My interest in this blog is to post articles I write and collect pertaining to my concerns with ceramics, both historical and contemporary. I will post images and articles written by myself and others that I find interesting and newsworthy, in addition to the occasional more lengthy and formal writings. I will be posting bi-weekly to keep things fresh. If you have comments, please share them--the blog will be more exciting and fun as a result of your participation.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott

OVERVIEW

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (born 1935, Ballarat, Australia) is a contemporary ceramic artist. With a career spanning over 45 years, influences from her early apprenticeships with English potters Ray Finch, Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach are still apparent in her current work. Hanssen Pigott wood-fires her porcelain still-life arrangements that are noticeably influenced by the still life work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. Her palette is clearly inherited from China’s Song Dynasty wares introduced to her through her various apprenticeships in the Leach tradition. Hanssen Pigott currently maintains a studio in Ipswich, Queensland where she is recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists.

BIOGRAPHY

In 1954, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott received her Bachelor of Arts (equivalent to a Bachelor of Fine Arts) from the University of Melbourne. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to ceramics was in the 1950s while a student at University. She studied Bernard Leach's A Potter's Book, an influential text for potters both when it was written as well as today. In seeking to learn more in the Leach tradition, she sought out Ivan McMeekin who had apprenticed with both Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew in England.

Between 1955 and 1959, Hanssen Pigott held apprenticeships with several influential potters from both Australia and England. Her first apprenticeship was with McMeekin at Sturt Pottery in Mittagong, New South Wales, Australia, between 1955 and 1957. McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in 1953 as a production and teaching pottery modeled after the studio traditions of Leach and Cardew. McMeekin emphasized the use of local materials for small-scale studio production, a concept introduced to him by Cardew. Hanssen Pigott studied with McMeekin at a time when all clay bodies had to be made from hand-processed raw ceramic materials, they were not available as commercially pre-mixed
products. While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott was exposed to an appreciation of materiality and process in addition to a learned admiration of form and beauty in a pot.

Hanssen Pigott’s introduction to the Leach-Cardew studio potter tradition via McMeekin more than likely encouraged her to go abroad to England to apprentice with Finch, Cardew and Leach. Hanssen Pigott traveled to England in 1958. She first worked with Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery. Michael Cardew established Winchcombe in 1926 by shortly after he left St. Ives where he had been an apprentice to Bernard Leach for three years. Cardew’s goal was to make pottery for everyday use and to make his pottery available at a price that most people could afford (in the seventeenth century English slipware tradition). In 1939, only three years after joining Cardew, Ray Finch assumed the management of Winchcombe while Cardew set up a new pottery in Cornwall at Wenford Bridge. In 1946, Cardew sold Winchcombe to Ray Finch.

In 1958, after working at Winchcombe, Hanssen Pigott apprenticed Bernard Leach at St Ives, and Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge. In 1960, she left Cornwall with her newlywed husband, Louis Hanssen, to establish a studio in Portobello Road, London. During her time in London, Hanssen Pigott enrolled in evening classes at the Camberwell School of Art, with Dame Lucie Rie.

In 1966, after several visits, she moved to Archeres, France where she set up her own pottery. Hanssen Pigott became more and more well known in the ceramics community internationally. Around this time she lectured in the United States as well as Holland. In 1973, she returned to Australia, moving to Tasmania in 1974 with her second husband John Pigott. Hanssen Pigott and her husband set up a pottery workshop in Tasmania with financial help from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.

Some of her many artistic accolades include the following: in 1980, Hanssen Pigott was a “tenant potter” in Adelaide at the Jam Factory Craft Center, from 1981-1988 she was the potter in residence at the Queensland University of Technology. In 1989 she was the artist in residence at the Fremantle Arts Center. In 1993 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council. In 1994 she was the artist in residence in the Ceramics Department of the School of Mines and Industries, Ballrat.

INFLUENCES

Gwyn Hanssen Piggot’s work has a wide range of influences. The variety of influence from Song Dynasty glazes and palettes to Leach-Cardew forms can be clearly seen in her work. Hanssen Pigott has written about her interests in Buddhism and the meditation accompanying the practice as well as her interests in the quiet still-lives of Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi—all of which influence her work.

As previously discussed, Hanssen Pigott was influenced early on by the text A Potter’s Book, written by Bernard Leach. Artist and author Edmund de Waal describes A Potter’s Book:

A Potter’s Book, finally published at the start of the war in May 1940,
stands as both manual and polemic. Indeed its significance and popularity are due to the complex way in which Leach’s technical descriptions are bound up in his values. It is a book that seems to encode the whole meaning of being a potter and working as a potter, not simply the making of pots. From his introductory chapter ‘Towards a Standard’, through the technical chapters to the description of an imagined month in the workshop life of a potter, Leach rehearses his convictions about the place of handwork in society…Leach starts from the presumption that there is a need for a common standard of ‘fitness and beauty’ and that such a standard is lacking in the West where the appreciation of pottery is a marginal activity…His judgments are expressed as absolutes: ‘a pot in order to be good should be a genuine expression of life,’ ‘it is true that pots exist which are useful and not beautiful and others that are beautiful and impractical, but neither of these extremes can be considered normal: the normal is a balanced combination of the two…(Leach states) The potter must be symbolically independent of contemporary society…The gravitas of Leach’s book, though, lay in the feeling that art was not various but very particular indeed. It was the very absoluteness of Leach’s ‘Song standards’, ‘the ethical pot’, that were to define the post-war agenda on ceramics.

Through her study with McKeenin, Hanssen Pigott’s sense of the Leach tradition was sharpened. McMeekin set up the Sturt Craft Center based on Michael Cardew’s philosophy of self-sufficiency. McMeekin relied on local clays and raw materials to make his work. McMeekin wrote his own influential book published in 1967, titled Notes for Potters in Australia. Clearly Hanssen Pigott chose to learn more about Leach and his family of potters in her decision to apprentice with Leach, Cardew and Finch in the UK. De Waal’s description of Leach’s high regard for the aesthetic of China’s Song Dynasty wares, specifically the objects made for meditation in the monasteries, has been incredibly influential on Hanssen Pigott’s aesthetic.

The Song Dynasty wares, so influential to so many contemporary potters, are known for their simple glazing, soft colors, elegance, poise, restraint and peaceful qualities. Bernard Leach might be considered one of the most notable contemporary advocates for this aesthetic in the West. Chinese firing technology had become quite advanced during the Song Dynasty, allowing for the development of more sophisticated high temperature glazes. More important than decoration, the shapes of this dynasty became complex and engaging as the focus of the wares. Many potters made work with tradition in mind, aiming to recreate the look of jade stone in their glazes.

In Hanssen Pigott’s pottery, you can see a heavy influence of specifically the Northern Song Dynasty wares. The Northern Song wares concentrated on the meditative qualities of form. Glazing was rich in color, but decoration on the surfaces was minimal. What decoration that was used was delicate and restrained. The work is technically very accomplished.

In addition to her adherence to the aesthetic of the Song Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of form, which is aligned with the Cardew Leach philosophy of the importance of the everyday and humility in pottery:

About form. I am sure that the forms of the most common, everyday utensils can evoke so much that is inexpressible in any other language, about humanness. That with only the very slightest gesture, the merest suggestion of the lip of a jug, or pouring spout, or the lightest softening of a curve, there can be expressed a sort of vulnerability, or a tenderness, or an attentiveness that causes us to pause. That the scale alone of some objects can touch us, and a small jug of open and generous form can somehow seem brave and absurd and a bit like ourselves.

It is later on that Hanssen Pigott describes how her work differs from the aspirations of Leach and Cardew:

I no longer care if the cup, with its careful handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of teaset making), stands unused among a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a still life, somewhere higher than table height. Aait is still a cup—an everyday object as ordinary and simple as can be—but from somewhere, because of its tense or tenuous relationship with other simple, recognized, even banal objects, pleasure comes.

I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach. To make beakers that are totally inviting and then to freeze them in an installation. Worse still, to take so much time with each piece, carefully trimming and turning and removing most marks of the throwing….Old friends indeed be worried. And yet it has come slowly, out of observation, out of what cannot be refuted. These forms, these assemblages and groupings and jostlings and juxtapositions sometimes have a power to move me, and others. Strange, I cannot understand.

Hanssen Piggot might have come to arranging her work in groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was not without influence. Hanssen Piggot describes her interests in the paintings of Italian Giorgio Morandi:

Thankfully there are masters I can look to, who never seemed to miss. The makers of the Korean rice bowls, Giorgio Morandi. Their works confront and inspire, and imply humility, unconscious or highly, intensely conscious, they express a sure understanding. Of something. What? Is that truth in form? Are their forms true? Well, they have left us some sort of man-made, material, tangible expression in real stuff, real clay, real thick paint, which in its pulled back simplicity satisfies a suprising longing. And because I can appreciate it (a little), or feel it, then that understanding must be in me too—as deeply as I allow it. And also, perhaps, the potential to express it. Worth pursuing, would not you say? But perhaps, after all, not to be spoken about too much. Words get too big. Leave them.

Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) started painting still life compositions in the 1920s. His style of painting was minimal in its use of composition, quiet colors and line quality. His colors often used whites, muted blues, browns, iron reds, cobalt and ochre creating a very specific palette. Author Karen Wilkin writes of Giorgio Morandi:

This is true even among the still lifes constructed of utterly familiar, repeated objects. In some, Morandi gangs those objects together so that they touch, hiding and cropping one another in ways that alter even the most recognizable features; in others, the same objects are treated as distinct individuals, gathered on the surface of the tabletop like an urban crowd in a piazza. In Morandi's closely linked "serial still lifes", apparently identical groupings of familiar objects, altered by the addition or subtraction of a single element, the presence (or absence) of one more bottle, one less box, as casually placed as an afterthought, can serve not only to completely shift the dynamic weight and the spatial logic of a given composition, but to change its color harmonies, and even the entire proportion of the picture.

WORK

In her early work, in the 1950s through the 1970s, Hanssen Pigott focused on producing functional ceramic wares. She is most well known for her more recent objects--three dimensional still life groupings, which she has worked with closely since the 1980s. Her influences from the Song Dynasty wares show early as she was working with McMeekin in the 1950’s, who was also heavily influenced by the work from the Song Dynasty. This early engagement with the history of ceramics has proven to become an old friend for Hanssen Pigott in her later works.

Owen Rye writes of Hanssen Pigott:

Had I come to Pigott’s work with knowledge of recent art history, and none at all of her journey, I might sat that her work is much more suggestive of the modernist movement than of its beginnings in a love for Song Dynasty ceramics; more redolent of Bauhaus Germany or later Scandinavia, than distant China…the group carries an alternating current, a constantly reversing flow from one polarity to another; from abstraction to reality… Early in the evolution of the group concept, Ian McKay, in 1990, discussed the inherent contradictions in the grouping that arose at that time from considering each item in the group as a functional object, for example, a bowl or cup for daily use. These functional pots if used and replaced would constantly modify the group. Or, if the group were retained in its original format, then quite usable objects could become solely objects of contemplation. In a prescient manner (the article was written just before his death) McKay suggested: "The still lifes should be thought about again, both by enthusiastic critics and the artist".

In a 1999 review, Helen Stephens writes of Hanssen Pigott:

She (Hanssen Pigott) says in making her forms, she dared herself to go to the edge of formlessness and, she wrote: "To my delight the pared down forms remained pots; glazed, strong, usable. What is more, this eccentric presentation, unframed, unboxed, completely floating on an idea, was accepted." She says she is wary of design: "Skill is one thing but a pot has to breathe." These groups have a meditative value -- we take time out to consider them in the rush of life. People who purchase these groups of pots set aside alcoves, shelves, specially designed locations for these object groupings. Their strength and individuality; their cool composure; their certainty; their lightness and depth have the power to move and reassure. Pigott says they have, "for a moment pulled on our attention, with, perhaps, a reminder of our own vulnerability, and beauty and possibility of transformation and repose". The range of colours also have a powerful effect -- from pure white groupings to rich and intense browns that seem to glisten out of the darkness.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found in the collections of: the Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Winnipeg Museum and numerous others. Her recent accolades include: 2001, Order of Australia Medal; 1998, Australia Council Fellowship Award; 1985, Queensland State Ceramic Award, Toowoomba; 1963, Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen, UK; and numerous others.

ETERNAL LINKS

Garth Clark Gallery: http://www.garthclark.com/artists/artists.php?id=Hanssen%20Pigott
Sturt Contemporary Australian Craft: http://www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/index.htm
Galerie Besson: http://www.galeriebesson.co.uk/hanssen2exhib2.html
Ceramics Today: http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/pigott.htm
Smithsonian Freer Gallery of art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery:
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/Parades.htm
Chritine Abrahams Gallery: http://www.christineabrahamsgallery.com.au/adisplay.cfm?id=74
National Gallery of Victoria: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/hanssenpigott/
The Leach Pottery: http://www.leachpottery.com/
Wendford Bridge Pottery: http://www.wenfordbridge.com/
Winchcombe Pottery: http://www.winchcombepottery.co.uk/history.html
Museuo Morandi: http://www.museomorandi.it/english/sec_pag.htm
Song Dynasty Wares: http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/ceramics/early-chinese-ceramics-sung.cfm

Mark Pharis

[Functional forms] "have been a source of curious and engaging problems for many years. I suspect it is because the nature of the pots is multifaceted and unfolds over time. Utility or function is but one aspect of a pot. Use and its connection to the domestic arena form the framework and a context in which I work. The themes provided by function are familiar-vases, cups, teapots, etc. And they may be thought of as a kind of shorthand for a longer and less obvious list of concerns, which includes-in no particular order-interactivity, material, chemistry, the realm of ideas, metaphor, formal constitution, social and cultural context, a pot's relationship to 'fine art' and function as 'idea." –Mark Pharis

"Just as in music we find that the simpler the theme, the more thorough must be the knowledge of the musician in order to compose acceptable variations thereon. So, in fact in every Art this rule obtains, and the simpler the apparent result- assuming, of course, that such result is really beautiful the greater the art care knowledge and taste required... The problem presented is practically one of elimination. To include all that is necessary and eliminate all that is unessential..."


Mark Pharis is an American ceramic artist and professor residing in Roberts, Wisconsin. Pharis is currently the Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota where he has been a faculty member since 1985. Pharis is most known for his exploration of functional vessels: namely the teapot, vase and soy bottle forms. Pharis is well known for his unique method for handbuilding using cut paper templates and slabs in a way very similar to sewing with fabric. Pharis comes from an important lineage of potters having been a student of Warren MacKenzie, an influential American potter formerly an apprentice of British potter Bernard Leach.

BIOGRAPHY AND ARTWORK

Mark Pharis received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1971. Between 1971 and 1985, Pharis was employed by many Universities (mostly Midwestern) as a visiting faculty member, sabbatical replacement and summer session faculty. During this time Pharis showed in many group and two person shows as well as several solo exhibitions. In 1985, Pharis began his long-term career as a professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, where he is currently the Chair of the Department.

It was as a student at the University of Minnesota that Pharis studied with Warren MacKenzie. Sandy Simon, also a student of MacKenzie, describes the importance of MacKenzie: “I remember what brought me into the world of pottery—coming of age in the midst of the Vietnam War, kids we knew in high school were getting killed; our college campus was closed. Violence was everywhere and for reasons we doubted worthwhile. Pottery making was a vital practice of living. Warren MacKenzie, as our teacher, encouraged us to follow our vision, allow our talents and trust ourselves. The world was a healthy place: compassion and confidence in humankind not only existed but thrived, and feeling it was just the beginning; living it was just down the road.”

In an interview with Jeanne Quinn (faculty member of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder) Quinn describes McKenzie’s artistic strength as his very narrow focus in clay—his ability to work within a structured set of rules to work within. Quinn queries Pharis about his own rules or parameters for working with clay. Pharis responds stating that it is his choice to make functional vessels that is a parameter in his work. He states: “I was in love with the whole functional world and I could operate confidently in that world—I like the fact that this is [function is] structured—functional pots happen in a certain framework, both defining and liberating at the same time. It is interesting to investigate the boundaries of that.”

Apparent simplicity of form and decoration in Pharis’ vessels allow for a revealing of the subtle complexities in the work over time and through the use of his work. His interests in function are clearly both literal and conceptual. Pharis states: "I want my pots to have that potential to flip or alternate, to appear to be about use at one time, but to be visually independent and clear enough to be other than functional as well." His process of folding and joining slabs together that have been cut using templates similar to sewing patterns gives a sense of volume to his closed vessels that speaks to the softness of clay in the green state. Where the slabs are joined as seams the process of assemblage is apparent.

His exhibitions are numerous and his work can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, Gardner Museum, Toronto Canada, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, Ferguson Collection, the Kansas City Art Institute, The Woodman Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, Everson Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, amongst many others.


EXTERNAL LINKS

What Follows Interview at the University of Colorado at Boulder: http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=2018
Akar Design: http://www1.akardesign.com/art/ceramics/pharis/pharis.htm
Department of Art: University of Minnesota: http://artdept.umn.edu/faculty/gallery.php?UID=phari001
Ferrin Gallery: http://www.ferringallery.com/dynamic/artist_portfolio.asp?artistID=87
Trax Gallery: http://www.traxgallery.com/artist.php?sid=pharis
LaCoste Gallery: http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid