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"With her most recent series, including "Channel", "Reservoir" and "Watertower", Israel
explores the familiar relationship Californians have with our waterways, proffering a personal geography with a recognizable
narrative."
Firings: Ceramic Sculpture
September 16, 2006 - December 2, 2006
Sculpturesite Gallery is pleased to present abstract sculpture by John Toki, Lu Bin and Alfred McCloud and figurative works
by Susannah Israel, Cybele Rowe and Kathy Venter.
Earth is an inherent element in the study of geography, geology and archeology. It holds the beauty and secrets that fascinate
humanity about its environment and history. The works by the six sculptors in this exhibit draw their interpretation of the
landscape and references to the human form from the material earth, which they activate in very personal ways.
Susannah Israel, a respected California ceramics educator, composes her works like stories. "My work has its source
in the fluid nature of experience and the transience of personal history and memory", she writes. "Though the work
is largely elegiac, it also celebrates and honors the living community." "The Summer Opossum" is a touching
portrait of a seated girl and her pet opossum (Israel had such a pet for a summer). With her most recent series, including
Channel, "Reservoir" and "Watertower", Israel explores the familiar relationship Californians have with
our waterways, proffering a personal geography with a recognizable narrative. "The works' flat back present a clay "canvas"
for landscape imagery, while the front is a figurative representation of urban and rural California", says Israel.
John Toki, the acclaimed Bay Area ceramic sculptor and educator, refers to his works as earthscapes. Just as a painter
may be inspired to paint a landscape, I am inspired by landscape to produce sculpture, and since the materials I use literally
come from the earth, the sculptures can be thought of as earthscapes. At first glance the influence Toki's works derive from
land and water- forms is evident; the archeological references come through upon closer observation. The careful layering
of clay and porcelain, the years of careful planning and engineering, the powerful towering columns that activate space in
almost shamanic ways lend his sculptures a timeless quality through their archeological feel, yet they offer fresh sculptural
territory in their technical and visual appeal, as writes Nancy M. Servis, in Ceramic Monthly.
Lu Bin is the director of the ceramic studio at the Shenzhen Sculpture Academy and has been recognized as one of China's
modern ceramic masters. In China, where the venerable tradition of ceramics is intrinsically tied with culture, contemporary
ceramic sculptors are struggling to be recognized as artists. In rejecting cultural references for a purely formal vision,
they strive to achieve global acceptance. Lu Bin has found his contemporary expression beyond modernism by incorporating objects
from Chinese daily life and investing them with a critical role. His recent series Fossils are his interpretations of a fictional
history , writes Dr. Sun Zhenhua. Using modern daily living objects and making them into time-warped fossils, he uses them
to reflect his views on contemporary issues.
Kathy Venter's work was introduced to the Bay Area this past spring at Sculpturesite Gallery, where three larger than
life suspended figures from the Immersion Series attracted much attention. This new body of works includes Suspended Between
Two Points, two life size busts in terra-cotta also covered with Hydrocal, and sand-blasted to reveal the smooth surfaces
below the lumpy white and gray areas of varying size. The dreamy, impressionistic effect recall how light changes our perception
of the subjects we observe. Two new-born babies, sleeping peacefully, seem to have been lifted from a bubble bath, their consciousness
not yet awakened. Venter, who apparently is the only contemporary sculptor of note making life-size terracotta figures currently,
wants the pieces to appear as if they had been unearthed from a dig, yet look fresh and current.
South Carolina artist Alfred McCloud works to push the boundaries of clay sculpture in his investigation of abstract stacks
made from materials not readily associated with ceramic sculpture. He dips paper, cotton and wood into clay slip, stacks each
element ingeniously and when the material burns, it leaves behind a structural skeleton of complex and intriguing form and
texture. McCloud does not bother with color, and this is fortunate, as the stark white contrasting with deep shadows compound
the effect of the dynamic patterns that emerge in his Constructions. Like future archeological discoveries of modern life's
simplest substances, these works resonate beyond their repetitive forms, at once natural and organic and decisively abstract.
Cybele Rowe's imposing vessel-like forms grow out of her life story and her take on the modern womans journey and role
in society. The Human Shells as Temples series was born out of personal tragedy, after Rowe lost a friend to cancer, to celebrate
and affirm the body as temple for life. When she was pregnant, the shapes became expressions of fertility. After she had given
birth to her children, she came forth with her series Husks. The six foot tall hollow works explore the archetypal question
of a woman's purpose after creating life, after the seeds have been sown. Rowe, who was born and raised in Australia, covers
her spirited coil-built sculptures with bold, exuberant markings. Her art has a raw truthfulness, a timeless quality that
transcends cultures, writes Roberta Carasso in the Laguna News Post. Rowe's sculptures have been shown at noted venues, such
as the Smithsonian Institute and the Kennedy Center.
Sculpturesite Gallery
201 Third Street, Suite 102
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: (415) 495-6400
E-mail: info@sculpturesite.com
Gallery Hours : Open Tue-Sat 10AM-6PM
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