This change of medium might be likened to a change of language. The experience of using two languages makes each more rich than it possibly can be by itself. And, more important, the attempt to convey a thought from one language to another makes possible a finer comprehension of the thought.
Kimon Nicolaides 1
Working between two media enriches subsequent work in either. As in a dialogue between two persons, each is the more itself and yet is expanded and informed by the exchange. Amy Halko's new series of cups are informed by her recent work in both printmaking and collage.
One might suppose nothing but alterity would ensue from such an engagement. Yet for all the obvious differences obtaining in the flatness of paper and the volume of the clay works, the same sensibility is deployed in her work in both printmaking and collage and in clay. Surface is pre-eminent in both media,
Both the print-collages and the clay works entail a concern for the objectness of the work, and for the treatment of surface as surface. In both media, repetition of shape and line articulates the surface, entailing an elegance of proportion and placement. This reduction to an elemental level in which referents are abstracted beyond easily recognized sources conduces to the sense of quietness and restraint in the overall form of the works.
This quiet calm restraint extends to the presentation of the works. The constraint of format in the print-collage works to a common size and aspect, and the parallel constraint of the clay works to a repeated tall cylindrical vessel form, and the presentation of several of the works together in groups is partly a function of the configuration of the gallery interior architecture, but more saliently conduces to the comparison of similarities between the works, and the manifestation of differences among the works. Consequently, both in ensemble and as discrete works, there is a delight both for the eye and the mind in the simultaneous perception of category and instance. One might compare these works with the juxtaposition in Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of elements of industrial infrastructure as examples of Kant's dictum that "Thoughts without content are empty, and percepts without concepts are blind."2
Amy Halko earned the Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University, and the Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University. She teaches ceramics at Eastfield College. Recent exhibitions include: Ceramics 2005, Guilford Art Center, Guilford, CT; Mastery in Clay, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia; Strictly Functional Pottery 14th National, Lancaster, PA; About Surface, Treetop Gallery, Dallas; Abstraction '01, Period Gallery, Omaha; Emerging Artists, Ohio Arts Council Gallery, Columbus; Amy Halko, Alfred University; Passion and Process, NCECA National Student Show, Columbus, OH; 1999 Seed Merchant's Warehouse Invitational Show, Toledo, OH.