Continuing the tradition begun in 1999, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts is pleased to host an Invitational Ceramic Exhibition, Different Directions: Coming Together in Clay 4. The ceramic invitational exhibits run every other year on the odd numbered years. This year the work of Bridget Hauser, James C. Watkins and William Wilhelmi is on display, as the museum seeks to feature contemporary work of regional ceramic artists. Whether stark and serene as the desert landscape or as fanciful as the artist's imagination, whether embellished with nature's forms or the artist's sense of humor, this collection of work offers the viewer something to think about, something to laugh about and most of all something to visually enjoy.
Bridget
Hauser"My experience with the world and its beautiful complexity has its roots
in my childhood. Our family home was in a rural housing development on the
edge of an expansive wooded area conserved and cared for by the Purdue University
Forestry Dept. My parents were adamant that we "play" outside and
for me that meant that I would take my sketch book into the woods and draw.
Sometimes I would walk in and find a good spot to just look, see and feel
what the forest had to offer. I learned a great deal there and in the large
garden we kept. We experienced first hand how to work together to plant, weed,
harvest and preserve that which we needed to eat. I gained an intimate knowledge
of seeds, pods, berries, squash, and gourds. We also gathered what grew wild,
mushrooms, wild onions, berries and grapes. In my house asparagus was something
that grew wild along the railway tracks. Those early experiences left me with
a sense of respect and wonderment at the natural world around me.
The current series of work that is pushing its way to the surface of my conscious
mind draws me close to my memories of the natural world in a quieter time.
Contrasting textures, layers of life, simplicity give the forms a sense of
being part of the natural world.
My forms are stoneware, thrown and assembled and then adorned with visual
clues to the natural world. The leaves, vines, pods, fungi, and forest debris
cling to the forms as they would to your clothes after resting on the forest
floor. Each piece, whether functional and representational or invented and
sculptural, is meant to take you to my forest and share the wonder with me.
Once the pieces are bisque fired they are stained or glazed in a pallet of
color that coincides with the pallet of nature, and then fired to cone 10
in a reduction atmosphere."
Bridget Hauser is a functional potter and ceramic artist who was born
and raised in rural Indiana and now resides in Dripping Springs, Texas where
she runs a large studio and gallery, Sunset Canyon Pottery, together with
her husband and daughter. Bridget gives classes at her studio and teaches
as an adjunct at St. Edwards University. Though she sells a functional line
of pottery, she continuously explores the creative side of the ceramic arts
and reaches for a balance between the commercial world and fine arts. Her
work is influenced by her memories of growing up in a rural environment where
she gained respect and wonder for the natural world around her. She studied
ceramics at Indiana University where she received her bachelor's degree. One
of her first instructors in clay was co-exhibitor James Watkins.
"As a perceptive being, I am trying to make vessels of clay that appeal
to all my senses: hearing, taste, sight, smell and touch. Each piece is comprised
of preserved memories from both a personal history and a borrowed history.
It becomes an artifact of my reality, made up of historical references, cultural
melodies, dream images, eidetic imagery, physical stimuli and an aesthetic
vocabulary.
I am influenced by many cultures and people, by my experiences in faraway
places, by acute observation of nature and, in some way, by every object that
I have ever seen. I approach my work from the point of view that I contain
multitudes of memories which provide me with the impetus to pull from all
sources. The collective history of human beings is at my disposal.
My work is influenced by layers of remembered images. These images come from
memories of my mother and grandmother making soap and washing clothes in black
cast-iron caldrons and memories of scaling the scorched canyon walls of Rattlesnake
Canyon in the Pecos wilderness to see ancient pictographs. The long-ago memory
of holding a twelfth-century Song dynasty tea bowl in my hands in the basement
of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, led me many years later to firing
a five-hundred-year old wood kiln in Jingdezhen, China. There are memories
of reading about the Senoi people of Malaysia who trained themselves to become
conscious while dreaming in order to bring back images and information to
the wakened state. The memory lingers in my mind of the ineffable beauty of
the sun setting behind the great Shinto Torii on the island of Miyajima, Japan.
I also keep in mind the internal visions of the high and low intervals in
the one, two, three, four rhythm time of John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme".
My strongest memory is of my daughter's response at age five to a platter
that I pulled from the kiln, "um, yummy, Dad."
In my current work, I am actively participating in the rite of remembering,
and using this rite as a creative mechanism. The forms challenge me to explore
the perfect balance and depth of visual texture that I remember from the Song
tea bowl. As I mentally listen to Coltrane's energized rhythms, the studio
becomes a place of improvisation. All of my memories become players - composing
vivid internal images of form, line and movement."
James C. Watkins is a ceramic artist who has been working with clay
for over 30 years. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky and grew up in Athens,
Alabama and received his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and his
M.F.A. from Indiana University. He is currently a Full Professor and the Assistant
Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech
University. He has shown his work extensively and it is included in the White
House Collection of American Crafts, and the Shigaraki Institute of Ceramic
Studies in Shigaraki, Japan among many other places. He is the recipient of
the Texas Tech University President's Excellence in Teaching Award.
William
Wilhelmi
Clay is my métier.
I am a potter/ceramist.
My work is my statement.
I make functional & non-functional decorative pieces.
I am afflicted with horror vacui.
I tempt the fragility of clay.
Beauty with humor is my goal.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
that is all ye know on earth
and all ye need to know."
--John Keats
William Wilhelmi was born in Garwin, Iowa, raised in San Diego, California
and lives in Corpus Christi, Texas where he moved in 1969 after graduating
from the University of California at Los Angeles with an MFA degree. He went
to Corpus Christi to apply for a job as studio potter to an architect and
has been there ever since. His pottery studio was in the garage part of a
renovated Gulf service station and the rest of the building became Dos Patos
Gallery and a showroom for his work. Shortly after his arrival he became friends
with Ben Holland and eventually, in 1986, the two teamed up and opened the
Wilhelmi/Holland Gallery, where Bill continues to show his work. After over
35 years a studio potter, Wilhelmi continues to apply his talent to clay,
transforming the commonplace into the uncommon with his often -humorous interpretations.
This exhibition is made possible by the generous sponsorship of Trinity
Ceramic Supply, Inc. in Dallas, Texas, and with the continued and substantial
support from Angelo State University, The Old Chicken Farm Art Center, and
numerous volunteers.
San Angelo Museum
of Fine Arts
One Love Street
San Angelo, Texas 76903
Fax: (325) 658 - 6800
Phone: (325) 653 -
3333
e-mail:
museum@samfa.org