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I seem to be at the point in
life (I’m middle-aged), where my interests are coming full
circle, as opposed perhaps to the mere arcs that were
discernible earlier. I’m lucky enough to be established as a
professor of art at a university. I’m short on time to make art
(there is always lots of teaching and paperwork to get through),
but then on the other hand, there is little to stop me at this
point from branching out beyond the boundaries of ideas and
media as those are conventionally defined for professional
artists.
During my training
period as a young person, I painted a lot. I liked the color
and patterning that is available in the painting medium, and I
was attracted to the idea that the organization and structure of
a painting form a kind of conversation with a world of other
people who are avid about “reading” that structure – or who
argue about how to read it. However, I also liked the visceral, bodylike, three-dimensional structure of working with clay as an
art form. “Forms” and structures in painting are almost always
an illusion, whereas structures in a ceramic work really do
exist, even if some of the references are conceptual.
Eventually I chose ceramics as my professional medium, and that
necessarily led to a number of years of working exclusively in
clay.
So, during my
recently-acquired middle aged sense of freedom, I decided to
circle back to an earlier interest and take some steps toward
combining painting with ceramic vessels. The idea of vessel on
shelf in front of painting makes a neat package. In it, the
viewer has an object (the vessel) plus a setting (the simple
shelf) and an environment (the painting). I feel a mischievous
sense of revenge when placing a painting as a backdrop to a
sculpture. For various historical reasons, Western art
privileges painting above sculpture, and craft below either (for
some reason, the use of clay is relegated to the craft category
by most prestigious art experts). Seriously, I intend for the
painting and the vessel in these works to illuminate one
another.
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