In the PROFILES section: Eight ceramic artists from USA, Germany, Italy, Korea, UK. Coverage of EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS in Germany, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Portugal, UK. In the section ARTIST JOURNAL, we present Ruriko Miyamoto and Cho Ming-shun. And we also have interviews with artists IN STUDIO as well as listings of Dates, Courses, Seminars and Markets.
NEWS
PROFILES
Gustav Weiss at 100 – Germany
Antonietta Mazzotti – Italy
Karen Karnes – USA
INTERSECT – Korea
Mendy Arp – Germany
Jane Perryman – UK
Didem Mert – USA
EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS
275 years of Porcelain from Fürstenberg – Fürstenberg – Germany
Clay-whistle Figures – collection – Germany
Tonalá – Traditional Ceramics – Mexico – Mexico
Matres Terrae – Capua – Italy
AIC / IAC Congress – Geneva – Switzerland
POTverdorie! – Tiendschuur – Netherlands
XV International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics – Aveiro – Portugal
Collect – London – UK
ARTIST JOURNAL
Ruriko Miyamoto (Japan) and Cho Ming-shun (Taiwan) – Ting-Ju Shao
IN STUDIO
John Tuckwell – Evelyne Schoenmann – Interview / Developing Skills
DATES / Exhibitions / Galleries / Museums
COURSES / SEMINARS / MARKETS
ADVERTISEMENTS
PREVIEW
Master of Innovation
Ceramics connoisseurs have long admired Karen Karnes’ pottery and for years I heard stories about her innovative ceramics at Round House – textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen’s first country house in East Hampton, New York. Last summer I received an invitation to study Karnes’ work at this house.
The Marks Project, Dictionary of American Studio Ceramics 1946 Onward, informs us that Karen Karnes, 1925-2016, was born in New York City and passed away in Vermont. She attended Brooklyn College and earned a master’s degree at the New York State College of Ceramics during its glory years. An early “hippie,” she joined a residential commune in Stoney Point, New York for several years. Exceptionally, she was the resident potter at Black Mountain College from 1952-4.
Black Mountain College was located in rural western North Carolina and was something akin to Germany’s world famous Bauhaus School. With shaky finances, the College was founded in 1933. Bauhaus instructors Josef and Anni Albers were the first artists invited to teach at Black Mountain College. Incredibly, in 1939-40 Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer were commissioned to design a campus for the College. Their models were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1940. For many reasons, it was decided to not go forward with those plans, and instead, in 1940 Lawrence Kocher designed a modern reinforced concrete structure that was built by faculty and students.
(Marc Leuthold)
Karen Karnes
Three Korean ceramists expanding the horizon of ceramics
INTERSECT is the group name of ceramists Young-Sil Han, Eun-Mee Lee, Soon-Jung Hong. They have many things in common: they studied at the same university in Korea and later abroad, they have worked as lecturers and art ceramists. They work individually and as a group. They live in the artists’ village, Heyri Artvalley in Paju, around 40 km north of Seoul, and have their studios and exhibition space there. Han also has a private gallery, Ponetive Space (www.ponetivespace.co.kr.), where the works of the group are exhibited.
They go beyond the boundaries of ceramics but remain connected with it. For some perhaps, their projects are too bold and too confusing. But the basis of their work is long reflection on the themes, free discussions, metaphorical interpretation, artistic skills and professional creation. Despite their strong individuality, great harmony exists between them. For sixteen years, they have exhibited as a group every two years. They want to take up multifaceted themes in artistic terms and express them with various materials. Three strong identities create a new, powerful creative energy.
In 2007, their first exhibition took place with the title Intersect. They made the film director Ki-Duk Kim their subject. Together, they watched his films, discussed and interpreted them in their own works. Intersect became the name of the group.
(Yoon-Kyung Lee / Dieter Jacobs)
Young-Sil Han, Eun-Mee Lee, Soon-Jung Hong
When an artist has finished a major piece of work and is sifting through the world for a new project, one encounter can crystallize their thinking and set off a whole journey of research.
Jane Perryman’s previous installation Containing Time explored “interlocking ideas of time and place through sequential (ceramic) forms”. In 2017, her attention was focused by an article on circadian rhythms and the profound effect the light-dark cycle has on every aspect of life on earth. This started a 5-year commitment that has resulted in her major new installation, From Light to Dark, Dark to Light, which opens at Ruthin Crafts Centre in Wales in April 2022.
Reflecting recently on the inception of this work, she describes a visit she made in 2018 as having a subliminal effect on the development of her ideas. In the harsh light of Jaipur in India, a huge 18th century sundial makes visible, millimetre by millimetre, the movement of the sun, as it casts a shadow on the towering arc of the Samrat Yantra, a stone sundial of enormous proportion.
Encounters with scientists, both face to face and through their writings1, led her to become inspired by the world of scientific data. I have been fortunate to visit Jane on many occasions since 2017 and have had the privilege of seeing her turn figures, charts and diagrams into a series of hand-coiled ceramic forms, incised wall-plaques and her signature rocking bowls, now embellished with fine angled lines, all dictated by the sequence of the numbers she tenaciously collected over a year.
(Linda Theophilus)
Jane Perryman
In conversation with Monika Gass
Was ceramics always your favourite medium – and why?
Love this question! Growing up I’d draw, paint, and use just about whatever materials I could get a hold of to express my creativity, ideas, and thoughts. My dad, being a woodworker, would often take me to his shop when I was younger and I’d hide under the finishing tables and make sculptures from the sawdust and wood glue to hold the sawdust together, much like when using water to hold together a sand castle on the beach.
In primary school we had one day a year we could work in clay. It was the very first day I touched the medium I knew it was for me. Clay is so malleable, you move, the clay moves. Being in my dad’s woodshop I was always frustrated that to manipulate wood there were many loud noises and sharp tools I couldn’t use as a child. It’s incredible to be able to manipulate a three dimensional material with just your hands, but add in the addition of heat and we have a real party!
Didem Mert
50th IAC Congress – Celebrating Ceramics in Geneva!
The International Academy of Ceramics (AIC/IAC) is preparing Congress in Geneva. Created in 1952, the association is celebrating its 70th anniversary and its 50th congress this year. This exceptional double jubilee is organized by swissceramics, the association of professional Swiss ceramists, around a theme in tune with the city’s multiculturalism: “Melting Pot: From the Alchemical Crucible to the Cultural Crucible”.
The congress will (in optimal conditions) take place not only face-to-face but also online from 12 – 16 September 2022 at the Centre International des Congrès de Genève (CICG).
swissceramics is proud to organize this major event, which will offer ceramics an incredible stage in the heart of Geneva and Romandie. The city and the region will be transformed into a ceramic space for several months. No less than 35 museums, galleries, foundations, historical and contemporary institutions have ans-wered the call and joined the project! The international exhibition will be held at the Ariana Museum, headquarters of the AIC, and the two national exhibitions at the Nyon Castle Museum and the Museum of Art and History in Neuchâtel. In addition to these major events, there are all the exhibitions organized by partner museums and galleries in Geneva, as well as a post-tour on 19 September in Romandie. We want to show the quality of our welcome but above all to highlight all the cultural actors who support ceramics. We are expecting at least 200 people from around the world and hundreds more online.
IAC General Assembly, 1985, Ittingen, Switzerland ©AIC/IAC
On Saturday, 30 October 2021, the 15th International Biennial of Ceramic Art was opened in Aveiro, Portugal. This year’s competition attracted 477 entries from 298 artists worldwide (58 nationalities). The main exhibition is on show at the Aveiro City Museum, housed in the beautiful 15th century Franciscan abbey. The jury, headed by Benedetta Diamanti, director of the European Route of Ceramics, selected 128 works from 113 artists representing 28 countries, emphasizing the major international significance of this event in the ceramic art calendar. At the opening ceremony attended by more than 100 artists and guests, the Mayor of Aveiro, José Ribau Esteves, presented the first prize (12,000) to Ellen van der Woude (Netherlands) for her exquisite clay and porcelain sculpture entitled Big Smile 1. Second prize (8,000) went to Marie-Josée Comello (Netherlands) for her incredible floor installation, ETA 24.06, composed of hundreds of slip-cast porcelain objects and a wooden aeroplane wing. Third prize (5,000) was awarded to Andri Ioannou (Italy) for her beautiful porcelain lamellar sculpture, Nereide. Ten artists received an honourable mention: Anima Roos (Belgium), Cheng Chung Yu (Taiwan), Chin-Wang Chen (China), Filipe Faleiro (Portugal), Lara de Sio (Italy), Olga Simonova (Germany), Rita Gonçalves (Portugal), Sunbin Lim (South Korea) and Yukiko Kitahara (Japan).
Marie-Josée Comello (NL), ETA 24.06, 230 x 260 x 170 cm, slipcast porcelain, wooden aeroplane wing photo – Martin Galvan
Ruriko MIYAMOTO (Japan)
Miyamoto (1963) thinks about the properties of clay, and developed her solid technique when she studied under the pioneers of Japanese contemporary ceramics such as Yasuo Hayashi, Kinpei Nakamura and Mutsuo Yanagihara. Since the very beginning of her career, contemporary art has been her foundation, clay the medium, connection and interaction of human beings and history her theme.
Cho Ming-shun (Taiwan)
Cho’s (1968) works start from practical functions. In his creative path, he does not overly reside on the decorative level. The symbols of the utensils and the meaning of the utensils correspond to each other. Cho turns around to review the practical aspects of objects, and thinks about the developmental relationship between objects and users. Interaction and games are the two themes of his works, whether it is a bio-transformable mask or a pot such as a submarine and bio-chemical machinery.
(Ting-Ju SHAO)
Ruriko MIYAMOTO
Cho Ming-shun
John, you worked in the motor trade before you lost your heart to ceramics. Would you tell us a bit about your biography and how you came to work with clay?
It all seems like a long time ago. I grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, the poorer suburbs, and, like all good Western suburbs boys, I worked in the car business. Before I moved from Sydney I started a car spare parts business. At that stage I thought the motor trade was for life. In the mid 80’s we, that is with potter and partner, Gloria Malone ,decided to move from Sydney to Bellingen, a country town of 3500 people, near the coast and about 550km north of Sydney. It was wonderful for a pair of city kids. Both of us, without skills, slowly built a house on our 35 hectares of rugged land and at the end of that and without a job I started making birds and fish sculptures for a local craft shop. I knew nothing, but loved it all. Gloria and I have been together for more than 40 years. Gloria makes functional ware and I do art work. It is good that both of us pot so the harsh critic is only down the other end of the studio.
(Evelyne Schoenmann)
John Tuckwell
