In the PROFILES section: Eight ceramic artists from Italy, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, USA. Coverage of EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS in Germany, Turkey, USA/Korea, France, Netherlands. In the section ARTIST JOURNAL, we present Lin Po-yu + Samantha Thole. And we also have interviews with artists IN STUDIO as well as listings of Dates, Courses, Seminars and Markets.
NEWS
PROFILES
Andrea Salvatori – Italy
Barbara Fittings – UK
Christine Renker – Germany
Jerome Hirsen – France
Jeroen Bechthold – Netherlands
Susannah Israel – USA
FORUM
All in All – Gustav Weiß – Art theory
EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS
Northern Lights – Landau Northern Europe / Germany
The Bampi Prize 2022 – Future plans Germany
Turkish ceramics cities – Turkey / Europe
Sense and Sensibility – Fürstenberg Germany
ebenErdig – Krefeld Germany
Through the Ages – La Borne France
Kaleidoskope – Shannon Blakey / Yeonji Kim USA / Korea
Lucky Us – Nesrin During Europe
International Ceramics Fair – Oldenburg Germany
Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York USA
ARTIST JOURNAL
Lin Po-yu + Samantha Thole – Ting-Ju Shao – Taiwan / Netherlands
IN STUDIO
Ross de Wayne Campbell – Evelyne Schoenmann – Interview / Developing Skills
DATES / Exhibitions / Galleries / Museums
COURSES / SEMINARS / MARKETS
ADVERTISEMENTS
PREVIEW
The David by Michelangelo is one of the defining works of the Renaissance and it has become an iconic image familiar all over the world. This imposing sculpture (over 5 metres in height, weighing over 5 tonnes) was made from an enormous block of marble between 1501 and 1504 in order to be placed in Piazza della Signoria, Florence. For centuries, this sculpture has been a model and a challenge for students at academies and art schools, who have created an infinite number of interpretations.
The history of the reproductions of Michelangelo’s David received official consecration when the original was brought into the Galleria dell’Accademia for optimum conservation, and replaced outside by a copy.
(Luca Bochicchio)
Andrea Salvatori
Hand building bottles and bowls using the Japanese technique of Nerikomi is Barbara’s specialism. “Nerikomi artists often use quite strong stains whereas I prefer oxides, which are much softer and more natural,” Barbara explains. “I do occasionally use stains but I go for softer ones rather than bright colors.”
Nerikomi consists of cutting and slicing different coloured blocks of clay and building up a pattern through it. “I start by staining the clay”, she says. “Then I’ll roll out different thicknesses and layer them up, alternating colours. I will then slice through the layers, perhaps in a triangular pattern and join the triangles so that they are opposing each other, building up to make a block. I slice through the block, revealing the pattern running through. I join the slices to make a slab and roll it to strengthen it.” Barbara usually lets the block of patterned clay sit for a while so that the colours settle and meld onto each other. “I sometimes use an extruder. This is a tube with a die at the end and you put the clay into the tube. Often it will be a slightly patterned clay already or bits I have reclaimed; bits I have had over from something else.
(Tim Saunders)
Barbara Gittings
Dutch ceramic artist Jeroen Bechtold spots no benefit in repeating what he does, nor is he driven by commerce. He needs an urge to make before he sets to work. His extensive oeuvre, dealing with grand themes, displays an intense engagement with the world we live in. Each and every new series seems completely different from what went before – with techniques logically adapted or invented to serve the message. Recently, Jeroen’s biography appeared in print. This striking and comprehensive book paved the way for a retrospective at Gallery del Campo.
Even while studying at the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy, Jeroen designed for Rosenthal. The ceramics industry seemed to be his destination. Years before, deeply impressed by a vase made by, Jan van der Vaart, he had discovered ceramics as a means of individual expression. “I was fascinated by the shape, a square turning 90 degrees. I wanted to master the skills, make multiples from moulds, so that my thoughts would be affordable to many.
(Yna van der Meulen)
Jeroen Bechtold
The ASOLAS series is all about life in quarantine. I live alone, so when California went into lockdown, I was severed completely from my loved ones, community and resources. Total isolation was deeply exhausting. In the frustration and worry of the first months, I wrote in my notebook: “Time to reach deep down for clarity and focus.” Discipline follows process; for clay artists, our process is a very physical practice. Our work cycles timed by the natural properties of clay, and we must pay attention moment by moment. These are also the foundations of spiritual practice.
A seated figure reads a book, gaze focused and thoughtful, while holding a cup of coffee. “Reading” is the first in the series, because immersing myself in books was a source of great solace which inspired the sculpture. The book bears an illuminated letter “Q” for quarantine. A sleeping cat sprawls luxuriously across the table, belly against the book.
Like the figure in “Writing”, I usually review my work at dawn, with coffee in hand. Why do we so often write at night? Is it working in silence and darkness? Neurologists tell us that the brain does its filing while we dream, so that our mental desks are clear when we awaken.
Susannah Israel
The range of possibilities in ceramics is huge. Amazing things have been wrought from a material that has been in use from time immemorial. It is in this everlasting abundance on the basis of continued questioning and reinterpretation that the great, unifying attraction consists.
Three major successful exhibitions of (inter)national ceramics from the 20th century up to the present within ten years (2008, 2014 and 2019) as well as hosting the 14th Richard Bampi Prize in 2013 at the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts in Leipzig demonstrate the relevance and lasting influence of modern ceramic artists on today’s makers. As a ceramic avant-gardist from the very beginnings, Richard Bampi (1896-1965) is a an irre-futable great among his contemporaries. He was born in Brazil in 1896, grew up in Freiburg and Karlsruhe (Germany) and during his university studies in architecture from 1919, worked together with Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Weimar. After three years in Rio de Janeiro, Bampi returned to Germany in 1927 and opened a ceramics studio in Kandern in the Black Forest, where he devoted himself to his technical experiments with ceramic bodies and glazes.
(Marlen Topp)
Anepia Excerpt, Paul Simon Heyduck, prizewinner 2018
Shannon Blakey is an artist and educator from Columbia, MO. Shannon received his BFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and his MFA from Pennsylvania State University. With a love for clay, Shannon has balanced creating and educating with a range of teaching that includes teaching at art centres, museums, and in schools that range from elementary to college.
Yeonji Kim
Artist’s Statement: I vary the direction and thickness, colour of lines, specifically horizontal and vertical lines, to create the present artworks. The geometrically divided surface of ware with inlaid line is meant to heighten aesthetic features. The inlaid work is used to emphasize the clear-cut lines on fine, translucent, white porcelain. The initial act of drawing lines continues to progress to analyse them endlessly in order to shape and reconstruct the space of ware.
(Monika Gass)
Shannon Blakey
Lin Po-yu (Taiwan)
Lin Po-yu was born in Dashu District, Kaohsiung City, in 1975. Perhaps owing to his solid training in sculpture as a major at university, the animals and plants in his works are vibrant with life and energy. One can even detect the lively vigour that once belonged to withered leaves. His work has an unadorned beauty, from which even a flower, a leaf, a dead branch, or a deer looking back can lead one to reflect on the land under our feet as the place where our cosmic ancestors reside.
Samantha Thole (The Netherlands)
As a contemporary artist, Samantha Thole (1982) became acquainted with ceramics in 2011. That year she took part in an exchange project in the Netherlands, organized by the EKWC during her Fine Art masters’ programme at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam. She expresses herself through ceramics and performance art. In these two languages she wishes to balance a longing for permanence with the joys of our fleeting world; where to be alive is to be “in flux”.
(Ting-Ju SHAO)
Lin Po-yu
Samantha Thole
Ross, you studied sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute. Can you tell us something about this time?
I applied to the sculpture department at SFAI in 1988, a private art school with lots of history. Parts of it are covered in original Diego Rivera frescos, Angela Davis was a guest professor during my first year, never a dull moment. SFAI has a well-established performance art department. I left the sculpture department my first year and embraced performance. Performance art changes a person, it’s a hard discipline to fake. I graduated from the performance department in 1993.
(Evelyne Schoenmann)
Ross De Wayne Campbell
