Transformations: The Language of Craft
Over + Over: Passion for Process
Lissa Hunter: Histories Real & Imagined
Anne Gould Hauberg: Fired by Beauty
Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic
Illuminating
the Word: The Making of the Saint John’s Bible
Only an Artist: Adelaide Alsop Robineau, American Studio Potter
Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century
For Hearth and Altar: African Ceramics from the Keith Achepohl CollectionCeramic Millennium: Critical Writings on Ceramic History, Theory, and Art
Process & Promise: Art, Education & Community at the 92nd Street Y
Movers & Makers: Doris Ulmann’s Portrait of the Craft Revival in Appalachia
High Style: Masterworks from the Bernard and Sylvia Ostry Collection in the Royal Ontario Museum
The Yixing Effect: Echoes of the Chinese Scholar
Archive
Transformations:
The Language of Craft
by
Robert Bell, 2005, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. University
of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 144 pages, illustrated. $30
paperback.
In
his introduction to this catalog of an international survey of 85 leading
craft artists (35 from Australia) at the National Gallery of Australia
early this year, Robert Bell, senior curator of decorative arts there,
writes: “Such works reveal the creativity, skill and imagination
of the contemporary craft practitioner in the negotiation and articulation
of materials, structure, and production technology; the passionate expression
of the languages of abstraction, narrative, design and ornamentation;
and the skills that transform materials from the everyday to the extraordinary.”
The works—many from the gallery’s collection—are organized
under the categories Narrative, Materiality and Structure, with interpretative
text accompanying each photo. Bell looks to dance and music to suggest
ways of interacting with craft objects and the unseen “performer”
behind them. “By engaging with the nuances and performance of materials,
the framework of tradition and the theatrics of presentation, object makers
can heighten our experience of their work.” Biographical details
are provided for each artist.
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Over + Over: Passion for Process
by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox, 2005, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 72 pages, essay by Judith L. Rapoport, illustrated. $25 paperback.
The work of the 13 artists in this catalog of a touring exhibition “embraces the technological and the handmade simultaneously,” writes co-curator Ginger Gregg Duggan, who has coined the term “HyperProcess” to characterize this trend as a “mutated” version of the Process Art of the 1960s. Rather than creating spontaneously, the HyperProcess artists, using materials like paper cups, pencil stubs, tires and twist ties, “employ rigid assembly, dissection, and display techniques that require the development of an ordering system prior to the start of a work.” Organized by the Krannert Art Museum, the exhibition was at the Austin Museum of Art, Texas, through August 6.
Eva Hesse: Sculpture
by Elisabeth Sussman
and Fred Wasserman, 2006, Jewish Museum, New York, NY. Yale University
Press, New Haven, CT, 203-432-0163. 192 pages, contributions by Yve-Alain
Bois and Mark Godfrey, illustrated. $50.
In a career of merely a decade, the German-born American artist Eva Hesse
(1936-1970) made her mark with latex and fiberglass sculptures notable
for their evocative and emotional resonance despite their minimalist roots.
This study of Hesse’s work, accompanying an exhibition at the Jewish
Museum (May 12-September 17) begins with her one solo sculpture exhibition,
Chain Polymers, at the Fischbach Gallery in New York in 1968, and also
includes the work she made in the years between that show and her death.
“Hesse purposefully de-skilled Minimalism,” writes guest curator
Elisabeth Sussman, “introducing or allowing for rough edges, chance
groupings, the clash of smooth exterior and irregular interior.”
Co-curator Fred Wasserman places Hesse’s accomplishments in the
context of her life and times—her Orthodox Jewish family escaped
Nazi persecution and settled in New York in 1939. The biographical material
includes collaged diaries of the artist’s early life kept by her
father. Yve-Alain Bois examines her art in the light of art theories of
the 1960s; Mark Godfrey discusses her hanging sculptures of 1969-70.
Lissa Hunter: Histories Real
& Imagined
by Abby Johnston,
2006, Upala Press, Portland, ME, 207-775-9872. 228 pages, texts by Dennis
Jarrett, Janet Koplos and Hunter, illustrated. $55.
The Maine artist Lissa Hunter has developed over 25 years from a weaver
to a basket maker to the creator of mixed-media sculptural works that
often incorporate baskets and objects into poetic tableaux with implied
narrative. This monograph based on conversations between the artist and
Abby Johnston, her former studio assistant, provides a biography and covers
the development of her craft and themes. Reprinted essays—by Dennis
Jarrett on Hunter’s “stories,” and by Hunter on what
being an artist means to her—and a correspondence between Hunter
and the critic Janet Koplos complete the text. Nearly 200 works, from
the 1970s to 2005, are illustrated.
Anne
Gould Hauberg: Fired by Beauty
by Barbara Johns,
2006, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 174 pages,
forewords by Jack Lenor Larsen and Priscilla Beard, illustrated. $40.
A major figure in the cultural life of Seattle, Anne Gould Hauberg has
long been recognized for her contributions to the contemporary craft field,
notably, as a co-founder of the Pilchuck Glass School in 1971. In this
biography, the art historian Barbara Johns tells the story of a woman
of cultivated background who “married into wealth and used it to
create a richly textured personal style, . . . a style colored by her
passion for art and architecture and warmed by her relationships with
artists and designers.” Johns does not ignore the difficulties of
Hauberg’s life, but the dominant feeling conveyed is her joy in
art and her gift for advocacy in many areas. The illustrations include
family photographs, views of her homes and art from her collection. “The
Northwest would be a far less colorful place,” writes Priscilla
Beard, the book’s project director, “were it not for the unique
personal vision, style, and indefatigable energy of this thoroughly modern
Medici.”
Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic
edited by Jane C. Milosch, 2005, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa. Prestel Publishing, New York, NY, 888-463-6110. 144 pages, texts by Milosch and four contributors, illustrated. $45.
In 1924 the painter Grant Wood (1891-1942) converted a carriage house attached to a funeral home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, into his studio, known as 5 Turner Alley. There he would work for a decade creating his iconic works—American Gothic and other paintings depicting the people and landscape of the Midwest. Wood also designed or made the studio’s furnishings and decorative objects. This monograph of an exhibition shown at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which acquired the studio in 2002, and at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum (March 10-July 16), integrates Wood’s decorative art into the better-known body of his paintings, drawings and prints. Included are stained glass windows, iron gates, whimsical mixed-media constructions, furniture, jewelry and a metal corncob chandelier designed for a hotel. “As Wood made the connection between craft and painting he found the cohesive style that marked his greatest work,” writes Jane Milosch, curator at the Renwick. “The first step in this process was the creation of 5 Turner Alley. Without it Wood might never have perceived the artistic possibilities inherent in a man, a woman, a pitchfork and a Gothic window in Eldon, Iowa.”
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Illuminating the Word: The Making of the Saint John’s Bible
by Christopher Calderhead, 2005, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 800-858-5450.
240 pages, illustrated. $39.95.
On April 28, 1998, Donald Jackson, a noted calligrapher and scribe, and
Brother Dietrich Reinhart, a Benedictine monk at Saint John’s Abbey
and University in Minnesota, signed a contract which launched The Saint
John’s Bible—a commission to copy by hand the complete Bible—and
began a collaboration that is still in progress. This modern manuscript
book—three volumes of a projected seven are completed—is meant
to recapture the spirit of the great medieval Bibles, yet it grows out
of a contemporary artistic and theological sensibility. From his Scriptorium
in Wales, Jackson, artistic director of the project, supervises a team
of three calligraphers, two illuminators, a graphic designer, a project
manager and studio assistant. In Illuminating the Word, also commissioned
by Saint John’s, Christopher Calderhead, an artist and a graphic
designer of letter-based works, takes the reader behind the scenes of
the project. His text, based on interviews, tells the story of the makers
of the Saint John’s Bible and of the abbey community. The abundant
photographs bring to life the rich materials and complex techniques being
used. Pages from the completed volumes are reproduced.
Only
an Artist: Adelaide Alsop Robineau, American Studio Potter
edited by Thomas Piché Jr. and Julia A. Monti, 2006, Everson Museum
of Art, Syracuse, NY, 315-474-6064. 114 pages, texts by Piché,
Elizabeth Fowler and Ellen Paul Denker, illustrated. $39.95 paperback.
Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865-1929) is considered one of the most significant
American potters of the early 20th century, known particularly for such
Arts and Crafts-era porcelains as the intricately carved Scarab Vase.
“She was an American female studio potter who worked in porcelain,”
notes the scholar Elizabeth Fowler, summing up her subject’s singularity
in this fine catalog of an exhibition of nearly 100 works at the Everson
Museum of Art (March 11-May 21). Focusing on some 30 porcelains from the
artist’s last five years, curator Thomas Piché Jr. writes:
“Clean-lined shapes, monochromatic glazes, and abstract embellishments
informed by motifs associated with Art Deco characterize some of these
objects. Others . . . combine sculptural mass and painterly coloration
in ways that presage ceramic designs that did not become common until
well after Robineau’s death.” Ellen Paul Denker addresses
Robineau as a communicator and educator keeping alive the “fire”
of the creative spirit through her classes for china painters, Keramic
Studio magazine, her Four Winds summer school, and nearly 10 years as
a professor of art and design at Syracuse University.
Contemporary
Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century
by Joe Earle with the assistance of Halsey and Alice North, 2005, MFA
Publications, Boston, MA, 617-369-3438. 102 pages, illustrated. $24.95
paperback.
Documenting an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (October
6, 2005-July 9, 2006), this catalog provides a snapshot of innovative
ceramics produced in Japan during the last two decades. In the more than
50 works by 37 artists drawn from the collection of New Yorkers Halsey
and Alice North, the concentration is on the influence of the avant-garde
group based mostly in Kyoto who challenged the traditional supremacy of
utilitarian forms. The works range from refined porcelains to rough-hewn
vessels to trompe-l’oeil objects. The enlightening commentaries
on the artists by Joe Earle, first chair of the Department of the Art
of Asia, Oceania and Africa at the Museum of Fine Arts, cover their background,
processes and place in postwar Japanese ceramic history.
by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, 2005, Art Institute of Chicago, IL. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 203-432-0163. 204 pages, illustrated. $45.
Storage and water containers, bowls, jars and objects for ritual use are among the 125 splendid terra-cotta vessels from across the African continent in an exhibition held at the Art Institute of Chicago early this year and presented in this companion book. Ranging in time from the third to the late 20th century, the pots have been assembled over two decades by Keith Achepohl, a printmaker and professor, who discusses his collecting passion in an interview. Kathleen Bickford Berzock, curator of African art at the institute, introduces the historical roots of ceramic traditions in Africa and provides detailed information on each pot. Documentary photos of the potters at work demonstrate their techniques and the continuing connection between pottery and village life in Africa.
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Ceramic
Millennium: Critical Writings on Ceramic History, Theory, and Art
edited by Garth Clark, 2006, Press of
the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax. D.A.P./Distributed
Art Publishers, New York, NY, 212-627-1999. 432 pages, 22 contributors,
illustrated. $45 paperback.
Over the period 1979 to 1999 the Ceramic Arts Foundation (CAF) presented,
with affiliates, eight events titled the International Ceramics Symposium
with the goal of promoting scholarship and criticism in ceramic art. This
anthology offers 22 papers from the symposia selected by Garth Clark,
founding director of CAF, that address such topics as the status of clay,
the relation between ceramics and modernism, the decorative, architecture,
and history and tradition. Among the writers are Clement Greenberg, who
gave the keynote at the first symposium, Clark himself, Gabi Dewald, Edmund
de Waal, Léopold Foulem, Tanya Harrod, Janet Koplos, Edward Lebow,
Philip Rawson and Gerry Williams.
Decelerate
by Elizabeth Dunbar, 2005, Kemper Museum of Contemporary
Art, Kansas City, MO, 816-457-6147. 31 pages, illustrated. $5 paperback.
The cultural trend of “slowing down” as opposed to “velocitizing”
is explored in this catalog of an exhibit of 44 works by 10 artists at
the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art early this year. “Using diverse
materials,” writes curator Elizabeth Dunbar, “these artists
have created objects and installations that dislodge us from the cacophony
of our existence and transport us into a meditative zone brimming with
wonder, awe, beauty, and delight.”
edited by Retha Oliver, 2006, 92nd Street Y, New York, NY, 212-415-5749. 160 pages, texts by Margaret Mathews-Berenson, Toni Greenbaum, Amei Wallach, Edward Lebow, et al., illustrated. $35 paperback.
For 75 years, the Art Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (the oldest and largest Jewish Community Center in the United States) has attracted leading artists for its programs, which include, in addition to the fine arts, the Jewelry Center and Ceramics Studio. This “album,” published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Y (May 6-June 23), commemorates the center’s anniversary with a selection of 75 works (25 in each discipline) created over decades by the faculty, among them jewelers Deborah Aguado, Robert Ebendorf and Thomas Gentille and ceramists Ruth Duckworth, Margaret Israel, Warren MacKenzie and Betty Woodman. Essays by curators Margaret Mathews-Berenson, Amei Wallach, Toni Greenbaum and Edward Lebow cover, respectively, the overall history of the center (supplemented by archival photos), and the fine arts, jewelry and ceramics programs.
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Movers
& Makers Doris
Ulmann’s Portrait of the Craft Revival in Appalachia
by Anna Fariello, 2003 (reissued 2005), Curatorial InSight, Asheville,
NC, 540-818-6771. 40 pages, texts by Jean Haskell and Richard Kurin, illustrated.
$7.95 paperback.
Doris Ulmann (1882-1934), a pioneer photographer and a founding member
of the Pictorial Photographers of America, specialized in portraits—of
prominent individuals and of what she called “vanishing types.”
In the 1920s she traveled to Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina to
photograph Appalachian craftsmen at the request of the Southern Woman’s
Educational Alliance of Richmond and later of the author Allen Eaton.
Fifty eight of these images were published in 1937 in Eaton’s classic
survey Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. This catalog of a traveling
exhibition (2003-2005) features 13 Ulmann portraits and an essay by curator
Anna Fariello surveying the craft revival in Appalachia (1896-1937) and
analyzing its impact on the American cultural landscape.
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by Alastair Duncan, 2005, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. Antique Collectors’ Club, Easthampton, MA, 800-252-5231. 148 pages, texts by Ross Fox, Peter Kaellgren, Robert Little, Brian Musselwhite, illustrated. $49.95.
The Royal Ontario Museum’s Bernard and Sylvia Ostry collection represents three decorative arts movements spanning the late 19th century through the 1930s: Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco, with an emphasis on the last. Among the elegant objects from the collection documented in this book are ceramics by Taxile Doat and Paul Milet, glass by Christopher Dresser, René Lalique, and Louis Majorelle and Antonin Daum, silver by Liberty, Archibald Knox and Georg Jensen, furniture by Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann and Jules-Emile Leleu, and lighting by Walter von Nessen. The places of manufacture include England, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Canada and the United States.
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by Marvin Sweet, 2006, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, China. Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT, 406-442-6400. 210 pages, texts by Rick Newby and William R. Sargent, illustrated. $45.
The tradition of Yixing ware, first introduced to the West 350 years ago, has been a potent influence on contemporary American ceramics. The scholar and ceramist Marvin Sweet reveals why in this illuminating book, which offers a brief history of Yixing ware before discussing its impact in the United States. William R. Sargent of the Peabody Essex Museum contributes a chapter on Yixing’s influence on 17th- and 18th-century European ceramics. Historical Yixing teapots are illustrated are as works by 59 American ceramists, among them Annette Corcoran, Randy Johnston, Richard Notkin, Bonnie Seeman, Richard Shaw and Susan Thayer. The artists’ comments the Yixing influence conclude the book, which accompanies a touring exhibition that opened at the Holter Museum of Art (through August 6).
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