Video and Books Warren MacKenzie: Legacy of an American Potter Pretty Dutch: 18th Century Dutch Porcelain Manuel Neri: The Figure in Relief International Architectural Ceramic Exhibition Ceramics in the Environment: An International Review Quilts in a Material World: Selections from the Winterthur Collection Under Cover: Evolution of Upholstered Furniture Shared Images: The Innovative Jewelry of Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird New Glass Review 28 A Place for the Arts: The MacDowell Colony, 1907-2007 Archive
	Warren MacKenzie: Legacy of an American Potter 2007, Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN, 507-282-8629. 136 pages, essays by Catherine Futter and Robert Silberman, illustrated, wood slipcase. $49.95 paperback. If the United States recognized distinguished artists as “Living National Treasures” and named potters to the honor, as is regularly done in Japan, Warren MacKenzie would be a “shoo-in” for the designation, declares Robert Silberman in this fine catalog of the Minnesota potter’s touring retrospective organized by the Rochester Art Center (May 19-August 26). More than 350 functional works spanning 50 years—platters, cups, teapots and vases—are presented in excellent photographs, supplemented by engaging images of MacKenzie in the studio or teaching. Silberman’s gracefully written biographical essay offers insight into the potter’s way of working: “It can be especially revealing to select one kind of pot—cups, or teapots, or small plates—and see how MacKenzie explores it at a particular point, and then transforms it over time, changing the shape, size, color, and surface decoration, always in search of an elusive rightness that would bring all the individual elements together in a magical unity.” He characterizes MacKenzie as a “ceramic Balzac,” in the way that his vases portray a wide range of types. Although not overtly self-expressive, all MacKenzie’s pots, Silberman says, cumulatively represent “a kind of self-portrait” that mirrors the potter’s own qualities—“directness, warmth, and modesty, those good Midwestern virtues, but also strength, humor and a simplicity and plainness that are not at all simple or plain.” His pots are in the Leach-Hamada country pottery tradition, but they “speak MacKenzie.” Catherine Futter’s essay reflects on how MacKenzie in his work and way of conducting his life embodies William Morris’s philosophy of the ideal craftsmen. TOP
	Pretty Dutch: 18th Century Dutch Porcelain edited by Ank Trumpie, 2007, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, Netherlands, www.010publishers.nl. 160 pages, text in English and Dutch, 8 contributors, illustrated. $55. For about four decades starting in the second half of the 18th century, porcelain was manufactured in four production centers of Holland, and though this production was ultimately a financial failure, the wares produced were comparable in craftsmanship and the quality of decoration to the porcelain produced by the better-known European centers such as Meissen and Sévres. Indeed, the imagery decorating the Dutch porcelain tended to conform in subject matter and style to international norms. The prettiness of these wares is emphasized in the bold design of this catalog of an exhibition at the Ceramics Museum Princessehof in Leeuwarden (through October 28), which presents like—followed by responses to the historical porcelains by 26 masterworks—cachepots, tea and coffee services, vases, and the contemporary artists and designers. The texts include a history of the Dutch porcelain industry and its market, the technique and production of the work and the sources of inspiration for its decorative motifs. The message conveyed through the striking photographs, many of them close-ups, is that luxury goods we might regard as outmoded can be the impetus for works that honor the attributes of the historical style while taking it in 21st-century directions. TOP
	Manuel Neri: The Figure in Relief by Bruce Nixon, 2006, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, Portland Art Museum, OR, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA, with Hudson Hills Press, NY, and Manchester, VT, 802-362-6450. 198 pages, introduction by Maxwell L. Anderson, illustrated. $65. In a career that began in the late 1950s, the California sculptor Manuel Neri, the recipient of the 2006 Lifetime achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, has taken the female figure as his primary subject and explored it in a prolific body of work in various media—plaster, clay, bronze or marble—all with rich textural surfaces and the use of color to accentuate gesture and provide emotional depth. For more than 25 years he has concentrated on figurative relief sculptures that recall the relief carvings and architectural friezes of antiquity. In these, the slender, sometimes fragmentary figure—usually based on a single model Neri has worked with since the 1970s—emerges dramatically from the side of a panel. This catalog of a traveling exhibition brings together 230 works, including drawings—all photographed by M. Lee Fatheree—that suggest the infinite variety and depth possible in Neri’s single-minded pursuit. The essay of the scholar Bruce Nixon traces the evolution of Neri’s ideas about the figure in sculptural space. TOP
	International Architectural Ceramic Exhibition Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Gimhae, Korea, www.clayarch.org. 181 pages, essays by Sangho Shin, Rudolf Schnyder in English and Korean illustrated, slipcase. $50. In 2006, Clayarch Gimhae Museum, situated in Korea in the center of what was once the ancient Gaya civilization, presented an exhibition intended to survey the current state of architectural ceramics and at the same time envision new possibilities for the field. Forty-seven works by 16 artists from 10 countries represented a range of issues, artistic expressions and technical approaches. Among the participants were such figures as Nino Caruso, William Daley, Tony Hepburn, Jun Kaneko, Ole Lislerud and Betty Woodman. This handsomely photographed catalog contains, along with artists’ statements, essays on the history of the relationship between ceramics and architecture and the promise this time-honored collaboration holds for developing beautiful environments in residences and urban spaces. TOP
	Ceramics in the Environment: An International Review by Janet Mansfield, 2005, A&C Black, London. American Ceramic Society, Westerville, OH, 866-721-3322. 224 pages, illustrated. $59.95. Janet Mansfield, a potter and the publisher/editor of the journal Ceramics: Art and Perception, has brought her strong international perspective to bear in this survey of large-scale ceramic works in built and natural environments around the world. The book grew out of a project called ClaySculpt that Mansfield organized in Gulgong, New South Wales, Australia, in 1995, in which she invited 22 ceramic artists to install work in a rural area. The first chapter features some of these participants. Beyond that introduction, the works are organized according to such themes as symbolism and culture, in harmony with space, patterns, expressing care for the earth and more. The emphasis consistently is on the aesthetics and relevance of each work in relation to its location. TOP
	Quilts in a Material World: Selections from the Winterthur Collection by Linda Eaton, 2007, Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 212-206-7715. 208 pages, illustrated, $40. The fascinating glimpses of daily life in an earlier time that material culture can yield are plentiful in this companion book to a recent exhibition of more than 40 quilts at the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate in Delaware. Not simply a beautiful catalog, though there are plenty of gorgeous photographs, it brings the reader a greater understanding of the lives of quilt makers in early America. Linda Eaton, Winterthur’s curator of textiles, who organized the show, achieves this through the letters of Mary Remington, a young Rhode Island woman who in 1815 created an extraordinary whitework quilt that is the only known example of an American quilted coat of arms. Remington’s letters to Peleg Congdon, her husband, provide the themes—family, marriage, faith and politics—for the interpretation of all the quilts. Through their quilts women could express themselves in ways they could not in other aspects of their lives. Eaton also touches on the development of the American textile industry, the role of quilts in international trade, and how the economics of the time affected quilt materials and design. By placing quilts in their historical and cultural context, she demonstrates that there is more to quilts then decoration or warmth—they offer a complex and enduring cultural narrative. TOP
	Under Cover: Evolution of Upholstered Furniture by Ed van Hinte, 2006, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, Netherlands. www.010publishers.nl. 121 pages, illustrated. $47.50. By turns chatty and philosophical, this book—whose mull-covered jacket and endpapers illustrated with springs announce its subject matter—is an extended rumination on upholstered furniture, especially chairs. It is the result of a project initiated by the privately owned Dutch Sofa Foundation in which 10 designers were challenged to work on upholstered furniture. The first chapter is a historically oriented review of the meaning of such furniture as a representation of the human body. The technology of upholstery is discussed as is the way upholstery, once scorned in the 20th century as superfluous decoration, was reintroduced into modern design. The chapter “Under Cover” presents the quirky results of the Dutch Sofa project—for example, benches formed like a tent or stacking box frames that become a bookcase. After all this avant-gardism, the book ends with an ode to the comfortable, if unfashionable, overstuffed factory-made Chichester Chesterfield armchair. TOP
	Shared Images: The Innovative Jewelry of Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird by Diana F. Pardue, 2007, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, and Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 505-476-1158. 188 pages, illustrated. $45. Companion to a recent retrospective exhibition at the Heard Museum, this attractive book by the curator of collections there takes us on a journey spanning three decades of collaboration between two Native American jewelry makers from New Mexico. Drawing inspiration from prehistoric and historic Southwest iconography, Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson create distinctive, wearable art that also addresses contemporary concerns. While the emphasis is on the more than 40 thematic belts—they depict Pueblo pottery, tourism, dinosaurs and the desert landscape, among other imagery—that have won the couple acclaim at Santa Fe’s Annual Indian Arts Market, the book also documents the pair’s other jewelry—necklaces, brooches, earrings—in styles that vary from the dramatic to the whimsical. All their work is noted for the use of unusual stones and materials arranged in unexpected juxtapositions. “I think what I like most about working is surprising myself and others with what Yazzie and I do and why we do it,” Bird has said of their long partnership, in which he has been the designer and she the silversmith. TOP
	New Glass Review 28 2007, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, 800-723-9156, 128 pages, jury statements, illustrated. $10 paperback. In 2006 a total of 895 individuals and companies submitted images of their work to the Corning Museum of Glass with hope of being included in their well-respected annual survey. From those submissions four jurors—Thomas S. Buechner, the founding director of museum, Tina Oldknow, Corning’s curator of modern glass, Milan Hlaves, the curator of modern glass at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, and Kathleen Mulcahy, cofounder of the Pittsburgh Glass Center—chose 100 pieces by emerging and established artists, made between October 1, 2005 and October 1, 2006, to include in the 2007 edition. Beyond this selection, the jurors were each given the opportunity to choose 10 examples of work that impressed them for a “jurors’ choice” section. The resulting survey encompasses glass works from all over the world, including sculpture, vessels, installations, design and architecture. Notes on recent developments in the glass field and a pictorial section of recent acquisitions of contemporary glass objects by private and public collections in the United States conclude the volume. TOP
	A Place for the Arts: The MacDowell Colony, 1907-2007 edited by Carter Wiseman, 2007, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, and University Press of En England, Lebanon, NH, 603-448-1533. 240 pages, 14 contributors, illustrated. $39 hardcover. The composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, Marian, believed that to do their best work, creative people need time, space, privacy and the opportunity to interact with each other. In 1907, in effort to realize this ideal scenario, the couple founded the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Since then this rural refuge has offered individual studios and living accommodations to thousands of artists, writers, composers, architects and filmmakers, with Edward Arlington Robinson, Thornton Wilder, Leonard Bernstein, Milton Avery and Alice Walker among the many notable alumni. The release of this book is part of the celebration of the colony’s centennial, along with an original film, performances and exhibitions of fellows’ work across the country. By incorporating its history with personal perspectives of former fellows, essays on the role of art in society and vintage and contemporary photographs, Carter Wiseman, MacDowell’s president, brings readers an intimate portrayal of this groundbreaking artist residency program. The book stands as solid evidence of the wisdom of the founders’ vision. TOP
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