ceramic excellence

F EL L O W S H IP S AT T H E A R C H IE B R AY F O U N D AT IO N 2 0 11– 2012

Jeff CampanaAnonymous Fellow

Andrew CastoMJD Fellow

Alanna DeRocchiSpeyer Fellow

Kenyon HansenLincoln Fellow

Sean O’ConnellMatsutani Fellow

Lindsay PichaskeTaunt Fellow

Jonathan ReadLilian Fellow

FELLOWSHIPS AT THE ARCHIE BRAY FOUNDATION2011– 2012

What could be more interesting, or in theend, more ecstatic, than in those raremoments when you see another personlook at something you’ve made, and realizethat they got it exactly, that your heart jumpedto their heart with nothing in between. –Robert Motherwell

When I was at art school, my sister was atdivinity school. Often, I would ride the traindown to New York to spend the night in herdormitory. We had painted the linoleum floorof her room in red and black checkerboards,and I would sleep upon it fitfully, troubled by binary thinking. What I found at artschool was constant evaluative duality. But art seemed more complex to me, oftenembodying opposing forces or disparateintentions in one cohesive work.

And this kind of art seemed honest to me,because in my own experience, life was a constant and ever-changing stream ofincongruent emotions, perceptions andsensual awareness. At art school, I had alsobeen hoping for an arena of compassion, inwhich each of us could bare our humanitythrough the act of making, and betterourselves through the search. But that was not to be. Instead, I rode the train toHarlem and hung out with future ministersand theologians, discussing matters withthem that I had hoped to explore with my professors.

As a child, I disliked bullies, and spoke up against their petty tyrannies at school. It offended me that they tried to attackthose with rough edges, those who did not conform, or say predictable words.

I liked the kids who were different, andwanted to protect them from suppression.And that is why I write about art, because in some ways, I see culture, and someinstitutions, as the bully, and artists in need of a proponent, someone who willcelebrate their originalities, irregularities and inconvenient truths. I have always felt that art was a sacred act, a ministry to a broken world.

Though I work as hard as I can in my ownstudio, and as a teacher, I see more of valuein art than I could ever express in just thosetwo environments. Sometimes, when I go togalleries, or am a visiting critic, I see art thatis breathtaking, in that it is entirely originaland alive, living quietly in studios and spacesaround the nation, begging to be seen andabsorbed. Writing about the art, and theartists who made it, is my honor and passion,no less a commitment than expressing myown inner world in my own studio.

Each artist I have met, while being the critic-in-residence at the Archie BrayFoundation, has elicited a resonantempathy in me, and though the bodies ofwork and biographies of each resident vary,each has addressed themes with universaland human pertinence: doubt, harmony,artifice, nature, light, communication anddanger. And the binary thinking that I havefound so frequently at establishments and universities has been entirely absent,restoring my faith in what an institution can be: a place to shelter the freethinker; a safe haven to allow one heart to jump toanother with nothing in between.

–Tanya Hartman

Annually, the Archie Bray Foundationinvites a critic to spend time at the Bray—to meet with the artists, experience theBray’s unique environment and developessays for the fellowship exhibitioncatalogue. This year the residency wasawarded to Tanya Hartman.

Tanya Hartman grew up in New York City, Cuernavaca, Mexico and London,England. She earned a BFA in painting atthe Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in painting at Yale University. Shewas then a Fulbright Scholar in Stockholm,Sweden. She now teaches painting anddrawing at the University of Kansas whereshe is an Associate Professor in theDepartment of Visual Art.

In addition to being a working artist, Tanya Hartman also writes about art. Her writing appears regularly in CeramicsArt and Perception magazine, and in April 2010, one of her non-fiction piecesappeared in The Sun magazine.

Hartman is represented locally by Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, and hasalso exhibited at The Center for Book Artsin New York, A.I.R. Gallery in New York, ARC Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; and at the Salina Art Center, Salina, Kansas. She lives in Lee’s Summit, Missouri with her husband Eric, stepson Daniel and three high-spirited canines.

For more information see the artist’swebsite, www.tanyahartmanart.com

Why I Write About Art

There is something in every one of you that waits and listensfor the sound of the genuine in yourself.–Howard Thurman

Home is the sacred refuge of our life.–John Dryden

hen Jeff Campana demonstrated his process

to me, he recollected that astudent of his once said that,“Jeff doesn’t throw pots so muchas summon them.” Watching him at the wheel beckoning form,I know this statement to be true.Campana has developed anoriginal process that supportsdelicacy of line and subtlety of interior and exterior surface. All forms are created in uniqueporcelain clay that the artisthimself developed. It is specificallyformulated to minimize shrinkage,

because Campana cuts hisvessels into gestural shards,delicately fusing them backtogether with slip. To watch hissteady hands wielding a simpleutility knife and allowing the bladeto dance through the drying clayis to experience wonderment,because the form falls open intopetals, which the artist gentlygathers and fuses back intofunctional and poetic vessels.The purpose of this cutting isaesthetic and unites surface withstructure as the subtle glazespool, creating luminous andflowing lines that also function as seams that literally hold thevessels together.

By the age of 15, Campanaknew that he was a ceramicartist. However, in a healthy and ambitious manner, he wasalways reinventing himself,pushing the boundaries of what a receptacle could be, how it could display color three-dimensionally, how it felt in thehand. He acquired the practiceof “habitual reinvention,”developing body after body ofwork, so that he could refineprocess and develop surface.For this artist, glaze is liquidemotion, and he wants to masterits nuances: The way that lightpasses through pigments andthe way colors in unusualcombinations tint each other.

He creates hundreds of test tiles,choosing from them specifichues that are as unique andsubtle as the changing colors ofnature. His cups, vases, pitchers,saucers, bowls and teapots arehis canvases, upon which hedaubs his passionate andconsidered glazes. He lavishestheir forms with attention andlove, segmenting them intocellular structures held togetherby seams of colored light. The overall effect is that of theephemeral: Each vessel is sodelicate and ethereal that onecould imagine it vaporizing into mist.

In recent years, the artist hasbegun to sell his works online,and in his typically thoughtful way,he has brought insight to theexperience, finding communityand humanity through buyer’semails and “thank you” notes.Sometimes, one neighborhood

in a small one-mile radius willstart to buy his works at thesame time, indicating to him thatthere has been a recent dinnerparty in which his vessels wereused and enjoyed. This matterstremendously to Campana, whodoes not feel that his work isfinished until it “finds a home.”

In the end, what we all cherishare our domestic rituals: morningcoffee, evening armchair, afavorite bowl containing soup.Campana labors to enhance lifeon a daily level, and through themeditative beauty of his pottery,he succeeds.

ANONYMOUS FELLOW

The Genuine is QuietThe work of Jeff Campana

Above:Green Twist Bowlmidrange porcelain7" x 7" x 4", 2012

Right:Grey Leaf Teapotmidrange porcelain5" x 7" x 7", 2012

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Rationality is what we do toorganize the world, to make itpossible to predict. Art is therehearsal for the inapplicabilityand failure of that process.–Brian Eno

Myth is the public dream anddream is the private myth.–Joseph Campbell

harpsichord and hip-hop music have each played a

role in the formation of AndrewCasto’s aesthetic. Born into afamily of freethinkers, Casto grewup surrounded by intellectualfluidity. Opinions were not rigid,and were open to change, and to interpretation over time. A spectrum of materials couldcome together to make a whole,as in the harpsichord Castoobserved his father making byhand for his mother throughout

his childhood, and sampling fromother traditions and sounds, as inthe hip-hop music that pervadedhis adolescence, could enhancediscrete and evocative works ofmusical composition.

Thus, Andrew Casto is happiestwhen he works withoutboundaries, moving betweenmaterials and integratingconflicting ideas, such as order and chaos, harmony anddiscord, momentum and stasis,into mysterious and gorgeousartifacts. I use the word “artifact”consciously, because Casto’sobjects are final agglomerationsof heartfelt and labor-intensiveprocess. Casto “samples” the world around him, much in the manner of a musician,incorporating discarded gaspumps and teapot handles,shards and debris into denseconstructions that are thenembellished with slip and withglaze. The resulting work is then observed and analyzed bythe artist, who may add wood, metal or gold to finish the piece.

For Casto, clay is not an inertmaterial but a kinetic force that is mostly between incarnations:cracking, hardening, disintegratinginto mud, breaking into shards,converting into expressive form.Each iteration of clay is of equalvalue in his work. To fight clay’stendencies would be to fight the

life force. All of nature transforms,and bodies return to soil as ash.Casto embraces this truth,realizing that he is fascinated by the moment just beforeimplosion. Formally, that instantyields originality and pathos;psychologically, it is the secondpreceding revelation. Thus,through sculpture, the artistcaptures a spectrum of humanexperience. The density of theglazes reveals strata of color.Bruised blues peek from beneathcreamy, fatty whites, and fleshypinks flash randomly. The resultis color that evokes the bodyswathed upon forms thatdescribe what is often hidden:organs, teeth, tumors, hideouts,coral reefs, caves and canyons.Hidden within these mysteriousshapes are prosaic bones;substructures made fromgarbage, refuse and broken-down junk. The artist seems

to be telling us that what wediscard as having no value, what we think of as muddled oruntidy, is in fact what life is like.The pains and losses we all must endure, our inherententropy, tend to strengthen ourcharacters and our capacity forinsight. Thus, Casto caps hisworks in molten gold. These are sacred artifacts that honorthe perfection of chaos. Theseare maps that help us find ourway home.

MJD FELLOW

Unrestricted ContentThe work of Andrew Casto

Above:The Breedersceramic, stainless steel, epoxy,tool dip, gold luster, hardware41" x 13" x 13", 2012

Left:The Locket of Circumstanceceramic, wood, plexiglass, epoxy,tool dip, hardware, gold luster 10" x 8" x 14", 2012

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We need another and a wiserand perhaps a more mysticalconcept of animals. Remotefrom universal nature, and livingby complicated artifice, man incivilization surveys the creaturethrough the glass of hisknowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and thewhole image in distortion.–Henry Beston

lanna DeRocchi sculpts a deracinated world. Nothing

is in its natural context. Sofasand armchairs sag, their worncushions evoking the form of an absent body. Exotic animalsstep delicately across woodenplatforms and tapirs wade inillusory puddles suspended bymetal legs. Though DeRocchiwas raised in a small town inrural Illinois, she has studied inschools across the nation andhas visited obscure locations inorder to hone her research and

refine her craft. Her magnificentand arresting sculptures exist noplace and everyplace. This is anartist who creates visual eventsthat have collective impact andmanifold meanings that canunfold across cultures.

Like many new ceramic artists,Alanna DeRocchi began hercareer throwing pots, but soonshe began to build figures in claybased on recollections from herchildhood. These figures quicklymorphed into a bestiary. Makinganimal rather than human formsfelt liberating to the artist becauseit freed her from narrative impetusand allowed her to look at the universal, rather than thepersonal. The artist began toresearch esoteric animals in aneffort to create an open arena inwhich to animate and imbue eachone with a spark of originalityand soul. She builds her creaturesusing coils of clay, allowing each to emerge purely throughcreative process. These beastsare hollow inside, and the artistallows them to be permeable toair and environment, rubbingpigment into their “skins” byhand, rather than suffocatingthem in impenetrable glazes.

Originally, DeRocchi displayedher sculptures in relationalinstallations, but the artist soonrealized that viewers were notwalking through her exhibitions

so much as gazing at them. This gaze, which separates andisolates the object, remindedDeRocchi of the dioramas at anatural history museum, wherevisitors gape at a facsimile oflandscape. Soon, she wasresearching the history andintention of the diorama, andincorporating fragments fromdeconstructed dioramas into her work. Hence, in CapeBuffalo on Terrain (2010), theviewer confronts a buffalo, its face sorrowful, noble andresolute, scaling a “terrain” made of wooden slats. In thispiece, DeRocchi is quoting from photographs she has seen of half-built dioramas. In acomplete diorama, the woodenplatform would be covered byartificial flora. Instead, the artistpresents the solid beauty of the beast against the fragility and absurdity of its artificialenvironment.

In her most recent work from2012, DeRocchi pushes scale to its absolute limit, creating life-sized animals that are solidbut dispossessed. The artist is investigating animals fromMontana, and brings to eachone a sense of particularity andalienation. She counters theanimal’s formal strength andpathos with intimate, handdrawn and painted surfaces, as delicate and ephemeral as

a child’s drawing on thin paper.Each sculpture is haunting. The animals are both presentand absent, partial and whole,severed from habitat or forcedinto unnatural poses or proximityto artifice.

These are deeply moving worksof art, poetic and layered. What I bring to them is a sense ofuniversal diaspora; that we areall, in some way, scattered,coping with non-supportive andconfusing landscapes, hollowwithin but solid, made from theearth but separate to it. AlannaDeRocchi invites us to gaze, but looking is not without itsdangers. Friedrich Nietzschewrites, “And if you gaze for longinto an abyss, the abyss gazesalso into you.” This is truthful,powerful work, filled with shockand wonder.

SPEYER FELLOW

Impossible DioramasThe work of Alanna DeRocchi

Above: Jackrabbit Habitatceramic, wood, paint, graphite, straw,caster wheels, 4' x 3' x 6', 2012

Right: Cape Buffalo on Terrainceramic, paint, graphite, wood, steel14' x 6' x 6', 2010

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An artist is a dreamer consentingto dream of the actual world. –George Santayana

enyon Hansen has developeda poetic language composed

of clay, glaze, symmetry andchance to express his musingson home, the landscape in whichwe dwell, the pace at which we live and the yearning we allexperience for stillness andmeaning. His ravishing pots are inherently binary, bringingopposites together in startlingjuxtapositions that revealessential truths: that landscapereflects culture and that cultureboth constrains and liberates.The grids on his vessels evokehighways and streets, cellularwalls and twigs. The glazes thathe uses pool and shatter, like the interiors of rich minerals, their creamy, luminous surfacessuggestive of all that is

boundless: sky, sea, storm, sun.Essential to the work are cleverand meaningful shifts in scale.The divisions on the potsthemselves read as large andsmall simultaneously, reminiscentof vast urban topographies or the tight order of botanicalstructures. In this way, Hansenasserts that the meaning of the pot itself is both vast andintimate, connecting humanbeings to a staggering scope of history and culture while also resting quietly in the hand,bringing simple contentment.

Every work of Hansen’s is uniqueand considered. Though eachpiece is composed of the samematerials, individually, they havean essence and quirk that isunique, much the way that notwo branches, or petals, are everquite alike. In a recent teapotfrom 2012, an exaggerated sidehandle is beautifully balanced by a short, utilitarian spout andelongated lid. The effect is aharmonious trinity, which isamplified by the segmentation on the body of the pot. It, too, is divided vertically into thirds.This formal structure supports aglaze that is seductive and lush,a buttery yellow that breaks andaccumulates over the structure,showing pocked glimpses of theearthy umber beneath. I think offields of undulating yellow weedsin a gridded and abandoned

urban lot, or a tree in light bloomduring an unusually cool spring.The artist does not prescribemeaning so much as bring itforth through adept manipulationof materials.

Though Hansen’s current work is soda fired, he has had a longrelationship with the wood kiln,which has affected his aestheticprofoundly. The reaction of flameto surface has allowed the artista deep understanding of touch.During wood firing, Hansen sawthat all information that he put on the clay, his most intimatecaress, was there when thevessel emerged from the blaze.He fired raw clay, and ash tendedto collect on the shoulders of his pots. He made exaggeratedshifts to catch and honor whatnature was doing innately. The artist loved the arbitrarycharacter of wood firing becauseit kept him in a relationship withlandscape, and reminded him ofhis childhood, when he wouldventure into the woods without a clear expectation of whattreasures he might find.

In the current work, there is stillthe sense of discovery that thewood kiln brought to Hansen’swork. Each time he sits at thewheel he is surprised, observingthe alchemy of his touch, thevelocity of the wheel and themood of the clay and thenresponding formally to bring forthoriginal objects of beauty. Thisloveliness is a form of shelter, an act of sanctuary to createdomestic peace and security,while still observing andcommenting upon the world atlarge. Maya Angelou writes, “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where wecan go as we are and not bequestioned.” Hansen’s potsprovide lyrical refuge. They arecomforting objects that vibratewith suggestion and care.

LINCOLN FELLOW

Material MirrorThe work of Kenyon Hansen

Left:Lidded Ice Tea Pitcher with Tumblersoda fired porcelain13" x 7.5" x 7", 2012

Above:Side Handled Teapot with Infusersoda fired porcelain6.5" x 8" x 7", 2012

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Each brushstroke is a decision.–Robert Motherwell

ean O’Connell brings a painter’s aesthetic to the

making of his pots. Each vesselpresents glazes that are gesturaland spontaneous, simultaneouslylush and spare. In his works, the artist creates a tenuous treaty between decoration andausterity, bringing the simplicityof Modernism together with the exuberance of decorationand color. The forms themselvesbalance the marks andbrushwork that he displays uponthem. By exaggerating the bodyof a mug, and minimizing the size of the handle, he subtlyexpresses that he has chosenthe vessel as the canvas uponwhich to paint. Yet his formsharmonize to his surface: adrinking cup’s lip undulates with

the brushwork upon it, its handlesimple and utilitarian, inviting usto sip. The glaze on a vase pullsand pools, much like a paintingby Morris Louis, the verticality of the marks accentuating theupward thrust of the form.O’Connell writes that, “beautyand purpose should be a part of everyday use.” He is an artistwho has integrated his love ofcontemporary painting with hisaspiration to improve domesticenvironments with his functionalworks. His vessels are truehybrids, practical paintings forthe home, purposeful andharmonious objects that enhancethe environment.

O’Connell is an aestheticintrovert. He has looked deeplywithin himself, to discover exactlywhat moves him and drives himto create. Originally, he was asculptor, but he felt no affinity for concept-driven works,aligning himself instead with theunconstrained, natural beauty ofBrice Marden’s, Joan Mitchell’sand Robert Motherwell’spaintings. Consistently, O’Connellhas been drawn towards the fluidopenness of brushwork and thealchemy of glaze. In Motherwell,he found a new way to thinkabout form, as something solidyet diaphanous with edges thatswell and heave, reiteratingcomposition. Each of O’Connell’svessels is an integrated entity

with clever configurations thatcan invert negative and positiveshape. The space, for instance,between a teapot’s lid andexaggerated handle becomeswhat is solid and immutable inthe piece, while the glaze isethereal and misty, dripping and hazy, appearing to changelike the sky. In another teapot,matte black handle and spoutsandwich a delicate, milky-whitebody, making it appear to befloating. The entire pot becomesa landscape, with solid andempty spaces integrated tocreate environment. In anotherteapot from 2012, blue-grey,cream and sienna glazes swirlaround the upper two-thirds ofthe vessel like a sky in transition.The base is solid brown, ahorizon line offsetting an activefirmament.

During 2012, O’Connell hasworked in both porcelain andearthenware, and seeing hisworks in aggregate reminds

me of the experience of seeingan exhibition of paintings, orreading a book of short stories.Each work is discrete and utterlyoriginal, yet linked formally byglaze, brushwork, color andtouch to other pieces in theseries. O’Connell can take amotif as simple as light andheavy marks upon form, andmake something expressive,original and highly intelligent, all the while quoting from thehistory of ceramic art and thetenets of Modernist painting. This is an artist who willcontribute generously to visualculture, working between genreswhile staying true to his passionfor “that which is tended andthoughtful.”

MATSUTANI FELLOW

Rejoicing in the HandsThe work of Sean O’Connell

Above:Jarsporcelain, 6" x 6" x 7", 2012

Right:Dish Stackporcelain, 12" x 12" x 5", 2012

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For the animal shall not bemeasured by man. In a worldolder and more complete thanours they move finished andcomplete, gifted with extensionsof the senses we have lost ornever attained, living by voiceswe shall never hear. They are notbrethren, they are not underlings;they are other nations caughtwith ourselves in the net of lifeand time, fellow prisoners of thesplendor and travail of the earth.–Henry Beston

e are mysterious to ourselves. This is a truth

that Lindsay Pichaske hasalways known, even as a child,when she was mesmerized by the gorillas of Uganda. Inthem, she saw something of ourhuman predicament. Their eyesin particular elicited a strongemotional response in her.

They seemed to be staring out,through a mask of skin,evocative of realms that fleshcannot fully express. Scienceand literature offered the youngartist similar windows intoenigmatic fathoms, but visual art best allowed her an arena in which to construct alternateversions of the corporeal,charged with sparks of botheternity and transience.

Pichaske has drawn extensively,both from living models and fromcadavers, and brings to her workthe requisite aggression andcourage to create her inventedmammals. So dedicated is thisartist to her practice, that sheexercises regularly, in order toburn off energy and bring asentient, focused stillness to hersculpture. Gazing upon works,such as The Matriarch (2012), I am struck by the sheer force ofits presence. It resonates with aninsistence and power that I haveseen in few works of art, andreminds me of a seminal momentin my own understanding ofcreativity when, gazing upon aLucien Freud painting in a silentgallery, I became convinced that I could hear it breathing. In thatmoment, I recognized that artpossesses a life no less adamantthan our own. Patty Smith writesin her memoir, Just Kids, abouther life with Robert Mapplethorpe,

that art is “the corporeal body ofthe artist. It will not fall away.”

Pichaske has an innate feeling for her materials and brings them together in juxtapositionsthat emphasize the unexpected, thus supporting her contentseamlessly. The sticks that cover the body of The Matriarchwere collected in Montana, and Pichaske describes theexperience of adhering them to the sculpture as ecstatic, inthat she was able to observe,absorb and appreciate thepersonality and quirks of eachtwig. Thus, something fragile andephemeral covers somethingsolid and eternal, allowing theartist to express through purelyvisual means that we areprofound and flimsy, vulnerableand strong. Another piece,Aristotle’s Foil (2010), presentsthe viewer with a hybridgorilla/human head, tipped on itsside and covered in vivid rosepetals. Here, the artist seems tobe saying that what is exposed isbeautiful and no less susceptiblethan what appears to beimpervious and solid. In her hairdrawings, the artist labors to“create an absence” in order tobalance the strong presence thather figurative sculpture conveys.

This is an artist who is unafraid of duality, and who states that

she is interested in the fact that we are living and dyingsimultaneously. And I am grateful to her, because her work expresses that each day ofmomentum pitches us towardsoblivion, and that though we do not understand our humancontradictions, we can createbeauty, observe tragedy andrevel in the unknown.

TAUNT FELLOW

Gifts from an Alternate WorldThe work of Lindsay Pichaske

Left:Untitledlow-fire ceramic, milk paint, oil paint, adhesive, sequins28" x 18" x 28", 2012

Above:The Matriarchlow-fire ceramic, sticks, puttyepoxy, oil paint, steel, casters60" x 30" x 28", 2012

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It is in the space between theinner and outer world, which is also the space betweenpeople—the transitional space—that intimate relationships andcreativity occur.–D.W. Winnicott

I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality ... to protect myself. –Alberto Giacometti

n October 2010, Dave Hickey addressed the audience

at Critical Santa Fe, a clayconference devoted tocontemporary criticism ofceramic art. He stated that whatmakes art remarkable is itsprolonged capacity for relevance.I am reminded of Hickey’s insightwhen I look at Jonathan Read’swork. Read is a generoussculptor. His figurative workscombine gestural brushwork withsartorial specificity. He gives justenough peripheral information to provoke memory, but never

enough to proscribe content. He is an artist who allows eachviewer to bring meanings to thework that can shift and changeover time.

Born into a family mechanicallyinclined, Jonathan Read did not initially aspire to becomean artist. He was gifted inmathematics and engineering,but a ceramics class in collegechanged his life’s course. Heknew that he belonged in thestudio and he possessed aninherent capacity to center clayon the wheel. The scale of hisworks increased, and duringgraduate school he began tomake monoliths, covering themwith loose calligraphic marks that slowly morphed into faces,fingernails and skin folds. Thefigurative forms soon followed.They were the artist’s responseto the loss of a family member.He wanted to make figures thatembodied both fragility andrelationship. Thus, he embarkedupon a series of ceramicinstallations in which the gesturalfreedom of his drawing on the figures was reiterated byaudience participation drawingupon the gallery walls. Theresponses that he obtainedemphasized the importance of interchange. The wallssurrounding Read’s sculpturesheld fragments of unconscious

responses to the figures, and the figures gazed back, ciphersof latent emotion. The effect wasuncanny. The sculptures thatelicited emotion and response in the viewer were themselvesmotionless and without preciseeffect. Only when these worksare gazed at and interpreted arethey fully complete. In this way,Read visually articulates a humantruth, best summarized in thewords of British psychoanalystD.W. Winnicott, “the place wherecultural experience is located is inthe potential space between theindividual and the environment”(from “Playing: Its TheoreticalStatus in the Clinical Situation,”1971).

Jonathan Read’s artwork followsin the traditions of both GeorgeSegal and Duane Hanson,sculptors whose work wasinherently, if privately, relational.Yet, unlike these precursors,Read is able to seamlessly linkthe act of drawing to the act ofsculpting. His marks and lineswhirl and whip over and acrossthe figure, sitting on theirsurfaces, descriptive yet discrete.They advance Read’s messagethat what we appear to be on theoutside is fundamentally separateto our inherent, and private, self.Though we can be close toothers, as close as many of hisfigures in their ambivalent

embraces, we are foreverdiscrete, one from the other.This is art without ego that gives fully to the viewer withoutdischarging the artist’s own innerlife, a modest gift that speaks of intimacy and solitude.

Between the Individual and the EnvironmentThe work of Jonathan Read

LILIAN FELLOW

Above:Woman with a Skirtceramic, 55" x 19" x 17", 2012

Right:Woman with Glassesceramic, 56" x 16" x 16", 2012

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Board of DirectorsJon Satre, President

Norma Tirrell, Vice President

Wally Bivins,Secretary

Margaret Woo, Treasurer

John BalistreriSally BrogdenMike CaseyLinda DeolaJulia GallowayAyumi HorieBeth LoAidan MyhreAlan NicholsonSusan RicklefsAnn ShanerBobby SilvermanRebecca SiveTim SpeyerPatti Warashina

Resident Artist DirectorSteven Young Lee

The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts has alwaysbeen an ongoing experiment, aplace and experience with noartistic boundaries. The extensivefacilities, the freedom to exploreand the creative exchange thatoccurs within the community of resident artists provide aprofound opportunity for artisticgrowth, both for individual artistsand for the field of ceramics.

To further encourage the Bray “experiment,” Robert andSuzanne Taunt established

the Taunt Fellowship in 1998.Inspired by the Taunts’ vision andgenerosity, others establishedadditional awards, including theMyhre Fellowship in 1999 and2000, the Lilian Fellowship since2001, the Lincoln Fellowship in2004, the Matsutani Fellowshipin 2006, the MJD Fellowship in 2007 and, most recently, the Speyer and AnonymousFellowships, both established in 2011.

Currently, the Taunt, Lilian,Lincoln, Matsutani, MJD, Speyer,

and Anonymous Fellowshipseach provide $5,000 and a one-year residency to a ceramic artist who demonstrates exceptionalmerit and promise, allowingthem to focus more completelyon producing and exhibiting asignificant body of work during their fellowship year.

Individuals wishing to establish a fellowship at the Archie BrayFoundation are encouraged tocontact resident artist directorSteven Young Lee.

Past Fellowship Recipients

1999Marc Digeros, Taunt Fellow Sharon Brush, Myhre Fellow

2000Eric Eley, Taunt Fellow John Byrd, Myhre Fellow

2001Jiman Choi, Taunt Fellow John Utgaard, Lilian Fellow

2002Jason Walker, Taunt Fellow Sandra Trujillo, Lilian Fellow

2003Jeremy Kane, Taunt Fellow Karen Swyler, Lilian Fellow

2004Trey Hill, Taunt Fellow Miranda Howe, Lilian Fellow Kowkie Durst, Lincoln Fellow

2005Koi Neng Liew, Taunt Fellow Deborah Schwartzkopf,Lilian Fellow

Melissa Mencini, Lincoln Fellow

2006Jennifer Allen, Taunt FellowChristina West, Lilian FellowJoseph Pintz, Lincoln Fellow

2007Jeremy Hatch, Taunt FellowBrian Rochefort, Lilian FellowRenee Audette, Lincoln FellowAnne Drew Potter,Matsutani Fellow

2008Kevin Snipes, Taunt FellowDonna Flanery, Lilian FellowBirdie Boone, Lincoln FellowDavid Peters, Matsutani FellowNathan Craven, MJD Fellow

2009Martha Grover, Taunt FellowSean Irwin, Lilian FellowGwendolyn Yoppolo,Lincoln Fellow

Kelly Garrett Rathbone,Matsutani Fellow

Kensuke Yamada, MJD Fellow

2010Aaron Benson, MJD FellowNicholas Bivins, Matsutani Fellow

Jana Evans, Taunt FellowMathew McConnell, Lilian Fellow

Courtney Murphy, Lincoln Fellow

This publication is generously funded by the Joliet Foundation.

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2915 Country C lub AvenueHelena, M T 59602 406-443-3502 archieb ray@archieb ray.o rg w w w.archieb ray.o rg