Photos and reporting by Robert Kokenyesi, Ceramic Artist, Beachfront Pottery, Godfrey, IL, 62035, USA. If you enjoyed this post, then give me a “like” on my Facebook page. There is additional information about Beachfront Pottery on my web site.
The Venue
The Ann Metzger National Biennial Exhibition took place from January 11 through February 23, 2019 in the gallery of the St Louis Artists’ Guild in Clayton, Missouri.
The Call for Entry
The Ann Metzger Memorial National Biennial Exhibition is an all-media, all-content, juried exhibition open to artists across the United States. Ann Metzger was a long-time member of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild and per her bequest established a prize fund for cash awards to honor
contemporary artists. For this exhibition, we search for and bring together great contemporary artwork from around the nation.
We are proud to announce our juror is Hannah Klemm, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the St. Louis Art Museum.
The Ceramic Art Pieces
I couldn’t find an art web site for Georgia. I found her statement along a 2011 exhibit report. There she states: “Stacks and layers are not reduced to a simple process of organization or compulsion. Rather the stacks create an awareness of time. Time is recollected.” While I’m not sure if that statement still applies, but it’s fun to think that these gestural vessels may be collecting time.
Unfortunately, her web site was not functioning at the time I tried. On her page on the Springfield Art Association, in a video recording Debra describes her approach to sculpture making that she strives to create something that Mother Nature may have sculpted. She believes that the most beautiful sculptures have been created by wind and water. She shapes clay by slamming it onto a stone, and then using a stick to make the marks and to reshape the clay. These pieces have an assembly process to them, and I’m curious about the technique that joins the parts.
Jackie has several 3D printed ceramic pieces on her web site. This is the first piece I ever saw in a juried exhibit. It would be interesting to find out how she controls or manipulates the printer.
On her web site Jackie States: “My work stems from an interest in nature, science, and living systems and I believe wholeheartedly in arts capacity to enrich the way we see, experience, and understand the world around us. My primary focus is sculpture installation and I work to invite viewers into imagined biological systems where it can often be hard to tell if the forms are healthy or harmful growths.”
My new teapot was juried into this exhibit!! This is an experimental piece that I already re-titled to “Seafloor Archaeology Teapot ca XXVth century”. The pieces in that series are ceramic vessels reconstructed in the 25th century, and archaeologically excavated from inundated locations in the 27th century. I will show and write a lot more from these future artifacts in another post. The teapot form here is broken into several pieces, and the overlapping pieces are held together with nails. This teapot can be lifted up by its handle, and while the individual fragments may move, the teapot stays together and doesn’t fall apart.