Photos and text by Robert Kokenyesi, Ceramic Artist, Beachfront Pottery, Godfrey, IL 62035, USA.
The Venue
The Rabbit Hole exhibit took place in the gallery of ArtStLouis between August 5, 2017 and September 7, 2017. The gallery is used regularly for quality exhibits that draws on artistic talent within 200 miles of the City of St. Louis.
The Call for Entry
The call for entry stated that exhibition will focus on the ideas of fantasy, whimsy, imagination, and sense of wonder. All explorations & interpretations of this theme are invited. Artworks in all media, techniques and styles are encouraged.
The Ceramic Art Pieces
This was a large piece, about 25 X 25 inches at front, and about 12 inches in depth. Troy states that this piece is about his research into the mass production and mold making for production of ceramics. He reflects on these artifacts as “remnants of contemporary cultures where these artifacts merge into amorphous structures to be unearthed by a dystopian culture.”
Troy is an MFA student at the University of Notre Dame, and he explains these pieces in a video. He collected old factory molds for ceramic structures, and he remakes ceramic pieces from these old molds. Then he presses the pieces together to make the large aggregates. He applies a glaze that mimics decay and erosion these ceramics pieces would undergo after being buried. In his words, these pieces are actually site-specific burials.
I have featured this sculpture of mine in several blogs. The ancient animal series are all about the essential features and characters of the animal, here the shark, that allowed the shark to be around for 400 million years. We humans have been a round for a few million years even if you count the primitive ancestors. I’m very proud to have found a style of expression using the clay ribbons to provide an abstractish shape, using the glazes to secure the individual ribbons, and then utilizing my glass experiments to add a crackled and pigment-accented glass shroud representing the ancient home, the oceans.
On top oft hat, you’ve seen my struggles to construct a stable support in previous blogs.