By Jennifer Litz
Editor
April 16, 2008 Do not take a late spring break out of town this weekend: If you like art, artists, food, (adult) drinks, and culture, San Angelo will be one of the best places on earth.
The 17th annual San Angelo National Ceramic Competition will bring some of the most cutting-edge artists from 35 states, Canada, and Mexico to our balmy town. And our quaint but quiet museum will morph into a rambunctious, well-attended scion of art bashes.
“It’s considered the biggest and most important museum-sponsored competition in America,” says San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts museum director Howard Taylor. “I’ve been to major events in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, and this is unusual. Everything’s free, it’s casual, and there’s just tons and tons of things to eat, and people to see, and free transportation. And even though there are a couple thousand people, it’s not really crowded.”
The events comprising the weekend-long ode to ceramics are too plentiful to list (but we’ve tried: see sidebar). Highlights include the competition kickoff on Friday, April 18, at 6 p.m.; the next day’s ceramics symposium by renowned ceramics artist Jack Earl; and Saturday night’s traditional Texas Barbecue Dinner.
Friday Night Reception
The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts’ Friday night reception kicks off the weekend with a party big enough to honor the event’s scope. The ceramic competition weekend is the culmination of a process that began with 1,300 national contest submissions to a chosen juror. This year, that juror is Anna Harris, Curator of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi, who was charged with whittling the contenders to the 130+ finalists that will be honored at the reception.
“The opening itself is one heck of a party,” says Taylor. “We usually have several bands performing. And we have tables set up on our rooftop garden, and very nice food. I hate to tell people this, but you can almost have a dinner here.”
The reliable rumor mill has it that drinks will be free, too. Luckily, trolleys will take people from the museum to ancillary ceramic shows playing off the weekend’s theme. For example, the J. Walker Gallery will host a group show of ceramic artists, and Fort Concho will host a San Angelo Mesquite Art Festival for those tired of the showcased medium.
Traveling show “George Ohr Rising: The Emergence of an American Master” will also open Friday night. It’s on loan from the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi. It features the work of George Ohr (1857-1980), whose life and art reflects the tragedy and reslience of the Gulf Coast Community from which Ohr hails. A fire in downtown Biloxi destroyed all 10,000 pieces of Ohr’s pottery in the late 1800’s. Ohr created a new, more dynamic body of work after that.
Hurricane Katrina struck Biloxi and the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in August 2005, partially destroying a new museum designed by Frank Gehry that was scheduled to open in July 2006. The museum is now in the process of rebuilding as Ohr did, warranting its traveling sideshow title, “George Ohr Rising.”
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Invited Artist Jack Earl
The San Angelo Ceramic competition occurs only in even-numbered years (a simple symposium occurs during the odds), and a ceramic-world luminary is always invited as a magnet for other artists. This year’s top name is Lakeview, Ohio’s Jack Earl, known for his eccentric, allegorical pieces that speak to life in rural Ohio. Earl entered the national scene in 1969 with the inclusion of his work in the Smithsonian Museum’s “Objects U.S.A.” exhibit.
Earl endows his pieces with long, rambling titles. “Because they’re easier to come up with,” Earl says.
| Event Lineup Thursday, April 17 1 p.m., Chicken Farm Art Center (Cost: $25/person) Workshop by clay artist Randy Brodnax. Learn how to build a wood fired salt kiln and Texas Glow Worm fiber kiln. Friday, April 18 8 a.m., Angelo State University Ceramics Facility (SAMFA) Ceramic workshop by Missy McCormack 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Angelo State University Carr Education-Fine Arts building Twenty-Third Annual Ceramic Symposium. Panelists for the Symposium will be the Juror Anna Harris and the Invited Artist Jack Earl. Artists will show slides and speak on their work before refreshments and question and answer forum. 6 p.m. – 9 p.m., San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts Opening Reception: 17th San Angelo National Ceramic Competition/George Ohr Rising: Emergence of an American Master Additional ancillary shows Friday night: * The Texas Clay Arts Association member’s show, “The 6-Pack Show.” At the Coop Gallery on Oakes Street. * J. Walker Gallery, 221 South Chadbourne, will host a group show of ceramic artists Steve Apodaca, Pamela Huffman, and Doug Oertli. * Jon Piotrs Ryder Nomadic Gallery, adjacent to the Museum. The Nomadic Gallery is a 24-foot long Ryder truck converted into a traveling gallery space. It is the brainchild of three Lubbock artists and Texas Tech art professors. * The Texas Mesquite Association—San Angelo Mesquite Art Festival in the Fort Concho Quartermaster Galleries located on the corner of Avenue C and Flipper Street. Over 40 artisans from across Texas will be showcasing their work in mesquite wood at this event. Saturday, April 19 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., Chicken Farm Art Center (Cost: $45/person) Demonstration ceramic workshop conducted by invited artist Jack Earl. Bring or buy a lunch. Saturday evening openings at the Chicken Farm: * Gecko Gallery owners Jerry and Susan Warnell, will host an exhibit at their gallery featuring the work of Siegele and Haley who hail from Huntsville, Arkansas * Roger Allen’s Starkeeper Gallery will feature ceramic work by Jim Bob Salazar of Alpine and Gary Huntoon from Dallas. * Clay artist Linda Gosset curates the exhibit Clay/Fiber, a ceramic invitational in conjunction with the group, San Angelo Fiber Artist Connection. In the Chicken Farm’s newly re-modeled gallery space, Studio One. The exhibit will feature both ceramic and fiber art. * Vicki Hardin will host a clay exchange in her gallery space. Workshop participants are invited to bring a small piece of their ceramic art (anything that will fit in a standard brown lunch bag) to put on display in her gallery. At the end of the day all the work will be packaged in brown bags and anonymously exchanged among the participants. 7 p.m., Chicken Farm Art Center (Cost: $16/person) Texas Barbecue Dinner. Musical entertainment and Japanese raku and other ceramic technique demonstrations. |
The highlight of Earl’s visit is his day-long workshop at the Chicken Farm Art Center from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 19. The $45 symposium is supposed to show captive audience members the artist’s tips and techniques. However, Earl is a man of few words.
Earl plays the curt-worded part of eccentric artist, seemingly unaware of the literary and other depth of his allegorical pieces. A 2000 New York Times review of Earl’s solo show in Soho describes the artist’s complex, thought-out scene: “In this, Mr. Earl's sixth New York solo show since 1972, the most impressive piece combines several scenes into one funny, in-the-round retelling of the Faust myth.”
Compare that with his first-person account of his artist philosophy: “I make things,” he says. “Where do I get the idea? I make them. I copy ancient art, I copy photographs, I copy cartoons, and where I get ideas is the same place you get ideas. It just happens and you evaluate it, and decide whether or not you want to spend the time.”
Earl’s response to the contention that his “Self-Portrait” piece is twisted and “Lynchian,” in the tradition of art house director David Lynch? He doesn’t know David Lynch. He simply fashioned his head as a block of clay because that seemed only natural, since he’s worked with the stuff for 50 years.
Spinning Ceramic on its Head
Of course, Earl isn’t the only draw. There are 100-plus artists from around the United States whose work has been accepted in the program. These artists break the old archetype of ceramic as uneven, earth-colored dishware like it was a plate at a Greek wedding.
Take, for example, Jason Huff’s accepted piece, a teapot in the fashion of his childhood hero, Mr. T. Seattle-based Huff’s work represents his heroes, and his aspirations to be them.
Huff says ceramic is advantageous because it can mock other materials. He incorporates what he calls “goofy” materials into many of his works—fake fur, glitter, even stockings.
“Technically, [my work] draws from traditional craft, collectible kitsch, animation and contemporary sculpture,” Huff says. “Thematically, it's an exploration of both my own iconography and of image[s] as conveyed in pop culture.”
Huff’s works include ceramic renderings of pop icons like Elvis, Speed Racer, even Santa Claus, some of them molded into teapots.
While Huff’s work draws from pop culture, Lubbock-based Leslie Laine Lewis’s pieces arise from a blend of personal experience and literature left around her subconscious. Competition piece “Siren’s Song” borrows from the mythological story—with a twist. Lewis’s “Sirens” are three plus-sized women in dumpy bathing suits and caps.
“It has to do with my fear of being in a swimsuit,” Lewis explains of her statuettes’ attire. “[There are] so many societal [dictates] of how you should look when you’re in one. And I also have two sisters—it’s the three of us in bathing suits.
“And those patterns are based on actual plus-sized swimsuits. They always put plus-size women in toddler outfits. Like, if you’re bigger you have to walk around with seashells on.”
The competition seeks to showcase a broad array of the ceramics medium, and not all have so much personal and worldly commentary. Some, like “novice” ceramic artist Eileen Braun, simply add novel, gorgeous technique to the craft.
Braun has only been doing ceramics in her in-home studio for four years. But her degree in sculpture and art education—and having worked as the director of an art center in Westchester, New York—has given her enough background to create her innovative, trademark textures. Tedious, touchable dots cover her accepted piece, a demure, lily-white teapot.
A National Art Competition in San Angelo?
How did the arguable benchmark of ceramic competitions come to nestle in not-so-centrally located San Angelo, Texas? It started with SAMFA museum director Howard Taylor, who knew the fledgling museum needed something to set it apart.
“I’m the first director they had here,” says Taylor, who came to the museum 24 years ago. “But when I came, it was a brand new museum, never opened to public. I felt we needed to have something to make us unique, and very few museums were doing things with ceramics. So we found a company headquartered here—Monarch Tile, who manufactured ceramic tile—to provide sponsorship.
“Then I found out a professor at ASU was already doing a small regional competition, so she kind of served as curator to get us off the ground.”
The event’s reputation was built up via the esoteric celebrity of the invited artist, as well as via ads placed in benchmark ceramics publications. The strategy worked quickly; a former editor of Ceramics Monthly called the event “the premier clay show in America.” Other formidable voices began to echo that sentiment.
“One guy who was a director with New York’s Syracuse Museum wrote to [Ceramics Monthly’s editor] and said ‘No, it’s us!’ But then he came here and conceded.”
