Robert Alexander
Terrain/Tirer Parti_01, 2020
survey card, magazine letraset type, ink
41 x 12”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My work uses the tools and media from an era where architectural and design representation were exclusively analog. These tools, previously used to produce the designs for buildings, furniture, and other objects, are collaged with magazine pages and ads that once delivered a message that defined ‘good design’ for professionals. My work scrambles and misuses elements found in these places to express alternate universes, topographies, landscapes, and scenes.

Robert Alexander
Terrain/Tirer Parti_03, 2020
survey card, magazine letraset type, ink
26 x 12”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My work uses the tools and media from an era where architectural and design representation were exclusively analog. These tools, previously used to produce the designs for buildings, furniture, and other objects, are collaged with magazine pages and ads that once delivered a message that defined ‘good design’ for professionals. My work scrambles and misuses elements found in these places to express alternate universes, topographies, landscapes, and scenes.

Chess Brodnick
The Recipient, 2020
sumi-e ink on paper
30 x 22 x 2”
Image use courtesy of the artist
 
Artist Statement
The Recipient is a representation of being assaulted over again with the daily anxiety of working with people infected with COVID 19, as well as the tumultuous social events taking place in our cities due to racial injustice. I reach the feeling of trying to connect and not being able to. Reaching with all one’s ability as a person and not knowing if a connection will be made.I will not be appropriated. It is the struggle of maintaining one’s identity and place in the world. Setting personal boundaries and holding them.

Andra Broekelschen
Window to the Sea, 2020
sculpture: steel, wood, glass, tile, clay, pottery, found objects
66.5 x 22.5 x 2”
Image use courtesy of the artist
 
Artist Statement
A simple oval frame provides a window to the setting beyond. The base structure made out of wood and steel is adorned with colorful glass, seashells, antique doorknobs, silverware, mirrors, tile, and old hardware. All are unified by charcoal tile grout.

The sculpture, the artist’s first, combines many of the disciplines that were practiced in the years prior. Seashells and tile made out of clay by the artist, fired and glazed. Sea glass and found objects collected over a lifetime. Carefully arranged, each side of the sculpture conveys a different feeling. One side has a limited palette and a more rustic look, conveying memories of a sunrise or sunset by the sea. The other side is very colorful and with a nod to Art Deco style. The question mark in the upper left corner intends to stop the viewer and question what is in front of them and what is beyond.

As a printmaker, collage artist, and metalsmith, mostly self-taught, the mosaic sculpture was a natural extension of the artist’s practice of trying to acquire new skills to bring an idea to fruition.

Sarah Bryant
I Have Set My Hand Against The Tide, 2021
letterpress printed from metal type,
linoleum, and polymer
12 x 18”
Image use courtesy of the artist
 
Artist Statement 
I am an artist who makes books. My projects have in common a repeated effort to reframe or reorganize existing information in order to challenge established narratives. I work in book form because of the natural relationship between the book and the communication of information. Our visual vocabulary developed simultaneously with the development of the book. They have worked together for over a thousand years to encapsulate information, to preserve it, and to pass it forward. I am interested in the simplicity of this diagrammatic language, which allows for slight variations in line, color, and format to describe a great variety of different systems; the movement of peoples, changes in climate, the progress of disease. This flexibility speaks to our need to connect, to find patterns, and to place ourselves in a world we can understand and explain.

I Have Set My Hand Against The Tide is a debris field of patent drawings for floodgates, water pumps, caissons, and levees, all mechanisms designed to keep the water out. The title is adapted from United States Patent No. 123,002, a caisson design proposed by James B. Eads in 1872. At first, a project about the rising sea, this print evolved during a pandemic year. A caisson is a watertight chamber and a workspace safe from outside forces. A floodgate is a mechanism of control over the flow of the tide and the last restraint against an external threat. Produced in an edition of 22 for an exchange with several artist proofs.

Diane Divelbess
Peace Is Your Nature, 2021
graphite and ink on paper
15.5 x 15.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement 
My mixed-media drawing uses graphite and ink, and since the foundation paper is a very roughly textured and pebbled Indian Village Paper, I collaged pieces of smoother surfaced rag paper for the stenciled lettering. The angled placing of the word pieces is intended to give the illusion of ascending —an uplifting feeling to the message, Peace Is Your Nature. The drawing, though square, has been deliberately turned ‘on point.’ The resulting diamond shape not only allows more room for the word pieces to hang along the central axis but it creates a more dynamic composition overall. Additional contrast is created by the almost “molten” texture of the deckle edge.

Joanne Donnelly
Red Sunset, 2019
monotype with collage
13 x 13 x 1”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Red Sunset with Mountain is another part of a series of monotypes with collage elements which depict reimagined landscapes. This piece was created in response to the massive fires that engulfed several areas of the United States during the recent summers.

Jeff Downing
Twenty-twenty, 2021
ceramic stoneware, glaze pencil, glaze
14 x 20.5 x 1.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
2020 was a year like no other. This work was inspired by several published online articles that featured words and phrases sent in by readers that best sums up the pandemic of 2020. Researching several blogs, I carefully chose the words and phrases that were most revealing of our range of experiences. The words are scribed on the ceramic form that it is symbolic of our collective state of lockdown.

Kevin Eaton
Cookie Jar No. 5, 2020
ceramic
15.5 x 12 x 12”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Cookie Jar No. 5 (2020) is another in a series exploring the potentially destructive nature of masculine energy. Is it a missile? A penis? Or just a cookie jar that you shouldn't try to plug in? SPLOOSH!

Kevin Eaton
KRR-PTZ! Jar, 2020
ceramic
17 x 12 x 8.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
KRR-PTZ! Jar (2020) is another in a series exploring the potentially destructive nature of masculine energy. The cartoon-like treatment of the onomatopoeia, along with the phallic, rocket-like shape, creates an out-of-this-world cookie jar. What sort of cookies would you keep inside?

Kevin Eaton
BOING! Wall Plaque, 2020
ceramic
14.5 x 14.5 x 1”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
BOING! Wall Plaque (2020) is a frenetic explosion of masculine energy. The cartoon–like treatment of the onomatopoeia, along with the potently suggestive arrows and gears, make for a fun and sexy work of art.

Hellenmae Fitzgerald
The Great Gig In The Sky, 2021
ink and fire on paper, mounted on birch
20 x 16 x 3”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This piece is a portrait of my biological father. It's based on an old black and white photo. He was a musician by trade. He got a ‘full-time gig’ playing trumpet for the United States Navy Band, which is where he met my mother. Every summer, the Navy Band would perform on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. I never got to see him play. My father was a chronic alcoholic and gambler. My parent's marriage ended badly when I was a baby. He was never a part of my life. When I was 19 years old, I asked my maternal grandmother for his address and took a spontaneous, unannounced road trip to meet him. He was drunk when I arrived. If he was happy or surprised to see me, it didn't show. He mostly talked about how much he hated my mother, and then he played his trumpet. He was good, really good. I never saw or heard from him again. I heard that he died from cirrhosis of the liver. This piece is about mourning a person I never knew. It acknowledges the fact that he never showed up for me as a father while honoring the incredible love and talent he had for music. Whatever his flaws were, he mastered his craft. In the night sky, barely visible, I incorporated sheet music from Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky" and, throughout the rest of the piece, "Time," "Another Brick in the Wall," "Money," and "When the Tigers Broke Free." I also incorporated sheet music from Mozart's "Requiem," The Animal's "House of the Rising Sun," "Memory" from the musical Cats, and Rachmaninov's "Bless the Lord Oh My Soul." These songs are some of my favorites, and they helped me come to terms with this loss. On my father’s right eye, stretching out into the moon behind him, barely visible, is a line from one of Lord Byron's poems: "And there with a swan song, I can die." The U.S. capitol, at the bottom of the piece, is found on the back of every $50 bill. This landmark is where my parents met. For better or worse, they both joined the military because they were musicians who wanted steady paychecks, the effects of capitalism. Capitalism is the reason our ocean levels are rising, represented by the waves crashing over the Capitol. Above the two trumpet swans face each other. My parent's connection, however badly it ended, gave me life. Their blood is pumping through my heart and veins. Because of them, I exist.

Katie Francis
Never Again, 2021
stoneware
21 x 8 x 7.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Never Again explores the experience of loss, the ephemeral, and change over time. I utilize the making process to reflect on what once was, having mixed feelings of warmth for their existence and grief for their loss. This piece was created with these fleeting moments in mind, expressing this poignant nostalgia through a ceramic vessel. Never Again reflects on my own personal experiences of loss regarding memory, loved ones, and life as we once knew it. I emulated this temporality through the building and dismantling of the vessel. This dysfunctional vessel expresses the dark side of reflection, the mourning for what is gone. The surface contains a text, specifically a poem, that has been made partially illegible through aggressive alterations, smudges from handling, and glazes. It is evident that this object once functioned in a traditional sense, but the external forces that I have imposed have altered how it functions now. Although heavily distorted, this vessel still stands tall, displaying strength, confidence, and resilience. By firing the piece, the process of change has come to an end, leaving this destruction in the past and moving forward from the events that I reflected on during the making process. Through the given text, form, and surface, this dysfunctional vessel functions as a memento for the past, a reminder of temporality, and an opportunity for viewers to associate their own narratives with the altered object.

William Fillmore
William & George, 2019
painted stoneware
12 x 15 x 12”
Courtesy of the artist, Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harri

Artist Statement
My work coasts on the edge of reverence for the tradition of object making and the temporality of experiential performance as it provides a sarcastic personal vision of both my surreal static present, and the dark mystical future. I enjoy fabricating objects that are both surrealistically representational and optimistically nihilistic as they giggle at the edge of the stagnant constancy of individual awareness within the mysterious decay of time. I subtly carved the initials of William, 'W', on the soles of “William’s” shoes.

A dream from childhood long dead,
I hear the smiling laughter
The lasting impression
A lost mentor and a friend.

Mark Hendrickson
Ink & Clay 45 #1, 2021
ceramic
11 x 8 x 8”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
 On this piece, I inscribed horizontally “INK&CLAY45” over and over one line under another into a clay cylinder until the whole piece was inscribed. This cylinder was made by hand manipulating a solid cylinder of clay. Using a system of graduated size dowels, I inserted the smallest diameter dowel into the vertical center of the solid clay cylinder. Then laying it horizontally on a canvas board and roll the cylinder with pressure until I have achieved the desired cylinder wall thickness. I then, using dowels and rubber ribs, hand-stretched the inscribed cylinder to the desired shape. Next, a white slip was sprayed on the entire piece, then allowed to dry, then to be bisque fired. After bisque firing, I apply a black stain composed of black copper oxide, manganese dioxide, and Gerstley Borate to the entire piece, then allow it to dry. Using gum erasers, I rub off the complete outer surface of the piece, leaving the stain in the design element and subsequent rips, tears, and cracks which can appear during the construction of the said piece. I then sprayed the same stain into the interior of the piece, then fired said piece to cone 2 in an electric kiln.
 

Mark Hendrickson
Ink & Clay 45 #2, 2021
ceramic
11 x 7 x 7”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
On this piece, I inscribed vertically "INK&CLAY45" over and over one line next to the last line into a clay cylinder until the whole piece was inscribed. This cylinder was made by hand manipulating a solid cylinder of clay. Using a system of graduated size dowels, I insert the smallest diameter dowel into the vertical center of the solid clay cylinder. Then laying it horizontally on a canvas board and roll the cylinder with pressure until I have achieved the desired cylinder wall thickness. I then, using dowels and rubber ribs, hand-stretched the inscribed cylinder to the desired shape. Next, a white slip was sprayed on the entire piece, then allowed to dry, then to be bisque fired. After bisque firing, I apply a black stain composed of black copper oxide, manganese dioxide, and Gerstley Borate to the entire piece, then allow it to dry. Using gum erasers, I rub off the complete outer surface of the piece, leaving the stain in the design element and subsequent rips, tears, and cracks which can appear during the construction of the said piece. I then sprayed the same stain into the interior of the piece, then fired said piece to cone 2 in an electric kiln.

K. Ryan Henisey
Babel, 2020
plaster castings
72 x 36 x 1”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Plaster castings of a figure imploring the heaven. Letters form fragments of words along the body parts. Impressed into the casting mold, the letters stand in relief. Mounted with nails and T-pins.
As a California-based artist, K Ryan Henisey's work is heavily influenced by the people, culture, and landscape of the local community and Golden State. His personal narrative is often interwoven with mythological subjects and symbols, using patterning as a vehicle to make meaning from deconstruction.
"I use a segmented form, highlighted with patterns and material," explains the artist. "With these two visual tools, I create connections within a context of deconstruction and Queer theory. Ultimately, I believe that meaning must be constructed in order to hold value."
Henisey is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working across performance, installation, and traditional paint and collage media. His work is unique in its ability to elevate the Queer experience using historical and spiritual references often barred to LGBTQIA+ peoples.
K Ryan Henisey (@kryanhenisey) is an award-winning West Hollywood artist and founding editor of Queer Quarterly Magazine. He is president of TAG Gallery in Los Angeles and founder of Pattern & Matrix, providing press and creative services for artists and organizations. Henisey's fine art has been displayed in institutions throughout Southern California, at the Garroxta Museum in Spain, and most recently in Guangzhou, China.

K. Ryan Henisey
Innocence, 2021
apoxy clay, plaster, and cement,
acrylic, monofilament
108 x 13 x 13”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Thirteen plaster and cement hummingbirds trap a golden heart in a spiral of hanging monofilament. This ceiling-hung sculpture chandelier is made of 14 hanging parts. The epoxy clay heart is marked with spiraling phrases carved into the muscle of the organ.
As a California-based artist, K Ryan Henisey's work is heavily influenced by the people, culture, and landscape of the local community and Golden State. His personal narrative is often interwoven with mythological subjects and symbols, using patterning as a vehicle to make meaning from deconstruction.
"I use a segmented form, highlighted with patterns and material," explains the artist. "With these two visual tools, I create connections within a context of deconstruction and Queer theory. Ultimately, I believe that meaning must be constructed in order to hold value."
Henisey is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working across performance, installation, and traditional paint and collage media. His work is unique in its ability to elevate the Queer experience using historical and spiritual references often barred to LGBTQIA+ peoples.
K Ryan Henisey (@kryanhenisey) is an award-winning West Hollywood artist and founding editor of Queer Quarterly Magazine. He is president of TAG Gallery in Los Angeles and founder of Pattern & Matrix, providing press and creative services for artists and organizations. Henisey's fine art has been displayed in institutions throughout Southern California, at the Garroxta Museum in Spain, and most recently in Guangzhou, China.

Stephen Horn
"Shikata Ga Nai", 2019
ceramic paper clay
9.5 x 8.5 x 0.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
The translation of this Japanese expression is "it can't be helped." An expression that I often heard in Japan while teaching a study abroad class in Sendai. It is commonly used in situations that are negative but leave you no alternative but to get over it. A useful attitude, especially in the world as it is now! COVID and politics have definitely required an attitude shift! This paper-clay print is a self-portrait. The images of a tortured self, chemo boy and Shikata Ga Nai are expressions of my cancer, treatment, and an attitude I eventually adopted. The paper-clay series began around 2015 and continues to the present. This piece was created after being diagnosed with cancer. It was not my intention to make illness the subject of this work, but my unconscious was running the show. The treatments lasted for more than two years. I began to finish the paper clay series (2018-2020). Paper-clay slabs were coated with colored slip and printed with unfused toner images and once-fired to cone six. A very low-tech process that made it easy to work with clay.

Julienne Johnson
Private Family Business, 2018
sculptural collage: Chinese ink, acrylic,
Printer’s ink, Conte Crayon
41 x 17 x 17”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
The sensations/feelings encompassed within this sculpture are so highly personal that in the midst of its creation, I experienced reoccurring nightmares. This artwork deals head-on with the ‘elephant in the room.’ This elephant is huge-colossal-familial.

When the nightmares began, the structure was architecturally intact. Until a work is complete, I am one with it; a conversation takes place physically/emotionally... being that I'm a hands-on artist...no brushes. The piece at this point had shape...an entity. The possibilities excited me. For clarification...this sculpture was 6' in stature...initially. Two sections are attached/detached for easy cartage. In my dreams, all 6'...were alive...dark...evil...powerful. The horrific entity was out to destroy...me first...then my loved one. I'd awaken terrified...heart pounding. At my studio, I covered the piece...hated it...and worked on others...while rationalizations ran rampant. Who/what was this destructive creature? I say ‘creature’ because it had animated human characteristics in the nightmares. Finally...in sunlight, I realized that my sculpture... ‘the creature’ represented cocaine/crack. I understood then...why the 3 sides evolved into a mess, ended up open, and held a small pink skeleton head I'd acquired during a Mexican residency year earlier.
 
That night, I wasn't afraid to face my bed. The nightmare returned...but the storyline changed. I killed the creature.
I have come to understand that intuitively I create visuals to work out deeply heartfelt concerns. The hands-on experience, with symbols seemingly guiding me from beyond myself...teach me. Art is my vehicle. For Private Family Business...that vehicle was a semi-truck hauling explosives.

Karen Ruth Karlsson
The Cookie is the Fortune, 2021
printmaking and encaustic
6 x 6 x 4.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This piece is one of the artist's ongoing Geomancy series of primarily geometric works incorporating origami forms and encaustic. The Cookie is the Fortune speaks to the all-too-human tendency to rush to the destination without appreciating the journey. At the end of a meal in most Chinese restaurants, it is customary to be presented with a fortune cookie - a thin, sugary round wafer folded on itself and holding a tiny slip of paper with a printed prediction, warning, or lucky number. In the rush to get to that fortune, the cookies frequently lie broken and unconsumed on the tabletop. The fact that they have received a free, crunchy, sugary treat is lost on the diners.

The piece is composed of paper circles hand printed with "The fortune is the cookie. The cookie is the fortune," which have been coated with encaustic and formed into cookie shapes with blank (save for one) paper fortunes. The cookies are contained in a paper origami bowl coated with encaustic paint.

Mako Lanselle
My Say, 2020
litho
12 x 9”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Democracy means rule by the people. Voting is the democratic tool for the people to be heard. A vote can take a variety of forms - a show of hands, a mark on a piece of paper, a finger on a touch screen, a simple syllable - "yay" or "nay." The voting might be for one office - national, local - or one issue; or, the ballot might be lengthy and confusing to cover many offices and issues. My image of a hand holding a ballot distills the act of democracy to its essence: one person, one vote. Hear my opinion; this is My Say.

Andrew Lawson
Disinformation Playhouse, 2020
etching
24 x 18”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement

My work illustrates the mediation of the relationship between humans and technology in our theorized post- humanist existence. As material products become a second-tier commodity, the product of information or disinformation becomes the most valued resource. I like to show the dichotomy between nostalgic ideas and objects of our past, with newer trends associated with our dependence upon technology and the future trajectory of our existence. In using narrative and illustrative-based designs, I like to play with the dichotomy of whimsicality and the dark nature of the overall themes of my work. I hope my work engages any regular person walking by and creates questions within the viewer about their own role in our late, image-based capitalist society.

Disinformation Playhouse is an etching of the musical instrument museum in Brussels. This building once was the main department store in the main city square. Signage associated with popular trends in Big-Tech and disinformation decimation adorns the building. This is a commentary about material consumption versus newer trends with popular consumption of information.

Andrew Lawson
Last Ducky Supper, 2021
etching
14 x 24”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement

My work illustrates the mediation of the relationship between humans and technology in our theorized post- humanist existence. As material products become a second-tier commodity, the product of information or disinformation becomes the most valued resource. I like to show the dichotomy between nostalgic ideas and objects of our past, with newer trends associated with our dependence upon technology and the future trajectory of our existence. In using narrative and illustrative-based designs, I like to play with the dichotomy of whimsicality and the dark nature of the overall themes of my work. I hope my work engages any regular person walking by and creates questions within the viewer about their own role in our late, image-based capitalist society.

Last Ducky Supper is an etching that depicts pop culture rubber duckies as the attendees of the last supper, set in a supermarket. This piece is a satirical commentary on popular trends in consumerism and the conditioning of consumer values through things like rubber duckies.

Haesook Lee
Old Self II (The Pride of Life), 2019
assemblage (clay, wood, acrylic, paper, letter stickers,...)
34 x 10 x 3”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This work is based on the Bible verse 1 John 2:16, ‘For everything in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - comes not from the Father but from the world.’ My monument represents the products I used to pursue and built before I became a Christian. It has been accumulated to protect and enhance my pride in line with worldly values and evaluations such as position and achievements in society; the motivation and sources behind this pursuit are expressed through this work. My art focuses on the state of my heart and the process of transforming my inner self - from my old self to my new self.

My art focuses on finding my personal identity by seeking my true self through the Christian faith. I believe that personal identities are naturally linked to collective or national identities. This work is about the national identity of Korea, my national identity, expressed through things that represent its history and culture. As a first generation Korean immigrant, this piece is based on my interests in Korea, where I grew up and was formed. As a Korean-American, I live in the culture and society of the United States, in the present, and I live with hope in the things of heaven: a better country where I will live forever in the future.

Christopher Leitch
reverse charges, 2018
paper clay with watercolor
40 x 60 x 1”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Reverse Charges is a work in stoneware started during my residency at Kansas City Art Institute’s Center for Contemporary Practice. The text is by Oklahoma poet Larry Bierman and is excerpted from his 1982 chapbook of the same name.

Verbal and visual language occupy space at several abstracted removes from direct, unlimited experience. Naming and describing are important mental efforts as we seek to understand our existence. They are, however, designedly fragmentary and contribute to mistakenly shaping our conceptions of time and space as linear, serial, sequential. Words are eventual, not original. They serve as plastic emblems, iconographic placeholders for impressions of an expansive reality that slyly continues to elide anything like full comprehension.

Bierman’s poetic phrase alludes to the shared social permission we insist upon in our country to frame ideas and realizations for one another without fear of authoritarian reproach. Yet, he also understands this liberty is circumscribed by the ultimate inscrutability of individual emotional realities and either the undesirability or unnecessity of baring every intimacy.

The work is hand-formed stoneware fired once, painted with gesso and watercolor.

Carolyn Liesy
Each of us has a name, ..., 2021
collograph on rice paper, graphite
38 x 25”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
I have been asked many times to explain my work, and I do not think there is one explanation that works all the time. I started with photography and ended up with printmaking. I also am a Biologist, and that influences my work. I gravitate to printmaking because I can use it to explore making many kinds of imagery that express a variety of things about what I see and love about the natural world.

My images are experimental, at the margins of traditional printmaking practice. I am interested in composition, love color, and seldom edition my prints. I like to combine different styles of printmaking (etching, relief, lithography) in conceptual ways. I often use text in my work. This approach does not make my work immediately accessible.

Each of Us has a Name. A cascade of masks accompanied by portions of a poem: “Each of us is given a name, given by God, by our desires, by our death.” A paean to our sorrow in the pandemic. The blocks where the text is written are masks that imply what or who is no longer with us. The poem was very long, in Hebrew, originally by a woman named Zelda. I have excerpted it.

Amanda Love
Word Matter, 2021
altered books
144 x 120 x 2”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Word Matter addresses the metamorphosis of words and books from explicitly historical, quotidian objects to altered organic matter. Books generate meaning by simply existing in a literate culture and are recognized as a time-based medium. Language paradigms in relation to visual literate systems support the repetition of moving your eyes from left to right, turning the pages in the same pattern. By deconstructing books and reducing their form, contradictions in the formerly known order of the book are revealed. Suspension frees the viewer from traditional interpretations of books and words and offers new ways to decipher meaning in the repeating matter. It is through repetition that new visual systems emerge. Displaced and repeating words, books, bark, rock formations, waves and landscape serve as alternative interpretations of systemic interrelated matter.

Click here to view video of artwork

Gina M.
Chaos is the Bomb, 2019
high-fired ceramic, oxide wash, wood, stain
22.25 x 27.5 x 1”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
A Craftsman-style oak frame holds four ceramic tiles depicting words circulating in mass media. They float in an atomic bomb’s bulging mushroom cloud rising over bent palm trees, referencing the photos from the atomic bomb test sites at the Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands between 1946-58.

Chaos is The Bomb captures the disinformation campaign that ramped up in 2016 and started well before the USA presidential election. It now runs rampant throughout the globe, trying to destabilize democracy. There is no need for a bomb when the stock market is affected by a tweet and elections are won with bots and lies. Words are weapons. Two flags sit at the center of the mushroom stem. After the destruction caused by fake news and a reality TV show host, one asks the question, “Who will set up the new world order?”

Connie Major
Opened?, 2017
clay, high fire underglazes
12.5 x 12.5 x 4”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Clay is clean dirt, and I love to play in it.

Opened? is a large wheel-thrown plate that appears to be ripped open at the bottom to find it is made of cardboard, which was detailed by hand to create a trompe l’oeil illusion. It is skillfully done in both image and color to bring the famous baking soda box to mind. One might note that the instructions are to “Open at the top,” obviously ignored. This sculpture requires a moment to ponder.

er.

Connie Major
Closing In On The Eleventh Hour, 2018
clay, low and high fire underglazes and glazes,
silver luster
14 x 14 x 3”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Clay is clean dirt, and I love to play in it.

Closing In On The Eleventh Hour is a large wheel-thrown plate that was then manipulated and added to in the trompe l’oeil method. The silver zipper is quite realistic and is closing on the world with some of a clock face still exposed. As the zipper closes, the world is covered in blackness. There is very little time to save the world as we approach the eleventh hour.

Monica Marks
Xhaustd, 2021
mixed media collage
16 x 15 x 5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist StatementCaregivers often give so much of themselves they have little energy for self-care. Mothers with special needs children, especially during the pandemic, experienced a kind of exhaustion they never felt before.

Monica Marks
After The Pandemic, 2021
mixed media collage
15 x 16 x 5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
As much as everyone has been looking forward to ‘after’ the pandemic, many experience trepidations, even anxiety, at the prospect of venturing out. The need for reinstatement of self-boundaries is paramount; when the doorbell rings, we may not be ready to answer. The text on the mother figure is made of quotes stated during a meeting of artist mothers expressing their feelings regarding the transition to the new normal.

Shahin Massoudi
Poetic, poetry, poem, pottery, 2017
ceramic
10 x 12 x 7”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Iranian poetry is a source of inspiration for much of my work. The color and form of this work comes from the poem inscribed on its surface (my own translation):

Where I rest my head is full

with the song of swallows’ wings.

Shahin Massoudi
Self portrait, 2020
ink
22 x 17 x 0.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist 

Artist Statement: 
The intimacy and specificity of any single woman’s struggle can feel in conflict with the global scope of misogyny and sexism. Inspired by the continuous perseverance of women in my homeland of Iran - alongside women all around the world. I strive to see myself in them and them in myself. The poem (Calligraphy) is from my favorite Persian poet, Sohrab Sepehri:

I am full of wings and feathers.

I am full of light.

I am full of loneliness

Babette Mayor
Alice is Only a Puppet from Life Out of Balance series, 2021
digital mixed media monoprint with
colored pencils and gouache
22 x 17”

Artist Statement
Alice is Only a Puppet represents the invisible double of the human from a dual perspective: the positive side freed from the gravity of matter; the negative side revealing the mind’s hidden impulses and torment of manipulation.

Jason McCormack
A Marked Man, 2018
sculpted in clay, casted in aqua resin,
ink hand-lettering.
30 x 19 x 17”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Must one be Black or Brown to care? This is one of the self-imposed questions that led me to create A Marked Man back in 2018.

It’s hard for me not to feel like a marked man when the very people sworn to protect are executing countless murders of unarmed men and women who look like my aunts, my uncles, my brothers, my cousins, my neighbors, and me. Every one of these murders feels like a threat. The victims did nothing to justify being killed. The one commonality is the hue of their skin, which designates them and me to the lowest rung of our American caste system- make no mistake, what we call ‘race’ operates as a caste system in America. And in this caste system, my life is worth bullets, so Black people get all the bullets they can - or can’t - stand. One must simply see the countless unarmed Black people being murdered while driving, walking, running, sleeping, and breathing to realize there’s a crisis at hand. Feeling strongly that we in America need to have this conversation, I decided the only way to start would be through the truth. My truth.

A Marked Man is a self-portrait of my physical and inner self. Even at 6’2”, 210lbs, the threat I feel is omnipresent. Despite what America has taught you to think of me, the reality is that I am the hunted. I needed to be totally vulnerable and honest in sharing this reality with those who may not be able to relate. If they could literally see what I feel, then maybe they could feel it too, or at least feel safe asking me questions in a conversation I had started. We must be willing to have these conversations. Our futures may depend on it.

Sarah A. Meyer
23, 2021
letterpress and offset lithography
12 x 10 x 1.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist
$250.00
 
Artist Statement
Typography, the art of type, takes into consideration the style, arrangement, and appearance of typographic matter. Typography enhances our everyday lives giving us information that is both implicit and explicit. In a cityscape, typography is an enigmatic thing, both old and new, simultaneously. Taken out of context, typography can become more confusing or more informative. Simplifying the noise of the environment in which the type is placed can enhance or detract from its original intent. It is this juxtaposition of intent and usage that influences my work.

In this body of work, typographic specimen books are used to constrain the writing. Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the author sets new parameters and rules to follow. For example, changing the order of words creates new meaning; and as contradictory as it may seem, two things always go together. Therefore, only the words and phrases included on one font specification sheet from the 1923 edition of the American Type Founders Specimen Book and Catalog were used to create the poetry.

A letterpress and all of its components are the media by which the poem is brought to form. Working in the method of the great pressman, H.N. Werkman, the make-ready brayer, and ghost image of inked type as well as the foot, groove, and nick of the type enhance the communication. Rubber bands, bolts, and hardware are inked to create depth and meaning to the form. Make ready, waste paper and specimen sheets are collaged to add texture, and each unique print uses the opacity and reverse print to bring implicit depth to the content.

Sarah A. Meyer
24, 2021
letterpress and offset lithography
12 x 10 x 1.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist
$250.00

Artist Statement
Typography, the art of type, takes into consideration the style, arrangement, and appearance of typographic matter. Typography enhances our everyday lives giving us information that is both implicit and explicit. In a cityscape, typography is an enigmatic thing, both old and new, simultaneously. Taken out of context, typography can become more confusing or more informative. Simplifying the noise of the environment in which the type is placed can enhance or detract from its original intent. It is this juxtaposition of intent and usage that influences my work.

In this body of work, typographic specimen books are used to constrain the writing. Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the author sets new parameters and rules to follow. For example, changing the order of words creates new meaning; and as contradictory as it may seem, two things always go together. Therefore, only the words and phrases included on one font specification sheet from the 1923 edition of the American Type Founders Specimen Book and Catalog were used to create the poetry.

A letterpress and all of its components are the media by which the poem is brought to form. Working in the method of the great pressman, H.N. Werkman, the make-ready brayer, and ghost image of inked type as well as the foot, groove, and nick of the type enhance the communication. Rubber bands, bolts, and hardware are inked to create depth and meaning to the form. Make ready, waste paper and specimen sheets are collaged to add texture, and each unique print uses the opacity and reverse print to bring implicit depth to the content.

Sarah A. Meyer
25, 2021
letterpress and offset lithography
12 x 10 x 1.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist
$250.00

Artist Statement
Typography, the art of type, takes into consideration the style, arrangement, and appearance of typographic matter. Typography enhances our everyday lives giving us information that is both implicit and explicit. In a cityscape, typography is an enigmatic thing, both old and new, simultaneously. Taken out of context, typography can become more confusing or more informative. Simplifying the noise of the environment in which the type is placed can enhance or detract from its original intent. It is this juxtaposition of intent and usage that influences my work.

In this body of work, typographic specimen books are used to constrain the writing. Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the author sets new parameters and rules to follow. For example, changing the order of words creates new meaning; and as contradictory as it may seem, two things always go together. Therefore, only the words and phrases included on one font specification sheet from the 1923 edition of the American Type Founders Specimen Book and Catalog were used to create the poetry.

A letterpress and all of its components are the media by which the poem is brought to form. Working in the method of the great pressman, H.N. Werkman, the make-ready, brayer, and ghost image of inked type as well as the foot, groove, and nick of the type enhance the communication. Rubber bands, bolts, and hardware are inked to create depth and meaning to the form. Make ready, waste paper and specimen sheets are collaged to add texture, and each unique print uses the opacity and reverse print to bring implicit depth to the content.

Gail Miles
Going Across The Sea, 2021
clay
11 x 6.5 x 3.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement

This piece, like the song lyrics, is meant to evoke a ship, timelessness, travel, the wind, and the ocean. The words are lyrics to an old public domain bluegrass song called “I’m Going Across the Sea” from the 1800s. The song and the piece speak to longing and love. Hope and sadness. Beauty and time.

I’m going across the sea. Stay forever more.

Won’t you come and go. Come and go with me.

Fly to me, my pretty little miss. I’m going across the sea.

Wind is howling low. Wind is howling high.

Hand-built vessel. Made from Black Mountain clay, brushed and washed with white porcelain slip. The lyrics are a custom rice paper transfer printed in black underglaze. The interior is hand brushed teal and clear glazes. Cone 10 gas reduction.

Gail Miles
Dancing on the Sunnyside, 2021
Black Mountain clay, hand-built vessel
6.5 x 8.5 x 2.75”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This piece is a dancing, moving sculptural vessel. Its coil is built from a rich deep clay called Black Mountain.

The lyrics are “Keep On The Sunny Side,” an old bluegrass song that speaks to trouble, clouds, storms, and also hope, triumph, and “the sunny side.” The piece looks old, weather-worn, and sun-beaten yet also lyrical, happy, and whimsical.

There’s a dark and a troubled side of life,

there’s a bright and a sunny side too,

tho’ we meet with the darkness and strife,

the sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side,

always on the sunny side,

Keep on the sunny side of life.

It will help us every day,

it will brighten all the way,

if we’ll keep on the sunny side of life.

Hand-built vessel. Made from Black Mountain clay, brushed and washed with white porcelain slip. The lyrics are a custom rice paper transfer printed in black underglaze. Unglazed. Cone 10 gas reduction.

Joy Nagy
Fragile Cargo installation, 2021
white porcelain clay: nine individual suitcases
6.5 x 5 x 3.35”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
America’s port of entry has changed. Immigrants no longer travel to our country via passenger ships, or come through Ellis Island for processing into our country. To signify this change in procedures, an array of miniature white porcelain suitcases commemorates travel during the late 20th-21st century, and the plight of today’s immigrant.

Joy Nagy
‘Give me your tired' from the The New Colossus series and the on-going Golden Door Project, 2020
white porcelain clay, handwritten, and each with its corresponding QR code, relaying 25 translations in various languages 
approx. 11 x 7.5 x 0.25” each
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This body of work began with thoughts of my grandmother, who, as a lone teenager, immigrated from Hungary. I wondered who stood by her side and translated Emma Lazarus's “The New Colossus” poem to her when her passenger ship entered New York Harbor and viewed The Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

The combined written word on clay is not a particularly unique notion –the uniqueness of this project is the message it conveys. The translation of a portion of a single poem is made by translators with a mutual dream for a better life in the United States of America. It is my intention to open a portal to vision, form, and dimension with words, to impact and encourage others to take note of the richness of the community that surrounds them.

To observe the richness and diversity of the many cultures that have entered the United States, I transcribed this portion of “The New Colossus” onto porcelain clay in twenty-five languages provided by friends and acquaintances, sixteen of which you see displayed here. These unique slip-cast porcelain pieces represent seven decades of immigration between the years 1950-2013. Each of the 7.5 x 11" crumpled fragile porcelain letters references the tenuous time we live in. Individual porcelain pieces are accompanied by a QR code link to a voice translation of each language.

Marie Nagy
Voices, 2021
porcelain
35 x 60 x 28”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
We are constantly exposed to people, be they friends, the internet, influences, celebrities, writers, or politicians. Between all those voices from time immemorial occasionally drops a nice moment of wisdom worth preserving, thinking about, and even repeating. However, often those statements get lost and overwhelmed by all the other voices we are surrounded by. I have chosen to preserve at least some of that wisdom and ideas using one of the more permanent medium known to man. And yet, I fully expect some statements to get lost in the crowd, and not all will be read. But that is fine. As long as you read even one, I have done my job.

Marie Nagy
IN VINO VERITAS, 2021
stoneware
12.5 x 45 x 9”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
In Vino Veritas. In wine truth. The last administration has essentially introduced itself with the phrase “We have alternate facts,” on January 22, 2017. Drunks do not always rememver what they said while under the influence. And people often get drunk on ppower. Since the now-famous phrase was introduced, facts became unstable, falling like bowling pins. But as time went on and the amount of questionable information kept growing I kept thinking of this piece more like “99 bottles on the wall”. With the help of the internet and even TV networks there is now little left of which we are certain, and on which most of us can agree. Thus, not many bottles are left on the wall. These are just a few...

Christine Niswonger
Underwood, 2021
full color, multiple-plate etching
36 x 28 x 2”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This full color, multi-plate etching represents the newest addition to a series of work based on my years as a newspaper reporter and editor depicting the insensitivity and misuse of power I saw while working my first years as a reporter just out of college. I later earned degrees in Art and combined that knowledge with my early life experiences in journalism.

Michael Paieda
EXIT, 2020
ink
30 x 19”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
EXIT is a portrait of a cheap apartment building, either a place of opportunity or one of last resort. It’s the place where people go as a way station in their search for more. It’s a place of hopes and dreams, a step on the way to something better. It’s the sound of kids playing in the hallway, the smell of food cooking, neighbors coming and going, living their lives. But for some, it’s the last stop. A place to rest and wait out the time that’s left. A TV is on in the middle of the night. The traffic sounds coming in through open windows during the hot summer months. It’s the place where no one wants to end up.

Jane Pellicciotto
Roman Arches Brooch, 2021
polymer clay, nickel-plated pin clutch, ink toner
3.125 x 3.125 x 0.125”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
As I’m sure many people are doing as the pandemic nears its end, I’m musing about travel. I dig into folders of images for something to take me away. That place was Italy.

My work tends to be bold and colorful, using simple forms. But I’m enamored of ancient places, and especially when sleek and modern contrasts with crumbling and ancient. In Rome and other Italian cities, chunks of antiquity are often preserved and displayed in surprisingly contemporary ways. A vibrant orange wall studded with a single broken capital from a column. The unexpected context makes us reflect differently on a past that might not be so different from our present.

With this brooch, I combine stylized overlapping arch forms with a charming bit of marble-engraved text from the Basilica of Our Lady in Trastevere in Rome, my own way of preserving antiquity in a new context

Jane Pellicciotto
Type Collage Pendant, Gray, Red, Gold, 2021
polymer clay, brass, sterling silver, ink toner
3.75 x 2 x 0.125”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Car tracks in the snow like calligraphic swoops. An empty sign marquee framing the sky. The graphic pattern is found in the foundation of ancient ruins. These and other mundane forms, patterns, and textures capture my attention and ask to be translated into a new form, one that is wearable. What these things share are impermanence and unevenness, a sense of serendipity. We cling to the idea of control and perfection, but these are imaginary and unattainable.

I try in my work to celebrate the slightly broken beauty in the world and in ourselves. There is irony in trying to capture the temporal and imperfect and make it precious in the form of jewelry. I often take life a bit too seriously. By making bold, asymmetrical, playful jewelry, I invite myself and others to cast off restrictive notions about life.

When I used to teach graphic design, one of my favorite typography projects to assign students was abstract letterform compositions. Cutting up and rearranging letterforms allows for appreciation of positive/negative space and the sensual or rigid forms of letters. It forced students to study the specific shapes of letters without the distraction of meaning. All these years later, I’ve embarked on a series of wearable type collages in that same spirit. The process involves ink toner applied to polymer clay in its uncured (unbaked) form, removing the paper to leave only the image. I add dimension and contrast with bits of colored clay that mirror some of the accidental cut-up letters.

Perhaps the viewer tries to decipher the letters, even though there’s nothing to figure out, only appreciating the forms. But in attempting to, a more intimate dialog is created between the wearer and the viewer.

Jane Pellicciotto
Type Collage Brooch, Gold and Orange, 2021
polymer clay, gold powder, ink toner
3.75 x 1 x 0.125”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
In this brooch, transparent clay as the canvas creates an extra element of dimension.

Perhaps the viewer tries to decipher the letters, even though there’s nothing to figure out, only appreciating the forms. But in attempting to, a more intimate dialog is created between the wearer and the viewer.

Luciano Pimienta
Biyuyo de 50, 2020
terra-cotta and wax
7.5 x 8 x 15”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My work explores dualities and the space found in the in-between. I am interested in the ephemeral, the natural world, and the seemingly permanent aspects of history. I use iconography linked to my experiences to explore the complexity found in what it means to be ’American.’

I use materials such as seeds, leaves, and clay as symbols for truth/healing, which I connect to the human condition. Nature becomes a collaborator as drying leaves curl or cut plants callous showing the passing of time. Re-creating images, objects, and memories allow me to look deeper at their significance to the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of Americanness.

Using personal narratives as a starting point for sculptures and time-based installations, I investigate themes of memory, desire, and healing. I am looking at inheritance across family generations. For example, the inherited belief of using labor as a tool for achieving dreams. Deciphering between the inherited, the acquired, and the imposed is where my work currently lies.

Luciano Pimienta
100 Dollars on a String, 2021
terra-cotta on paper, string, and tape
2.25 x 6 x 2.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My work explores dualities and the space found in the in-between. I am interested in the ephemeral, the natural world, and the seemingly permanent aspects of history. I use iconography linked to my experiences to explore the complexity found in what it means to be ’American.’

I use materials such as seeds, leaves, and clay as symbols for truth/healing, which I connect to the human condition. Nature becomes a collaborator as drying leaves curl or cut plants callous showing the passing of time. Re-creating images, objects, and memories allow me to look deeper at their significance to the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of Americanness.

Using personal narratives as a starting point for sculptures and time-based installations, I investigate themes of memory, desire, and healing. I am looking at inheritance across family generations. For example, the inherited belief of using labor as a tool for achieving dreams. Deciphering between the inherited, the acquired, and the imposed is where my work currently lies.

Luciano Pimienta
Three Ways to Make 50 Dollars, 2020
terra-cotta on paper
29 x 69”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My work explores dualities and the space found in the in-between. I am interested in the ephemeral, the natural world, and the seemingly permanent aspects of history. I use iconography linked to my experiences to explore the complexity found in what it means to be ’American.’

I use materials such as seeds, leaves, and clay as symbols for truth/healing, which I connect to the human condition. Nature becomes a collaborator as drying leaves curl or cut plants callous showing the passing of time. Re-creating images, objects, and memories allow me to look deeper at their significance to the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of Americanness.

Using personal narratives as a starting point for sculptures and time-based installations, I investigate themes of memory, desire, and healing. I am looking at inheritance across family generations. For example, the inherited belief of using labor as a tool for achieving dreams. Deciphering between the inherited, the acquired, and the imposed is where my work currently lies.

Linda Jumie Ra
Badass Espresso Mug - Carved, 2019
three mugs: carved clay
3 x 2.75 x 2.75”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My ceramic work is functional, minimal in form, and hand-crafted with graphic details. Feel-good words or 90’s nostalgic elements I’ve cherished are displayed in bold, illustrative hand-drawn or hand-carved typography.

Influenced by the deeply treasured “blind emboss” treatment in the graphic and print world, you will see this fondness expressed in my carved ceramic piece as a blind emboss texture on clay. The tactile quality is expressed in raised letterforms on a single colored clay containing a bold message: “BADASS”. Empowerment is expressed in the subtlety as you start or end your day with your BADASS mug.

Mick Schoon
Die-betes, 2021
clay
17 x 19 x 7”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This piece was inspired by early 2000’s pharmaceutical advertisements. The cartoonish aesthetics can mask serious side effects.

Die-abetes is an exploration and documentation of my struggles with diabetes and its monetary side effects. It shows the struggles between affording to maintain my health or rent. The cartoonish aesthetic is fun and inviting; however, it is much darker and sad upon further look.

Nanci Schrieber-Smith
Octopus (three views ) (from the Animal Tales Series), 2021
mixed media sculpture
10 x 8.5 x 10.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
In the ANIMAL TALES series, I join my love of stories and my love of animals with my compulsion to give new form and new meaning to the discards of our civilization. OCTOPUS:

What better animal from my Animal Tales series to submit to the Ink & Clay 45 than this natural ink producer! The repurposed book - Octopus, a factual Natural History by Mather, Anderson, and Wood is manipulated so that the printed type becomes a textural pattern floating behind the drawn image. Sheet glass from a repurposed picture frame is resized to fit the book. The front of the piece of glass is hand-drawn using glass/porcelain paint which is kiln-fired into the glass. The reverse side is painted in acrylic for color. The painted glass image is then permanently affixed to the book. Handmade glass beads and shells adorn the piece and the base.

FUN FACT ABOUT THE OCTOPUS:

· The Octopus does NOT have tentacles. They have 8 arms.

· The plural of Octopus is NOT Octopi. The plural is octopod.

· Because they have no skeleton, they can manage to fit themselves into tiny holes or crevasses.

· Octopus ink is toxic even to the octopus itself.

A. Seltzer
Hamlet's Dilemma-To B, or not to B, 2019
photopolymer intaglio etching - plate- 11.62 x 8.25
19.25 x 15.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
We are surrounded and bombarded by color, but the tonality of a monochromatic print has the power to stop us in our tracks. The unsaturated images command our attention because shape, form, texture, context, and the play of light and shadow are simplified with sharpness and freshness. They enable us to focus on the subject. They are ‘easy’ on the eye.

Photographic images are transformed by Seltzer into “one at a time” intaglio inked etchings that don’t utilize altered-reality manipulations. And the prints can’t be mechanically mass-produced with the stroke of a computer key.

Etchings have been created for centuries by the world’s greatest artists. The use of non-toxic photopolymer plates brings the intaglio tradition into the 21st Century.

I came upon a letterpress tray that had been prepared for printing and laughed out loud as I immediately saw an unintentional visual pun: the Shakespearean text, as a set, gave new meaning to the prose within Hamlet’s soliloquy. Hahnemühle Copperplate paper, Akua Ink, Charles Brand press.

Suzanne Sidebottom
Pieces of Peace, 2021
porcelain clay, underglazes
5 x 16 x 16”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Is it real, or is it a trick of the eye? To a casual observer, my sculptures appear real - combinations of books and boxes, completed with additions of crossword puzzles, newspaper clippings, paintbrushes, stamps, postcards, a pencil, or even old nails. In reality, they are still-life sculptures created from porcelain slabs that are manipulated, molded, and printed upon.

The sculptures force me to use every tool in my ‘mental clay toolbox’ to determine how I can best produce a sculpture that appears real to the viewer. Sometimes that means, rolling clay slabs across paper to produce a paper-like texture. Other times it means rolling slabs on a piece of wood, making a clay template to produce the center layer of a piece of cardboard, or using a particular surface to roll out a leather-like texture on a slab. The text comes from antique stamps or rubber stamps that I design and make. These stamps are inked with underglazes and printed on raw clay. Other methods of producing two-dimensional text and images are through artist-made decals that are applied and fired onto the clay. All of these methods require multiple firings, sometimes as many as five or six firings. Most completed art pieces feature a combination of printed, pressed, and applied textures and texts.

Trompe l’oeil is an art of illusion, a game, artists play with viewers to raise questions about the nature of art and perception. The challenge of making clay objects appear real, forces me to question how to make the viewer believe the artwork is real when they are made of clay. I want the viewer to interact with my pieces - touch them, feel them, and take a second glance. What you feel when you view my sculptures is not what you see... ‘It’s clay.’

Suzanne Sidebottom
Psyche of the Palette, 2020
porcelain clay, color decals, underglazes
3 x 12 x 12”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement 
Is it real, or is it a trick of the eye? To a casual observer, my sculptures appear real - combinations of books and boxes, completed with additions of crossword puzzles, newspaper clippings, paintbrushes, stamps, postcards, a pencil, or even old nails. In reality, they are still-life sculptures created from porcelain slabs that are manipulated, molded, and printed upon.

The sculptures force me to use every tool in my ‘mental clay toolbox’ to determine how I can best produce a sculpture that appears real to the viewer. Sometimes that means, rolling clay slabs across paper to produce a paper-like texture. Other times it means rolling slabs on a piece of wood, making a clay template to produce the center layer of a piece of cardboard, or using a particular surface to roll out a leather-like texture on a slab. The text comes from antique stamps or rubber stamps that I design and make. These stamps are inked with underglazes and printed on raw clay. Other methods of producing two-dimensional text and images are through artist-made decals that are applied and fired onto the clay. All of these methods require multiple firings, sometimes as many as five or six firings. Most completed art pieces feature a combination of printed, pressed, and applied textures and texts.

Trompe l'oeil is an art of illusion, a game, artists play with viewers to raise questions about the nature of art and perception. The challenge of making clay objects appear real, forces me to question how to make the viewer believe the artwork is real when they are made of clay. I want the viewer to interact with my pieces - touch them, feel them, and take a second glance. What you feel when you view my sculptures is not what you see... ‘It's clay.’  

Rebecca Spilecki
A Common Thread, 2020
relief print
20 x 16”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
My favored art-making practices are printmaking and sculpture, wherein I experiment with the myriad media and methodologies concomitant with each. Thematic arcs in my work tend to vary depending on said media, but language is an element I find to be especially malleable, unbound by either motif or medium. In my print, papermaking, and watermarking work, I often experiment by layering seen and unseen text, exploring the various shades of meaning which can be derived from said text and its sometimes very literal subtext. Working with text overall, I look at the boundary between language and imagery: attempting to find where the resonance of image or object may be amplified by a thoughtful phrase or where the communicative power of words can be crowded out by a more visual, visceral experience.

Recently, I’ve been exploring frameworks and viewpoints-both literally, as in series involving windows and gates, but also figuratively, investigating structures of oppression, power, and privilege. In print, I look at a wide array of social justice concerns regarding everything from race to reproductive battles to trans rights. In sculpture, this tends to be more centered on explorations of the female body, often focusing on reproduction, maternity, or deliberate materiality. I lean towards solidity in physicality, towards intimate but largely asexual portrayals, frank and often unpretty. Despite this, though, I simultaneously refuse to ground myself too firmly in practical reality, instead choosing either mythologizing the norm or norming the mythological, exploring the limits of that liminality and striving not to hem too close to either disparate pole. This remains the case whether the mythology involved relates to the ancient stories I loved consuming as a child-or if it pertains to the more modern one in which I was raised. When portraying the reality of the imperfect human figure, I want to counter the exhaustion of the everyday by offering a tinge of situational unreality in order to reassert the boundlessness and semi-mystically of psychological existence even within a typically disdained or ignored form. In those moments I do leave behind the body, I turn instead often to creatures unreal or extinct, trying still to ground them and offer them quieter, somehow still relatable life.

Ceramic is central to my sculptural endeavors; the fact of literal earth is, in itself, grounding. Still, much of my recent work has been with polymer clays. I’ve been capitalizing on their wide range of colors, but more importantly, I’ve been able to explore their literal greater plasticity, increased flexibility, and longer untreated open time to experiment with the pliability of human expressiveness. I hope to translate these exercises back to traditional clay, allowing for deeper investment in the aforementioned psychological tableau, richer selves within physical forms rife with detailed extremities and body rolls, reaffirming personhood and value in figures and choices which are consistently societally undervalued, demeaned, or degraded.

Jane Springwater
Just In Time, 2016
drawing; ink on paper
48 x 48 x 2”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
I find meaning through understanding the order and structure of things. Visual order expresses relationships; in some cases, mathematical and mechanical, in others, natural and organic. In pursuing this interest, my work incorporates elements of both free-flowing and highly structured expression. I establish a set of rules that then governs the repetition of marks and gestures. I investigate the potential of these systems to generate intricate patterns and unexpectedly evocative forms. My goal is to slow time for the viewer and encourage extended studies both close up and from afar, in a quest for quietude and contemplation and thoughtful response from the viewer.

This drawing is part of my Decelerating Series, which involves repetitive mark-making according to a set of rules I devised using a single element or ‘particle’ of form -- like a handwritten character or an invented glyph. The marks scrawl across the page in an ordered but organic fashion, revealing my hand in the irregularity of the repeated gestures.

Jane Springwater
Time Interval, 2021
drawing; ink on paper
53 x 40 x 2”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
I find meaning through understanding the order and structure of things. Visual order expresses relationships; in some cases, mathematical and mechanical, in others, natural and organic. In pursuing this interest, my work incorporates elements of both free-flowing and highly structured expression. I establish a set of rules that then governs the repetition of marks and gestures. I investigate the potential of these systems to generate intricate patterns and unexpectedly evocative forms. My goal is to slow time for the viewer and encourage extended studies both close up and from afar, in a quest for quietude and contemplation and thoughtful response from the viewer.

This drawing is part of my Decelerating Series, which involves repetitive mark-making according to a set of rules I devised using a single element or 'particle' of form -- like a handwritten character or an invented glyph. The marks scrawl across the page in an ordered but organic fashion, revealing my hand in the irregularity of the repeated gestures.

Caryl St. Ama
Speak Truth To Power, 2018
rubbing with encaustic monotype
22 x 14”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
For more than a decade, Caryl St. Ama has been working in the ancient medium of encaustic, consisting of beeswax, damar resin (a naturally occurring tree sap), and pigment. These pieces used incised, embossed, and fused wax to explore life in the Gulf Coast, specifically after the BP oil spill and Hurricane’s Rita, Katrina, and Ike. This led to a period of work responding to weather events in California. St. Ama began to reflect on the disasters created by fire, earthquakes, and floods. Assaulted by the political climate beginning in 2016 through 2020, her work began to incorporate political slogans and text. The medium of encaustic is very flexible, and her works on paper use the pigmented beeswax as a printmaking media to explore this unprecedented period in American history. Speak Truth To Power, an encaustic monotype, came out of this period. The medium of encaustic has allowed St. Ama to work in a process-oriented manner and explore the areas of ecology, personal politics, and natural vs. man-made disasters she finds so compelling.

Howard Steenwyk
L.A. Times - May 09, 2021, 2021
2 color screenprint on canvas
25 x 20 x 1.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
Collage of type and graphic elements taken from the May 09, 2021 edition of the L.A. Times.

A collage layout is divided into a checkerboard of alternating red and black squares without regard for where the color breaks occurred within the image’s individual components. The flat graphic colorizing method produced an unexpected depth and motion to the piece.

Kathy Yoshihara
Free, 2021
hand-built, cone 10 stoneware,
soldered and sandblasted glass
17 x 11.75 x 12.25”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This piece is dedicated to Baby Jerry, who is still interned in the Manzanar cemetery. He is on top of the Soul Consoling Monument (my interpretation), surrounded by a lotus flower. The lotus flower is a Buddhist symbol of enlightenment, purity, and rebirth. Jerry is now transformed into a Jizo (a guardian deity of children) and finally able to leave camp. The base is a top of an old Japanese wooden box. It is dirty, old, and worn, like the conditions at the Manzanar.

Kathy Yoshihara
Mieko, 2021
cone 10 stoneware, found box, computer generated art
17.75 x 13.25 x 6.5”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
This piece deals with the Japanese American internment experience and its effect on future generations. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and illegally imprisoned. Their crime is looking like the enemy. They practiced gaman –to accept the unbearable with patience and dignity. They buried their memories, anger, and feelings of shame as they became “model Americans”. Most were silent, never speaking about their experiences.

This piece is for my aunt-in-law, Mieko Sakata. With no direct heirs, I felt it was important to create a memorial for her and to honor all those that were imprisoned. Among the mementos found after her death was her Manzanar camp high school yearbook –Our World. Her yearbook photo appears in the girl’s hands.

The suitcase represents the “take only what you can carry” rule. The girl is searching for answers/clues of camp life and how it changed generations. What did they choose to take, and what did they bring home? The glass floor keeps the buried memories at bay. Hints are periodically poking out, like an archaeological dig. The guard tower and barbed wire on the glass background represent the barrier to the outside hostile and desolate environment. The quote is as relevant today as it was during World War II. The box is a found produce crate, representing the deplorable living conditions and a nod to the many Japanese farmers.

Sigrid Zahner
The Old Ways are the Best Ways, 2021
slip-cast porcelain, slips, stains, gold luster
12 x 7 x 6”
Image use courtesy of the artist

Artist Statement
I make work out of fragments as I feel that this is a metaphor for the way our lives are...disjointed and unrelated parts that make up a cohesive and meaningful whole. My goal is to supply the audience with a source for thought and personal speculation rather than present a didactic point of view, an attempt on my part to allow the viewer to experience the poetics of ambiguity. This piece incorporates text from an old newspaper personal ad that in its entirety reads: ‘I am not ugly, buy me dinner. I am looking for a man in his mid-40’s who can play the violin quite well’. This, together with the cast head of a British soldier from Napoleonic times on top of an old cast light fixture fitting, is a commentary on the passage of time and disappearance into the history of things we see as modern during their time. Everything is replaceable.