Wednesday, November 14, 2012, 6pm
Tower Auditorium
Bakalar & Paine Galleries
621 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Free
This panel, held in conjunction with the exhibition Earth & Alchemy: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture, features artists Syd Carpenter, Annabeth Rosen, and Paul Swenbeck ’91, as well as Emily Zilber, the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It will be moderated by MassArt ceramics professor Janna Longacre and is free and open to the public.
The Earth & Alchemy exhibition (on view September 24–November 24, 2012 in the Stephen D. Paine Gallery) celebrates contemporary ceramic sculpture and showcases a cross-generational selection of over two-dozen influential artists. Exploring a range of ideas encompassing conceptualism, social activism, materiality, and humor, this exhibition presents a survey of approaches to ceramics that often push the boundaries of one of the world’s oldest mediums. Whether through expansive sculptures, extraterrestrial installations, or fantastical vessels, the artists included in the exhibition have developed novel techniques—such as using oven-baked backyard clay covered with house paints, layering slip over glaze to create richly textured and encrusted surfaces, or silk-screening digital imagery onto porcelain. Earth & Alchemy examines the depth and range of ceramic practice today—a macrocosm of clay.
Featured artists: Yo Akiyama, Susannah Biondo-Gemmell, Syd Carpenter, Sam Chung, Mark Cooper, Laurent Craste, Bean Finneran, Klara Kristalova, Kate MacDowell, Warren Mather, Naoko Matsumoto, J.J. McCracken, Megumi Naitoh, Valéria Nascimento, Kamio Ogata, Elizabeth Orleans, Annabeth Rosen, Takayuki Sakiyama, Linda Swanson, Paul Swenbeck, Akio Takamori, Xavier Toubes, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Jason Walker, and Kurt Weiser.
Also on view
On view in the Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery is Zandra Rhodes: A Lifelong Love Affair with Textiles. Since her first solo collection in 1969, internationally renowned British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes has been creating brilliant and imaginative fabrics and clothing. This retrospective, her first solo exhibition on the East Coast, presents a selection of Rhodes’s textiles and more than 40 high fashion garments, accessories, and ephemera.
About The Bakalar & Paine Galleries
Massachusetts College of Art and Design is home to the largest free, contemporary art space in New England. The Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery and the Stephen D. Paine Gallery showcase dynamic and thought-provoking contemporary exhibitions by emerging to established artists. The galleries also offer lectures and events that are meant to encourage creative curiosity, acting as a hub within the college where the community gathers to learn, be inspired, exchange ideas, and celebrate artistic ideas and accomplishments. Free and open to the public, the galleries are a venue for national and international art and serve as a vital cultural resource for the college, Boston, and beyond.
About Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) is one of the top colleges of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1873, MassArt has a legacy of leadership as the only independent public college of art and design in the country and the nation’s first art school to grant a degree. The college offers a comprehensive range of baccalaureate and graduate degrees in art and design, all taught by world-class faculty, along with continuing education and youth programs designed to encourage individual creativity. MassArt’s MFA is the top-ranked graduate fine art program in Massachusetts, and one of the top 25 graduate schools of fine art in the country. Our downtown Boston campus offers more than 1,000,000 square feet of studios, workshops and galleries in walking distance of Boston’s world-class museums. Applications are now open for Fall 2013. For more information visit www.massartgraduateprograms.org. Whether at home in Boston or on the other side of the globe, the artists and designers of MassArt are dedicated to making a difference in their communities and around the world. For more information, visit www.massart.edu.
