May 2013
10 posts
Learning from the Portland craft scene & Alma... →
Sarah Hart, participant in Portland Selects, is all about the craft of chocolatey confections. Read about her business, Alma Chocolate, and visit MoCC to visit her bowl, on view in Object Focus: The Bowl, Engage + Use.
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5:30pm, Wednesday May 15
The video documentation of Craft Mystery Cult’s performance on the roof of Museum of Contemporary Craft arrives at the museum, freshly burned onto a disc by MoCC videographer, Peter Faasse, PNCA ‘15. To give you a hint: the performance involved ritualistically imbibing a mysterious herbal liquor inspired by the constellation Leo, concocted by Portland Apothecary.
I have to admit...
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4pm, Wednesday May 15
Nicole Nathan, Curator of Collections, queues up Transference, a collaboration of glass artist Andy Paiko and sound artist Ethan Rose, that explores the potential of the bowl as an object that projects rather than contains. Visit MoCC to see this installation of five singing glass bowls, on view in Object Focus: The Bowl, Engage + Use.
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12noon, Wednesday May 15
Artist and activist Michael J. Strand, (Fargo, ND), meets the urban farmers and artists of Project Grow, an organization that participated in Bowls Around Town, a community-driven project launched in conjunction with Object Focus: The Bowl, Engage + Use. See the photos and ephemera generated by Project Grow, on view through September 21.
Participate in Bowls Around Town by visiting the...
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10:30am, Wednesday May 15
Ayumi Horie tweaks the arrangement of Circulate, an installation of bowls on loan from 18 artists that Museum visitors are welcome to touch, hold, consider, and even take home and use. Experience it for yourself beginning tomorrow at MoCC!
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9:30am, Wednesday May 15
We begin our press preview of Object Focus: The Bowl, Engage and Use, and Soundforge.
Don’t be too jealous— the exhibitions open to the public tomorrow morning at 11am, and don’t forget about the curatorial walkthrough, Friday May 17, 11am.
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Portland Selects
A preview of what’s to come…
Artist Kris Paul’s unfired ceramic bowls on their way to the kiln. Once finished, these bowls will be delivered to Park Kitchen, where chef and owner Scott Dolich will be using them to serve a seasonal menu item beginning June 1st.
Portland Selects at Museum of Contemporary Craft brings together ceramic and culinary artists in unique collaborative...
The Bowl’s Blessing.
Written by Gloria Gerace
My love affair with bowls began many, many years ago on my first trip to Europe. Breakfast in a cheap pensione included coffee and milk, served in bowls, not cups. Raising the simple ceramic filled with strong coffee and foamy milk to my lips, I marveled at the mundane act transformed into a blessing. That bowl warmed my hands, captured my heart, and prompted...
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Written by Romy Northover
I set up my studio ‘No.’ at the Japanese run Togei Kyoshitsu in Manhattan. I feel connected to the earth at the basest level in the busiest city I’ve ever lived in. I recently joined with my good friend from Togei, Shino Takeda, to form KATAKANA NY - A side project to explore and expand our ceramic design through supper clubs, to feel the season...
Michael J. Strand's Bowls Around Town premieres at... →
Michael J. Strand (michaeljstrand.com) working with the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR launches “The Bowls Around Town Project” as part of the …
April 2013
29 posts
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Mario Petrirena
Sorrows Beyond Measure, 2011
Clay
2.5 x 19 x 9 inches
Mario Petrirena is a potter from Decatur, Georgia. This submission came to us via: curatorial@museumofcontemporarycraft.org
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The Oregon Potters Association Bowl Poll!
At the Oregon Potters Association Annual Showcase this weekend, MoCC presented the Bowl Poll, a seemingly benign contest that evolved into a hotly contested fracas. The premise was simple: we asked OPA visitors to vote for one of 15 spectacular bowls currently on view in Object Focus: The Bowl, Reflect + Respond.
No evil lurking here… Only Lucie Rie, Laura Andreson, Bob Stocksdale, Glen...
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Written by Mich Conklin
As a window into the daily ritual of dinnertime, this bowl, generously given to me by my mother-in-law, is also a beloved portrait of a life well lived and a family well reared. Salad with mayonnaise dressing is what my husband recalls coming forth from this bowl to the four siblings sitting around the table. Dinners were never quiet or tense. A quickly mumbled grace...
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PNCA illustration student Zoe McGuire is inspired by Object Focus: The Bowl, Reflect + Respond
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PNCA illustration student Taylor Smith is inspired by Object Focus: The Bowl, Reflect + Respond
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PNCA illustration student Molly Mendoza is inspired by Object Focus: The Bowl, Reflect + Respond
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PNCA illustration student Michelle Fraczek’s rendering of bowls featured in Object Focus: The Bowl, Reflect + Respond.
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PNCA illustration student Ben Vanderwerff is inspired by Shelia Fournier’s stoneware bowl, (top), and Bob Stocksdale’s turned wood bowl, (bottom), on view in Object Focus: The Bowl, Reflect + Respond
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Written by Dan Anderson
Approximately ten years ago, I fired this stoneware bowl—with a white feldspathic glaze on it—in my Edwardsville, Illinois, “Mounds” anagama wood kiln. The creator of the bowl, my long-time close friend, Robert W. Archambeau from Winnipeg, Manitoba, recognized my magnetic pull to his bowl the moment I un-stacked it from the wood firing. Robert gave it to me...
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I hold you each one in my hands unknown to me but felt in the world present now gone this bowl a reminder of you of us and we carry each other without and within.
Naomi J. Falk is an artist and educator based in Williamsburg, VA. Image: Naomi J. Falk, Swallow(ed), installation view, 2006, porcelain, saltwater, reclaimed wood, 240 inches diameter overall; Courtesy of the artist ...
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Two of My Bowls
Written by Ulysses Grant Dietz
I don’t do art is the line I’ve used for decades. I do decorative arts; and therefore in terms of ceramics, I do pots. OK, tiles, too; but this bit is about pots. In my 2003 publication of the Newark Museum’s studio ceramics collection, Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics From Function to Fantasy, I finally go the chance to talk about the difference between a...
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ODE TO BOWLS
Written by Carolyn Miller
I love bowls, and their freight of emptiness.
I love their shape, like the sun and moon, and their hollows,
like the bed of the sea, and their shiny
rounded sides, and their edges, thick as rope
or thin as shell. I love their patience and
their trusting openness, their strength and their round,
delighted mouths. I love their heft and the way
their flat...
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Hand-built stoneware serving bowl made from a single slab of clay. Stenciled black slip decoration and copper matt glaze. Made by Hayne Bayless, Sideways Studio, Ivoryton, CT
This submission came to us via email at: curatorial@museumofcontemporarycraft.org
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The Gift
Written by Kaaren Klingel
Where do you come from
bowl of green?
Clay of a riverbank
glaze of a sheen
that matches the grasses
matches the leaves
even perfectly matches the sleeves
of this soft shirt I wear as I touch its curves
and finger the spiral
that marks its heart
centered inside
like a spell
“This is the way,
All will be well”—
Where do you come...
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Written by Jason Sturgill
When the Object Focus: The Bowl came about I tried to examine my relationships with bowls to try and uncover anything of significance to write about. I scoured our house which is full of objects but I couldn’t find a bowl that I would consider a “desert island object.”
I was surprised to discover this because I knew there were bowls that I’ve...
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Objective Clay
Written by Brian R. Jones
I graduated from college in 2001 and was very excited about ceramics, making pots, and moving onto the next part of my education, (to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a special student). I had a chance to take a road trip out to the mid-West—Minnesota and Wisconsin—to check out the legendary ceramics scene. I had been made aware of Minnesota potters since my first...
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Written by Michaela Bancud
I have a white ceramic child’s soup bowl from France made by Axis. There is a little white house with a red roof in the center that is revealed as you consume the soup. When the bowl is full it looks like the house is in a flood. I bought it in 2000 about the time I got married and many of my peers seemed to be getting married around the same time. I needed a wedding...
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Written by Jim Gottuso
Potters, unlike most other people, probably think about bowls regularly. I have been pondering what compelling idea(s) may represent such a ubiquitous, and ancient form and have been somewhat stumped. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the bowl actually predated the wheel as prehistoric peoples evolved to replace their cupped hands with something less leaky with the...
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Submitted by Bob Pool
I made this bowl in 2012. I was working on a new direction of decoration and made this with the feeling of breaking through obstacles. When I opened the kiln I saw Angry Birds.
I made this bowl. I call it Red Net after a plankton net filled with golden sea creatures. I sponge-stamped copper-red glaze on temmoku, and accented it with rutile dots. The...
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A Sunken Cargo of Mochaware Bowls
Written by Robert Hunter
Resting 6000 feet beneath the Mediterranean Sea’s surface for nearly 200 years, this cargo of British-made Mochaware bowls was archaeologically recovered in 2006. The bowls, which never found their way to a merchant’s shelf or a housewife’s kitchen cupboard, retain their bright colors and factory freshness. Counter intuitive to the intricately hand applied slip...
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What makes this bowl special?
Written by Deborah Lerner
It is visually appealing to the eye, soothing to the touch and functional. The emotional connection to the bowl is creating it from a ball of clay to the finished product and making it one of a kind. Most of all, it belongs to me!
Deborah Lerner is based in Coral Spring, FL. This submission came to us via email at:...
Written by Barbara-Lee Orloff
Paul Bennett, (Sisters, OR), is renowned for his creative drawing technique. He decorates with birds, flowering plants, leaves, cats, and combination images. I own this bowl and many of Paul’s porcelain pieces and paintings. While Paul no longer decorates and designs ceramics, his focus continues to be Northwest subjects in watercolor and colored pencil. A variety...
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Written by Bonnie Cooper
I am a potter from Northampton, Massachusetts. The Form Fitted Bowls are my favorite bowl sets. I threw and altered the porcelain bowls to present food in a different way. Objects that challenge habits of use are what I set out to make.
In over 30 years of being a potter, I am often presented with the question of the functionality of my work. I answer this question...
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CENTERING
Written by Arlene Distler
Sometimes with your new frailness
we barely touch,
link body to body
by just a finger,
the way a potter
joins thumbs to allow palms
to press down and in
on the clay, centering it.
Linking hands this way
helps still the potter,
allows the unformed clay
to be opened up,
shapes it into a vessel
that will be filled
and used to...
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REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING OF MAKING BOWLS
Written by Jason Starin, ‘11
Due to the kiln firing requirement of turning clay into ceramic, all clay objects need to be made hollow. Therefore, a ceramic sculpture can be thought of as an inverted bowl resting on its lip rather than its foot. The simplest of these forms can be made using the pinch pot technique. Although my practice is based in ceramic sculpture, I thoroughly enjoy making...
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Written by Robert Hunter
In eighteenth-century Anglo-American culture, the punch bowl was an indispensable vessel in every household above the most humble class. Millions of examples were produced by British manufactures in earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. Indeed, the history of the eighteenth–century British ceramic industry is reflected in these ritual vessels intended for the...
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Written by Meghan Chalmers-McDonald, ‘14
What is a bowl? To potters it is a thing. The thing. It is often our first creation, a bowl pinched from the clay, or coiled up into existence. It is the first form taught on the wheel, the object we will throw or make most often through our potting careers. It is a meditation, a kōan to be repeated over and over until we get it right by some chance of...
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BOWLS DON'T NEED TO BE PRETTY
Written by Cheryl Rade
About 13 years ago, my husband David acquired two antique wooden bowls from his father. The bowls had been given to David’s mother a few years earlier by a family friend, who thought she would appreciate their beauty as well as their history. Reportedly, the bowls were found on the Oregon Trail and not much else is known. There are no letters or any form of...
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Written by Rachel Cox, ‘11
A bowl was the first ceramic object I made as an adult, and it changed my life. In a beginning ceramics class, I rolled thin coils of soft gray clay and wound them around and up, pressing and smoothing the coils into each other, until I had created a satisfying volume. I pressed a sprig of rosemary into the side of the bowl for texture and dipped the bowl in a...
March 2013
47 posts
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Written by Stephanie Snyder
Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ Insect Heart with Ladle is a moody, eldritch thing. Ashen and earth-toned, eccentrically shaped by and imprinted with the artist’s body, the work hearkens to a preindustrial age or, perhaps, a postindustrial future. Like all of Hutchins’ objects, Insect Heart hums with the artist’s chi, shunning refinement in favor of an untainted and...
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ATTACKS OF NOSTALGIA
Written by Ali Gradischer, ‘11
The Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland is a place where artists flock to gain individual completeness through quiet contemplation and deep concentration regarding their work. It is also a place where artists leave things behind. I left things behind. One of the rooms at Nes was set aside for storing all the various supplies, clothing, and equipment left...
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Written by Rob Walker
“This,” according to the text cited below, “is an actual bowl.” Technically the text does not refer specifically to this actual bowl, but one just like it. In any case I don’t own any iteration of this actual bowl. I don’t particularly want to own this bowl, or even a bowl just like it. Although I suppose if someone gave me such a thing, I’d take it. You can never have...
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"I think this is perfect."
Photo by Ken Forkish, cookbook author, baker, and owner of Ken’s Artisan Bakery and Ken’s Artisan Pizza, Portland, OR. Ken will be a featured participants in Portland Selects, an installation of bowls on loan from local culinary aficionados that will open as part of Object Focus: The Bowl, Engage + Use, May 16, 2013.
Object Focus: The Bowl is an exhibition that examines the...
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Written by Sarah Chenoweth Davis, ‘14
For the past 15 years, the entirety of my potting life, I have carried with me, in my mind’s eye, an Alev Siesbye bowl. This bowl is the horizon I chase, a place or state of reverential beauty and humility. This bowl is not the goal in and of itself—to replicate it or even attempt to simulate it—but it is a spiritual guide, directing me, as one also...
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HOW TO WASH
Written by Iris A. Law
First, set the rice bowl in the sink.
Apply the sponge until
the sides are sleek with suds.
When the tap groans to life,
rinse, holding the bowl low
in the basin so that the water
does not spatter.
When you set it by to drip,
notice how the still life looks
incomplete, imagine
a second bowl, propped up,
leaning on yours to dry, imagine
a woman...
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Written by Janet Koplos
This undated but unquestionably early John Mason bowl is a surprise. Although Mason worked in production pottery as a young man—about the time he met Peter Voulkos—his entire career has focused on large-scale sculpture. Of course, almost anyone who works in clay will at some time make a mug or a vase, for a fund-raiser if nothing else. But Mason is so thoroughly...
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A MATHEMATICIAN PREPARES A MEAL
Written by Nandini Ranganathan
Nandini Ranganathan is Associate Professor of Mathematics and Chair, Department of Liberal Arts, PNCA, Portland, OR
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Written by Whitney Lowe
“I do not seek a way to mark the earth or the images offered by its plasticity, or the colours that evoke warmth; I seek those signs that can be detached, that will come out of it and that I am able to understand.”
–Nanni Valentini, 1976
In the discussion of significant contributions to the European Art Informel–the equivalent of Abstract Expressionism in...
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A Bowl Filled with Love
Written by Liz Hartmann
Over food we gather. We visit friends. We grieve. We fall in love. And with each occasion the bowl is filled. Grandma filled the bowl with our favorite Sunday dinner. Mama fills it with fruit and nuts at Christmas. Daddy fills it with the delicious Indian curry he has mastered. The memories of our meals together, share a common bowl.
Through food, we live. Though love,...
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Written by Daniel Duford
I don’t know much about Glen Lukens. My knowledge of his biography is sketchy and full of very broad strokes. I associate Lukens with a dimly patched together sense of California in the first half of the twentieth century. His California is an Arts and Crafts state, with the likes of Robinson Jeffers writing tough poems about the central coast. The California evoked by...
