Curatorial Statement
Gallery Closing Reception: Friday, April 26, 2019 from 5-7 pm MT
Exhibition Posted Online: Monday, March 4, 2019 by 10 am MT
Over recent years, there has been a noticeable shift in contemporary ceramics from the vessel to the figure. As artists strive to create work that both reflects their personal experiences, and comments on our larger world, the use of the figure, including its many animal forms, has been utilized to address a variety of complex conceptual and emotional content through varying degrees of accuracy and abstraction.
For some artists the animal is an oblique reference to human condition and human emotions, for others, it’s really about the experience of the animals themselves.The animal is becomes a symbol that illustrates the idea of not quite looking at a thing to see it more clearly-or looking at something else other than the actual thing to gain further understanding.
Invited to co-curate an exhibition in support of their Spring 2019 workshop, Russell Wrankle and Kate MacDowell have put together a group of both emerging and established artists who are connected by their use of the figure as subject matter. The artists of Animals Among Us utilize the figure as a symbol of the personal, the political, the social, and the psychological.
Participating artists include: Ariel Bowman, Austyn Taylor, Ben Jordan, Bethany Krull, Elliot Kayser, Hannah Lee Cameron, Jason Walker, Kate MacDowell, Kelley Donahue, Lindsay Pichaske, Richard James, Russell Wrankle, Shauna Fahley, and Wesley Wright.