Lay of the Land, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, 2010
In celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Kansas City Art Institute, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art presents Lay of the Land featuring solo exhibitions by the current ceramics faculty: Cary Esser, George Timock, and Paul Donnelly. Also on view are works by Victor Babu and Misty Gamble.
From the exhibition announcement text:
“Cary Esser finds inspiration for her current work in the geometry of the natural and material world, informed by the history of ceramics, love of nature, architecture ornament and pattern. Esser has created systems of glazed tactile modular “tiles” of mass and vertically that can be arranged and rearranged in infinite combinations creating the paradox of permanence and the possibility of change.
These “tiles” group together to form a series of high and low topographical maps of unexplored territories, some glazed vibrantly with color, others sparkling crystalline white, revealing and obscuring the form and texture of the clay underneath. Made from the earth itself, the clay reveals cracks, fissures, and strata that evoke geology and biology, landscape and cell.”
(Re) Form
(Re) Form explores recent work by graduates of the KCAI ceramics program from the late 1960s to the present. Curated by Catherine L. Futter, the Helen Jane and R. Hugh Uhlmann Curator of Decorative Arts at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the exhibition includes pieces primarily in ceramics that have been completed in the last two years and display a wide range of perspectives. The artists invited to participate in the exhibition include well-known, mid-career and emerging artists who offer a variety of viewpoints — from the vessel and functional work to sculptures, installations and performance art.
Connecting with Contemporary Sculpture, Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 2010
Labyrinth Shield: French Garden was exhibited in the Connecting with Contemporary Sculpture exhibition at the Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri at Columbia, from January 30-May 16, 2010. The piece was borrowed from the collection of First National Bank, Columbia, Missouri.
Published January 24, 2010 in The Columbia Daily Tribune, A Voyage of Ideas and Reflections by Aarik Danielsen highlights discussion of the exhibition with the curator Mary Pixley and several of the featured artists.
“A sculpture exists in our three-dimensional space, so it’s part of that world, it’s not an extension from it created by illusion,” the museum’s associate curator said……”It connects with that tactile aspect of our very nature as humans.”
