Painterly Ceramics

According to Merriam-Webster, painterly describes something as: 1. Relating to or typical of a painter or 2. Suggestive or characteristic of a painting or the art of painting marked by openness of form which is not linear and in which sharp outlines are lacking. Painters enjoy this openness and freedom in their material. However, this is a freedom that is not limited to paint. The word painterly describes attributes as related to this sense of gestural expression. Thought this show the painterly aesthetics’ relevance to ceramic art will be examined.

Linda Sorman, a 2003 Alfred MFA graduate in ceramics, is a ceramic sculptor. Sormin uses wheel-throwing, slab-building, press molding, and pinching to describe a conversation that becomes the “’narration’ of (her)... abstraction.” In both thought and practice she looks to eloquently disturb known ideas about the ceramic material and the processes used in creating ceramic art. Again both physically and conceptually, the work questions enclosure, disclosure, porosity and density, as well as the relationships between mass and weigh, strength and construction, balance and movement, and construction and collapse. She accomplishes this by burrowing and colonizing forms, taken from her narration, within eachother while involving chance, desire, risk, failure, and surprise. She does not hesitate to attach wet coils to dry ones or even build wet off fired structures. Getting the clay to behave in new ways by allowing it to misbehave again contradicts preconception of the ceramic material. Sormin is excited and intrigued by “mistakes” which encourages her exploration of the material by using techniques known not to work. By actively questioning the ceramic material she gains a greater understanding of what clay can or will do and mean. She is motivated by the drama of the material and her continued questioning of ceramics is an evident strength in the precarious space where her work excises. (Sormin 2003)

In Sormin’s “Vernalia”(2003) the element of touch is very evident. It is architecturally constructed with linear units that form a lattices structure. Through the handling of material the linear units loose their sharpness resulting in a painterly object reminiscent of layered brush strokes instead of a constructed feeling like a building structure or skeleton. Loose craftsmanship in this sculpture, as well as attraction to material and its reaction to the hand are the result of the contradictions Sormin is inspired by. Not only is she questioning ceramic construction though her process but she is creating a feeling of dilapidated construction by suggesting previous stability whileusing a system in a painterly and gesturally free way. A relation between interior and exterior is introduced through the impaired view of the inside as well as by its pores outside. The suggestion, but ultimate lack of geometric form as well as volume of negative space and its interruption by loosely linear forms are direct relations to the definition of painterly. The negative space provides openness and although the structure suggests linear form, in the end what could be called an outline blurs the space where the piece starts and stops instead of framing it. A general feeling of decompostion, relic, and ruin emanate from the piece. The piece is 40” tall and sits on a pedestal that is angled so the corner is facing the viewer. The size and it’s height form the floor, as well as the spot lighting that cast shadow around the piece draw you in. These elements all attribute to the darkness, foreboding, dangerous, and intimidating result of the presentation.

In relation to painting Sormin’s work is consistent with some of the moves made by Francis Bacon. Bacon’s pictorial concerns and expressive techniques are eccentric in comparison to those of his contemporary modern painters just as Sormin works in a process that generally conflicts with the ideas and “rules” of the ceramic material. Consistent with Sormin’s dealings with construction through destruction, as Bacon progressed though his career he destroyed all of his early work. Bacon is known for his extreme anatomical and physiognomic distortions as principles of his expression. His violent recklessness in physicality, iconographic, and formal allusions are analogues Sormin’s handling of ceramic. Finally, Bacon’s use of a space frame device in his caged animals and enclosed figures relate to the encased objects in Sormin’s lattices. (Fuller 1985)

Lee Somers, a 2006 Alfred MFA graduate, is also a ceramic sculptor. Through travel, Somers has been interested in broadening connections to and senses of space and history. Using these connections he has rooted himself in three places: His home, the landscape and American Indian ruins in the American Southwest, Alfred, NY, the core of his academic and cultural education, and China, where he has built a relationship with the global ceramic community. In finding connection to these places as well as between them Somers discovered a relationships between architecture, landscape, and culture. In order to achieve consistency while discussing these relationships he defines these terms; architecture as the constructions of man, landscape as the depiction of natural scenes and the aesthetic approach to the outdoors, weather, and the shifting of light (through this definition he aligns himself with some painterly vernacular consistent through the execution of his work), and culture as customs, arts, and social interaction as achievements of human intellect in a social group. With these definitions he explores how these three factors rely on each other and blend together. Architecture is a representation of culture and is impressed upon by landscape. Architecture can become landscape through ruin. “Architecture and landscape often find their most dramatic expression in decay, ruin, and destruction.” Both looking at ruin, this conversation relates to Linda Sormin’s thoughts and processes. Perhaps ceramic sculpture that aligns itself with the painterly follows a trend of speaking to dilapidation, as opposed to rigid construction. Ruins tend to portray the morality of culture and the frailty of the human condition. By defining the three influential surroundings by their ruins and rubble Somers found a connection in clay. From the ceramics left over by the American Indians at Mesa Verda where he grew up to the shards found during excavation of buildings constructed on top of kiln sights in Jingdezhen, China and from the dumpsters of Harder Hall in Alfred ceramic shards became trail markers in his life.

In making Somers attempts to weave matrixes of material creating relationships that he hopes in the end transcend the materials used. This is similar to the conversations Sormin creates by working material in contradicting manners. Like Sormin and relevant to a painterly hand Somers is interested in the balances between structure and chaos, symmetry and disorder, and repetition and variety. Somers addresses these relationships as well as the relationship previously discussed between architecture and landscape by mixing sculpture and video in instillation. He builds sketches or “unfinished object” to investigate pattern and structure. Then using both built and found ceramic objects arranges “action paintings”. These are composite arrangements without any predetermined form. Somers sidelines the plastic forming process in favor of collecting, cataloging, and curating these temporary and spontaneous gestural aesthetic exercises. He is dependent on imagination and a process of productive daydreaming as this shift from making to finding or from architecture to landscape occurs. (Somers 2006)

Lee Somer’s “Roadtrip”(2006) is a mixed media installation. It is a composition constructed from layering up of individual found ceramic pieces. The parts vary in color, surface, form, and size. They sit on the wall in the space occupied by a painting and act as brush strokes braking up the composition as well as providing it. The work is a representation of the timeline of travel and the jumbled cross sections of the passage thought landscape. Somers uses video along with his ceramic shard collage to describe two feelings of space, one being the landscape and the other the map guiding you though. This relationship shows the change in space though ones experience of it. It is not cut and dry whether the video or the collage represents the landscape of the map. The video acts to suggest the viewer becomes part of or participates in the momenr maybe representative of the landscape and the things you learn by being in the space. The video is however flat on the wall presenting the space two dimensionally like a map. At the same time, the three-dimensional representation of space provided by the ceramic college could bring us into the space but is static and unchanging like a map.

Linda Swanson, a 2005 Alfred MFA grad, is a ceramic artist. She is interested in the paradox between humans and nature, humans being part of nature however separated by their consciousness, consciousness being what makes us human. She is also intrigued by nature or landscape being opposed to culture. This is reminiscent of Somers’ ideas of the two being inherently connected. She believes our conception of nature is a cultural process. She uses her art as a bridge to span the gap. Swanson talks about nature through her art as a way of viewing nature through the culture her work represents. She tries to get a new perspective on nature by first de-familiarizing and then reevaluation it through the making process. She does this by looking at nature phenomenons like boiling mud pits and volcanic lava flows that occur where people cannot survive. She uses ceramic materials and processes to look at the wonder, beauty, and danger created by these environments and to blur the line between the natural and crafted: nature and culture. She accesses nature through this look at natural process, and then reinterprets her subject through ceramic process and material. Her process involves making tests, looking for things that relate to her interests and then following them through. She minimalizes gestural elements in order to make room for natural ones, fast and slow, up and down, inside and outside, noise and silence, organic and inorganic, and light and shadow.

In Swanson’s series titled “Views”, she explores ceramic crystalline glazes in a painterly manner by working with them as pure surfaces. She glazes cast porcelain, convex circles and displays them in metal rings, used as frames. The phenomenon of the glaze and the work references “both natural organic forms such as flowers as well as geometric forms.” This duel reference, indicative of the material, illustrates the concept of Swanson’s work. (Swanson 2005)

Swanson’s ideas about translating nature are exemplified by James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne paintings of the 1870’s. Like Swanson, Whistler did not view nature in a realistic manner. He unified surface and employed gentle but non-static tones. Swanson’s crystalline glazes mimic the importance he found, though Japanese prints, in including color throughout a composition. Both artists share a similar idea of deconstructing nature,

Whistler used dots of color to show presence of light in a reevaluation of natural phenomenon. Finally, like Swanson’s translation of nature though material, Whistler did not paint on site, translating nature though the filter of memory. (Sutton 12964)

Through a common material and three very different processes these Alfred MFA graduals all work in a painterly manner. They share other common themes including looking at destruction, as opposed to construction, as a productive process and discussing relationships between the natural world and the human world. Through this show we see a spectrum of the definition of painterly in regards to ceramics and hopefully can begin to understand the usefulness of the adjective.

Works Cited:

1. Linda Sormin, Master’s thesis, New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University,

2003.

2. Fuller, P. Aug., 1985. Francis Bacon, London. The Burlington Magazine Publications,

Ltd. Vol. 127, No. 989: 553-554.

3. Lee Somers, Master’s thesis, New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University,

2006.

4. Linda Swanson, Master’s thesis, New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University,

2005.

5. Sutton, Denys. 1964. Nocturne: The Art of James Mcneill Whistler. Philadelphia, New

York: J.B. Lippincott Company.