Shannon Goff, Black Rotary Phone, 2006, Slip cast vitreous china, 30x11x18, Courtesy of the Kohler Company, Collection of Art
The 63rd Scripps College Ceramic Annual, on view at Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College from Saturday, January 20 through Sunday, April 8, is the longest running exhibition of contemporary ceramics in the United States.
Since its inception, the Ceramic Annual has been an “artist choice” exhibition that features new directions in ceramics. This year’s guest curator, Tony Hepburn, has selected works by distinguished artists Marek Cecula, Robert Dawson, Shannon Goff, Hella Jongerius, Paul Kotula, Geert Lap, Steven Mankouche and Abigail Murray, Jim Shrosbree, Christie Wright, and Barbara Schmidt (from Kahla Porcelain U.S.A).
The exhibition highlights works that exist between categories—fusing art, design, and architecture. “We are now unsure of the ground we inhabit, which is simultaneously liberating and terrifying,” said Hepburn. The works of selected artists and designers embrace this tenuous state. Working in a medium that is in redefinition, they blur the boundary between mass-produced and hand crafted objects, taking their inspiration from a combination of sources, from nineteenth century china to telephone circuitry.
Sculptor and ceramicist Hepburn is artist-in-residence and head of the ceramics department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He has garnered many awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Friends of Contemporary Ceramics, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two fellowships from the New York Council on the Arts, and top honors at the Faenza Ceramics Biennale at Faenza, Italy. He is a regular contributor to American Ceramics, Ceramics: Art and Perception, and American Craft and Ceramic Review. He also co-authored Robert Turner: Shaping Silence, A Life in Clay (2003).
A lecture with Tony Hepburn will be held Saturday, January 20, at 4 p.m., in the Scripps Humanities Auditorium. An opening reception for the exhibition will follow the lecture at 7 p.m. in the Bixby Courtyard adjacent the Williamson Gallery. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please call the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at (909) 607-4690.
The full-color catalogue includes an essay by Tony Hepburn. The Scripps College 63rd Ceramic Annual 2007 exhibition and catalogue are generously supported by the Ames Fund at Scripps, the Pasadena Art Alliance, Francine and William Baker, David Furman, Gloria and Sonny Kamm, Barbara and Victor Klein, Brent and Susan Maire, Mr. and Mrs. Marlin Miller, Lynn Howe Myers and Jerry Myers, John Regan, Diane and Igal Silber, and Skutt Ceramic Products, Inc.