The Scripps College Ceramic Annual, the longest running exhibition of contemporary ceramics in the United States, opens for the 64th year on Saturday, January 26, 2008, at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery on the Scripps College campus.
Since its inception, the Ceramic Annual has been an “artist’s choice” exhibition, in which a leading ceramicist selects the exhibition. This year, the guest curator is Phyllis Green, who has taught ceramics at University of Southern California and UCLA. Green has selected artists from across the country: MyungJin Choi (Philadelphia, PA); Sadashi Inuzuka (Ann Arbor, MI); Jim Melchert (Oakland, CA); Jeanne Quinn (Boulder, CO); Annabeth Rosen (Davis, CA), and Charles Long (Mt. Baldy, CA).
This year, in an interesting twist on the theme, the ceramicists are collaborating with artists working in new media, familiar ground for Green, who has explored digital technology in creating art objects in her own work. Green has titled the exhibition “Arm’s Length In: Ceramics and the Treachery of Objects in the Digital Age.” “Because of the multiple possibilities for expression that clay offers, this ‘old’ medium remains a vital choice in contemporary studio practice.” Green notes. “We are, however, living in an immaterial world in this media-drenched twenty-first century. Debate over the material nature of ideas and the nature of the original is changing once again under the impact, in art and life, of the personal computer, computer networks, digital mobile devices and virtual reality.” In this exhibition, Green has selected artists whose work will create a dialogue between the ceramic object and virtual image of their collaborators.
The full-color exhibition catalogue will include an essay by Scarlet Cheng, a Los Angeles-based arts journalist, who writes regularly about film and the visual arts. Her articles have appeared in Art and Auction, ArtNews, Art Ltd., Asian Art News, Coagula Art Journal, Los Angeles Times, Premiere, Village Voice, and Vogue. Cheng also teaches film history at Art Center College of Design and Otis College of Art & Design.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Ms. Cheng will give a special lecture from 4 to 5 p.m., titled “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Art and the Eternal,” in the Scripps Humanities Auditorium on Saturday, January 26, 2008. The opening reception will be held the same day from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Williamson Gallery. The reception will include live music and light refreshments. Admission is free and open to the public. The exhibition continues through April 6, 2008.
The Scripps College 64th Ceramic Annual 2008 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, John Regan, and Skutt Ceramic Products, Inc.
The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery is located in Claremont at Eleventh Street and Columbia Avenue, adjacent to Baxter Hall. The Gallery is open to the public, free of charge, Wednesday through Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, please contact the Gallery at (909) 607-3397.