The Scripps College Ceramic Annual—the longest running exhibition of contemporary ceramics in the United States—opens for the 65th year on Saturday, January 24, 2009, and continues through April 5, at Scripps College’s Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery. Entitled “Wearing It on Your Sleeve: Sympathizers, Empathizers, and Provocateurs,” the Ceramic Annual features views from artists at the edge of contemporary ceramics, where innovation is taking place. All events are free and open to the public.
Since its inception, the Annual has been an “artist’s choice” event, in which a leading ceramicist selects the exhibition; Scripps Professor of Ceramics Adam Davis is this year’s guest curator. Professor Davis’ most recent accomplishments include his participation in Judith Schwartz’s “Confrontational Ceramics,” in 2008. Schwartz is a professor of art and art education at NYU.
The theme of this year’s show is political in tone: from female presidential candidates in the U.S. to Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union. The works also address universal human subjects, from the cycle of life and death to the persistence of memory. Davis brings together Tori Arpad-Cotta, Christy Gast, Jeff Irwin, Charles Krafft, Io Palmer, Katherine Ross, Anders Ruhwald, and Reinaldo Sanguino—artists who primarily use clay in works that provoke and challenge viewers to engage with marginalities and marginalized conditions, broadly defined.
The opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 24, 2009, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Williamson Gallery. The reception will include live music and light refreshments. In conjunction with the exhibition, Professor Davis will give the opening lecture in the Scripps Humanities Auditorium, from 4 to 5 p.m.
Davis will discuss the Annual within the context of the sea change taking place in contemporary ceramics, and describe how the works operate within or against prevailing artistic or pedagogical paradigms.
The exhibition and catalog 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, Ginger and Marlin Miller, Lynne Howe Myers and Jerry Myers, the Pasadena Art Alliance, John O. Regan, and Skutt Ceramics, Inc.
The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery is located at Eleventh Street and Columbia Avenue, adjacent to Baxter Hall. During the exhibition, the gallery is open to the public, free of charge, Wednesday through Sunday, from 1-5 p.m. For more information, please contact the gallery at (909) 607-3397.