Juxtaposing order and chaos, My Two Brains is a physical interpretation of my psychological experience in dealing with the trauma of the death of my spouse.  At times I’ve felt absolutely “with it,” able to take care of whatever comes. At other times there is confusion, difficulty in concentrating, being distracted by I know not what, feeling totally “out of it.” This sculpture is an empowering exorcism as I encounter the self, and shadow-self at play.

My Two Brains, 2016

paper, clay, driftwood roots, found wood 5" h x 12.5" w x 7.5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

Caroline Blackburn, based in Los Angeles creates vessels that explore her interest in abstract painting, architecture, fashion, and nature. Trained as a painter, her work focuses on bringing a freshness and immediacy to each piece through color, form, surface, and texture. Every work is highly considered whether it is thrown on a wheel, hand-built, or a combination of both techniques.

Glazes perform at a level that engages the viewer as an abstract skin generated through the glazing process. She juxtaposes color, texture, and drawing using a variety of materials to accomplish a painterly surface including ceramic pencil, slip, oxide, or glaze creating a sublime effect, reflecting phenomenon found in nature. Color plays a significant role in the work.

Caroline has developed glazes that are versatile whether used opaquely, transparently or ones that create

cratering or pitting on the surface. When she glazes a work she approaches it as a canvas. She may first apply a slip, draw on the work with a ceramic pencil, and then hand-paint each piece with a variety of brushes to accomplish a painterly effect.

While investigating an interest in plasticity the work produces a continual shift between surface, texture, color, and object. Each vessel provides a contemporary sense of life that is very personal and universal at the same time. Caroline received a MFA from Art Center College of Design and a BFA from Boston College.

No. 342, 2016

clay, high-fire stoneware

24" h x 14" w x 14" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,635.00

As an anthropologist and visual artist, my field work in ergological folklore took me to different groups of potters not only in my country, Colombia, but also in Chile, Mexico and Haiti. I was affected by the same simple vessels that were used in everyday life and used for religious rituals. Their use of raku, saggar, barrel and pit firing fascinated me. Their vessels were more than just pots, they told stories, and they were timeless and universal.

I have always derived pleasure from creating something with my hands: my work derives from my passion with clay, the simple forms, the playful parts, the subtle balance and contrasts in color and texture. My ceramics contain a short history through their creation and production process. Every piece has its own origin and evolution —its own story, full of symbols and contrasts.

My long trajectory in the investigation of Indo-Afro-American groups has given me the opportunity to develop my unique style in the design of my artwork.

Micaella's Journey from the Mariposas series, 2016

saggar-fired, porcelain slip and fabric

37" h x 13" w x 14" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,180.00

As humans we are programmed to pick up on the subtleties of the world around us. Whether these cues are conscious or unconscious they undoubtedly affect the way we feel about people or places without us even knowing why or how, but what if these subtleties are contradicting each other? The sculptures I create use simple organic forms and a vibrant color palette to embody a beautiful contradiction, begging you to stay, and daring you to turn away.

The forces of connection and repulsion working simultaneously unearth feelings of great intensity: longing, fear, ecstasy, and confusion.  At first glance my sculptures may look somewhat bizarre in form, but they request your attention with subtle body gestures and flashy ‘peacocking’ of colors in an eye-catching display that satiates your brain’s pleasure centers.

My work uses biological form to illustrate the many psychological and emotional contradictions of the human experience, as well as the chaotic yet harmonious relationship of the natural world. Each piece creates a dialogue of free association, which invites the viewer to question their emotional response to each object. My art challenges people to adjust their scope and expand their imagination to the possibility of the beautiful contradictions that exist all around us.

Captions - Group Photo

Raku Teapot

Making something of great beauty with clay is my joy.  I love the simplicity of bowls, urns, vases, and spherical objects.  Teapots are somewhat different, in the sense that they are complex forms that require planning to execute. They are not symmetrical.  With the teapot form I become more whimsical, and playful: exaggerating the proportions and referencing toys and purses and animals and houses and anything really I can think of —even fortune cookies, or shells.  I play with the straight lines and the curves, the division of spaces, the angles and directions of spouts and handles.  I think I would have, in a different life, really enjoyed being an architect.  That is what making teapots feels like to me, It feels like designing a building, with all of the different possibilities.

I love contrast, black and white, darkness, and shadows intersected by color and reflected light. There is a simplicity and elegance possible with a restricted color palette.  I am using turquoise blue and green, and coral, along with black and white. The black is the bare clay, the white is glaze shocked by rapid firing —more rapid cooling in smoke and fire— creating cracks from the stress I have subjected the piece to and soaking the unglazed clay black with smoke.  Firing Raku is like working with lightning.  Each piece is one of a kind, never repeatable.

Community

I love the simplicity of spherical objects.  I have been making them by hand with my scrap clay from throwing more traditional forms, and glazing them with bands of white and Raku firing them.  In multiples they seem energized, as if in motion. They seem to me both macro and micro —revealing the orbits of the planets and a scattering of stars in the cosmos, or our own body in motion on a cellular level. The wood is a cosmic tide or an arterial system. This grouped together in the old milk delivery basket speak to me of community.

Ossuary for Romulus from the Ossuary Series series, 2016

ceramic wheel-thrown and altered with  sculptural elements

15" h x 9" w x 6.5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $817.50

Remnants of ancient man resurface in contemporary settings. An ancient column protruding through a modern sidewalk or a fragment of fresco overlain by graffiti are visual reminders of the passage of time. They illustrate the inescapability of our past even as we build our present. This work is an exploration of artifact and ancient cultures as they relate to now.

Frequently unearthed in archeological digs, bones are easily recognizable. They are common objects essential to the human form: they recall lives lived. My sculpted bones of various clay bodies make a statement about peaceful co-existence.

The Osseous series examines this essential commonality between humans regardless of race or social grouping. This vessel form, Ossuary for Romulus —a lidded jar with sculpted and textural elements— makes reference to the funerary use of containers often found in archeological digs. Ancients collected boney remains inside of such vessels for storage at sacred sites. Past and present, and across cultures, human populations have developed elaborate burial rituals. We are linked by the fact that, regardless of background, reverence for human life is a universal concept, and that our similarities far outweigh our differences.

I am drawn to abstraction because it breaks down visual cues to their most basic elements. I was born and raised in South Africa.  My work is inspired by the primitive forms I believe stir deeply in all of us —forms and textures that tell a story on some primal level.

My goal is to explore shapes and negatives, how they interact with each other, and impart information to us on a subconscious level.

 My greatest inspiration is Noguchi:

 "The structure is integral to the design."

Black Structure 1 from the Spaces series, 2016

hand built-clay and assembly

15" h x 8" w x 6" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $749.38

Vase, 2016

porcelain, sgraffito, high-fire

7.5” h x 5.5 w x 5 d”

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $510.94

Gina M. hails from a funky and creative family.  In the 70s her parents owned a puppet theater in California where weekends were spent developing shows, building puppets, and hosting birthday parties. Her anthropomorphic tendencies began early, raised by puppets and their puppeteers.

These unique life-events, and emotional observations, mix to inform her art, record the significance of memory and mortality, and self-reflect on the dread of the aging process and the image-altering effects of gravity.

Each piece in the series Lost Not Forgotten by Gina M., possesses innocence at its surface —a non-threatening nature and whimsy— to draw the viewer in, whereby a deeper or darker meaning or message emerges.

The collection consists of hand-built, high-fired ceramic teddy bears, toys, and puppets in different stages of decomposition. Iconic images from childhood become lost objects, misplaced opportunities, and distant memories.

Family Circus, a ceramic, wood, encaustic paint, and found objects sculpture demonstrates controlled chaos of family life with all the dramatic overtones.

Family Circus, 2016

hand-built high-fired B-mix clay,  encaustic paint and found objects

40" h x 24" w x 30" d

Thumbnails  1-5 (Left to Right) Courtesy of the artist

Thumbnails 6-7 Courtesy Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $6,131.25

I tend to work in cycles of making sculptural pieces or functional pots. Recently I’ve returned to the type of work I did fifteen years ago using low fire and bright colors. I have once again become intrigued by the relationship of the sculptural form and textural surfaces.

My designs evolve around a single image. It is important to me that this image is three dimensionally complete. Complete in the since that I see it as a sculptural form floating or sailing in open space. I use sand blasting techniques before and after firing to achieve my textures. I use under glazes for base color and lusters to achieve the pastel glass like quality. I complete the work with over glazes and additional sand blasting. The entire process takes five to six firings between cone 04 and 019.

Wall Series #4, 2016

extruded, thrown and cast forms, epoxy paint 29" h x 68" w x 5" d

Courtesy of the artist

Not for sale

Anyone who works in clay is confronted with a multitude of possibilities. Complexity and surprise are built into the medium, the process, the technology. Take one purposeful step down an artistic path, and you’re immediately face-to-face with a crossroads that wasn’t on your mental GPS. Should you keep going straight—or, what the hell, wouldn’t it be more fun to turn left or right and see what you run into? Exploring the unexpected side roads has always appealed to me. It’s like going on a walkabout. As a teacher I always say to students: “Try it and see what happens.” This is my own artistic mantra.

My aesthetic wanderings have been guided by the works of the ancient Minoans, Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans; by Japanese ceramic traditions—Jomon, Haniwa, Iga, Bizen, and Oribe; by artists like Gauguin, Miró, Picasso, Motherwell, Pollock, and George Ohr; and by the ideas of Minimalism and other art movements. My modes of working in clay encompass drawing, painting, and printing as well as handbuilding, moldmaking, and throwing —if only, sometimes, to smash a pot on the wheel or to engineer its collapse.

What I hope unites my work, is a sense of the excitement I experienced in going off-road —and there’s still so much to explore out there.

Cholla, 2014

porcelain, cone 10

3 " h x 11" w x 3.5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $647.19

Anemone Trio, 2014

porcelain raku

9.5" h x 20.5" w x 10" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $715.31

As a young girl, I loved playing in the dirt.  Hiding away in my secret “cave” beneath an overgrown bush for hours, I would make places and objects for my dolls and toys. Anything I could find in my surroundings, usually twigs, leaves and especially mud, I would use to build the perfect setting.

Nature has always been an inspiration.  But it wasn’t until a high school class in ceramics that I applied that inspiration to my newfound art medium, clay.  In my senior year of high school, I won a scholarship to Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Arts).  During that year, I began to move from more functional and realistic pieces to more representational styles of making.

Working in clay is being with nature. Like hiking, swimming and gardening, it nurtures and energizes.  Watching what can become of a lump of mud, figuring out the process, and seeing the end results continue to drive me forward.  Like my “cave” of younger days, I still love the process of discovery for each new work.

I am a ceramic sculptor, working primarily with a coarse, red clay body and muted colors from nature. I use the slow and steady coil and slab building techniques that allow my mind to simmer with full focus and my sculpting to slip into a timeless meditation.

My figurative work began with emphasis on the human head and facial features and has organically progressed to investigate the archetypal female figure — seated, lying down, kneeling, and to finally, standing. The sculptures deepen with narrative from the juxtaposed placement and scale of added autobiographical forms such as animals and objects from my surroundings.

These sculptures present the recurring theme of balance — metaphorically addressing the physical, emotional and intellectual realms of our lives.   For example, the universal challenge of balance is present in the sculpted positioning of the flying girl with arms out wide, balancing on a chair.  These works lead the viewer in, with a playful exploration of the narrative form. Then, upon a closer look, layers of meaning are revealed through these animated characters.

_________________________________________

Gina Lawson Egan works in the Los Angeles area and lives with her family in Ontario, California. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan, and studied with the late Paul Soldner for her MFA in Ceramics from the Claremont Graduate University. Gina currently teaches Ceramics at California Polytechnic University, Pomona.  Her works are in prestigious collections throughout the United States.

The inspiration for my current work of clay vessels series, In the Quiet Between, came from Wabi art. Sculptural simple but sacred forms, the refinement of simplicity, a rustic elegance, and nobility without sophistication —these are all values I hold deeply. My work avoids showy objects and the conspicuousness of extravagance. Instead, its defining factor is its purity, simplicity, humility and quietness. I value light, shadow and space in my artwork. I arrange my vessels in a group of 2, 3, 4, or more with a painting in the background wall as a one-piece Installation Art.

Nature contains all the elements of art: line, shape, pattern, texture, color, value, and most importantly, peace through balance. For my clay sculpture series, Sketches of Nature, I was moved to interpret these characteristics intrinsic in plants, animals and landscape. Through my interpretations, my ambition is for the viewer to appreciate nature with me piece by piece - not only as a source of traditional beauty, but as the complex, living, moving, intricate system that it is. Working with nature in this way, gives me the peace that I lacked for a long time.

One of the joys of looking at art is when something in the work sparks a fire of recognition just beneath my heart. This flash of personal understanding is powerful — it is like a shared memory. It makes me laugh for joy, sometimes it makes me cry, and always it makes me think. It is usually small and unexpected elements that evoke this reaction — a slight crack, patched and re-cracked at the edge of a sculpted wrist, a look of longing in the eyes of someone in a photographed crowd, a color subtly peeks through from underneath its complement…

These experiences are intimate and deep.  And they provide me with abiding goals for my own work. I want to tell the stories that exist under the surface — to make the unseen, seen. I want to re-experience the intimacy of shared secrets. I want to parse the truth that exists in façade. And when this magic works, it leads me —and I hope for viewers to come along with me — on an exploration of fleeting dreams and intimate logic, that opens a door to the place where sense and non-sense meet.

La Danza de Estrellas from the Regalos del Fuego series, 2014

handmade saggar-fired ceramic plate with encaustic, gouache, photocopy, and vintage Swarovski crystals 12" h x 12" w x 5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,090.00

The universe continues to request many things of women.

Can the indigenous view of the divine feminine help us in understanding what contemporary Western society needs from women today?

Moreover, can an ancient view help women understand from where their true power comes, an allow them to be the most generous and loving presence in a world that has lost its way?

I am investigating women’s work as an expression of feminine power and healing grace.

Of Love and Constancy, 2016

assemblage with clay and found objects

42" h x 42" w x 15" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $6,812.50

I throw classic forms and use surface textures to give them energy and vitality, resulting in art that is both pleasing and alive.  I seek to create patterns and textures that emphasize the organic interplay between order and randomness as found in nature.

The tactile feeling and visual look of surface textures are essential to my pieces.  I create textures by deeply impressing patterns into thrown cylinders.  Then, working from the inside only, I expand the cylinder to create the final form.  This technique allows the pattern to evolve as the clay twists and expands.  As the pattern adjusts to the shape and function of the vessel, it becomes reflective of nature’s adaptation to form.

My glazing process enhances the natural aesthetic of the order and randomness.  Thinly glazed surfaces highlight the macropatterns and reveal the stoneware clay’s micro-texture created during the expansion process.  I often use multiple glazes to intensify the dynamic tension of the surface.

My goal is to pursue the interplay of shape, surface texture, ordered patterns, and random effects so that work is created that intrigues the eye and demands to be touched.  Although my work is functional, it is often prized as decorative.

Jade Cracked Globe, 2015

stoneware, slip and hand-textured 6.5" h x 6" w x 6" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Not for sale

The Beating of My Heart, 2016

clay under-glaze and glaze

13" h x 10" w x 8" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $953.75

Canyons of My Life, 2015

porcelain, clay, stains

13" h x 30" w x 4" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $953.75

As a ceramic artist, my work is influenced by my connection with the earth, and my fascination with the continual changing of its formations due to the tremendous forces worked upon it. This deep connection comes from the combination of my Native American ancestral past, my present need as an empath for grounding me, and having the element of ‘earth’ as a Taurus in Western astrology. Native Americans and empaths are able to discern and take on the emotions, moods and pain of others to help them heal. Native Americans say that you have to become sick to understand sickness, before you can cleanse negative energies to heal others. Read More

In a world of virtual realities and changing perceptions of what is real, I am celebrating the materiality of things. As an object-maker, I make art to explore and understand my connection to nature and humankind. I navigate through pathways and intersections of collective experience, creativity and consciousness. I create poetic and engaging spaces to question and explore. I use clay and mixed media to speak directly of delicacy and strength, alluding to the poignancy and importance of balance in the natural and psychological realm. I am mapping my thoughts, materializing them into concrete narratives.

My work has a sense of history. Clay is an ancient material and seems inexhaustible in its ability to express a sense of timelessness, endurance and expressive meaning. The firing process, rapid petrifaction, is the transformative process, resulting in a contemporary fossil. I assemble these petrified fragments into topographic landscapes, poised somewhere between growth and decay, recognition and abstraction, beauty and viscera. These qualities allow entry into microscopic and macroscopic worlds that often feel familiar.

Ode to Teapot  is created by using refuse from my trimmed pots and slab construction. I create new forms from what usually goes unnoticed and unappreciated.

Ode to Teapots, 2016

site-specific wall installation: porcelain,  stoneware, nails and plexi glass

40" h x 40" w x 6" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $3,270.00

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

-Picasso

This is a favorite quote of mine, which also defines my journey as a ceramicist —the yearning for the sun— the visual solution in clay.

As I am deeply aware of my Pacific Islander background from the island of Guahan (Guam), I explore the history, myths, legends, and traditions of the island. I remember watching a segment on TV about Oceania where it was mentioned that there is no word for ‘art’. I realize that my particular island is often hit by typhoons and much can be destroyed, but Guam is known for its weaving and carving. Is there not art in these pursuits? Then I read recently that there is no word for ‘artifact’ in Oceania (Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia) because an ‘artifact’ is a Western concept. Painting, sculpture, carving, weaving, even tattoos, are actually an integral part of social and religious aspects of daily island life.

That’s why I like to create in clay: not working in a medium as a special project, but because the imagery is part of my personal story, something I see every day. Maybe, the clay journey incorporates function and form and selects from my past and present. I make what’s in my head because I don’t see the same experience elsewhere.

The great designer Massimo Vignelli was quoted as saying, “if you do it right, it will last forever.” Maybe the clay piece I make may not last, but the thought that it once emanated existed will last forever.

Ampersand Cursive, 2014

low-fire clay, low-fire gold/bronze metal coating 21" h x 20" w x 3.5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $953.75

The Lava series seeks to explore our culture from the viewpoint of an archeologist examining the remains of a civilization long since gone. What story does it tell? It's a question I often ask myself when I view the ruins of previous cultures, or even each time I empty the trash. I often wonder, "What would they find, and how would these artifacts be interpreted?"

As a ceramic artist, I strive to push the edge of clays possibilities as a medium. Much of my inspiration comes from nature, and this series was the result of exploring Hawaii’s lava fields. I experimented with a variety of clays and texturing techniques, as well as unusual glaze materials, to achieve the effects you see here. Hopefully, viewing these pieces will allow you to reflect on your own lives, your own art, and the haunting beauty of objects suspended in time.

I hope with these pieces to start a conversation about who were are, what we value, and what we leave behind.

Rebirth is the first of a series exploring the world of archetypal images, the dream world, and the power of the subconscious mind to communicate with our waking mind. I believe that like an iceberg, most of our mind hides beneath the surface of wakefulness, largely hidden to us but waiting for an opportunity to communicate deep, meaningful stories to us. Through a practice of dream journaling, I hope to bring this well-spring of meaning to my art work.

Rebirth 2016 (left thumbnail)

ceramic sculpture with lighting effect

20" h x 20" w x 9" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Not for sale

Last Call from the Lava Series series, 2016 (right thumbnail)

ceramic

9" h x 7.25" w x 9" d

Courtesy Kellogg Gallery

Not for sale

This raku mask depicts the way a computer maps a human face.  In the past, when actors and other people wanted to bring their expressions onto a computer, marks were placed on the face and body which allowed the computer to track movements.  Today, software like Faceshift can use a simple 3D camera to track facial expressions and movement in real time —without having to paste any trackers on the face.  This means that any person can walk up to a computer using this software, and can “power” an avatar just by talking and moving their face in real time.  As they open their mouth, the avatar opens their mouth.  This type of markerless motion capture technology will be important as people begin to immerse themselves into the virtual world to socialize with each other, play games, and make home virtual reality movies.

Markerless Facial Capture: Lucas, 2015

raku

19" h x 13" w x 7" d

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,294.38