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NCC Publications
These publications can be ordered from Northern Clay Center by calling 612.339.8007 x301, or by e-mail (salesgallery@northernclaycenter.org). Prices and availability vary; special volume discount for libraries, schools, and art centers.Architecture and Ceramics: Material, Structure, Vision (2008)
Architecture and Ceramics explores the relationships among clay and design, buildings and ideas through functional and non-functional works in clay as well as architectural drawings. As noted by the curator, "Architecture and vessel-making share a central concern with structure and the enclosure of space... The kinship between architecture and ceramics is ultimately a matter of their shared connection with human use and human life." Featured artists include Dan Anderson, Lidya Buzio, William Daley, Thomas Daley, Nora Narajo-Morse, and Robert Winokur. Guest currated by Robert Silberman.Clay Talks
Reflections By American Master Ceramicists 1997-2000
The Regis Masters Series honors ceramic artists of national and international reputation. The Regis Masters lectures, and subsequent publications expand the stock of oral and written history of a senior generation of ceramic artists. The exhibitions give regional audiences a chance to see current work by this vital group of ceramic artists. The series is organized by Northern Clay Center, co-sponsored by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and underwritten with generous support from The Regis Foundation. Clay Talks is a volume of stories of personal and artistic history and ideas, from the edited transcripts of the first 13 lectures and two reunion roundtables of the Regis Masters Series. It includes a foreword by Evan Maurer, former director of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and an introduction by Emily Galusha, Northern Clay Center director; black and white and color illustrations.Copies can be ordered through Northern Clay Center by calling 612.339.8007, or through www.itascabooks.com.
Contemporary Monsters (2009)
Guest-curated by ceramic artist Edith Garcia (London), this dark and dreamlike exhibition featured the work of six artists who work within the realms of the surreal. Participants include the curator along with Wesley Anderegg (Lompoc, CA), Tom Bartel (Bowling Green, KY), Cynthia Consentino (Northampton, MA), John de Fazio (San Fransisco, CA), Arthur González (Alameda, CA), and Michael Lucero (Upper Nyack, NY).Daisy Brand (2006)
Daisy Brand's wall sculptures frame images of landscapes she links to particular historical events, which increasingly include her memories as a Holocaust survivor. Rather than using more widely recognized symbols and images of those events, she tries to represent her personal memories of the particular landscapes and architecture that surrounded her. Because they are not necessarily archetypes of the Holocaust, her images expand a singular concept of that event and demand that its history reflect the ambiguity of personal experience. Essay by Dr. Stephen Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.Double Vision (2004)
Known internationally primarily for their ceramic work, these five artists also translate their distinctive visions into works on paper. Double Vision presented a selection of their vessels and figurative sculptures, along with drawings, paintings and prints. The exhibition showed the range of creative expression possible when the visual language of line, form and color is applied to both two- and three-dimensional surfaces. Featured artists included Edward Eberle, Tony Hepburn, Cindy Kolodziejski, Akio Takamori, and Patti Warashina. Hepburn, Kolodziejski, and Takamori each spent a week as artists-in-residence at NCC and Highpoint Center for Printmaking (Hepburn). Essay by Mason Riddle.Eat With Your Eyes (2007)
With this exhibition we celebrate the idea that memorable meals with friends and family are feasts for all the senses. Selected potters from across the country created place settings, special side dishes and decorative pieces for six dining room tables and four side tables commissioned from sculptors and designers for Eat With Your Eyes. Local chefs created special food dishes for specific pots for this catalogue.Exquisite Pots: Six Degrees of Collaboration (2008)
Exquisite Pots features work by six potters who exchanged signature bisqued pieces with each other, for glazing and finishing. Similar to the "exquisite corpse" game invented by the Surrealists, this exchange expands the idea of collaboration from its usual consciously cooperative mode to include the possibility for the unconscious and accidental. The resulting pots prompt us to think about the relationship between form and finish, and about what dominates our perception of a particular pot. Featured artists included Margaret Bohls, Andrew Brayman, Sam Chung, Maren Kloppmann, Andrew Martin, and Deb Schwartzkopf. Guest currated by Maren Kloppmann and Andrew Martin.From the Garden: Forms, Images and Ideas (2004)
Featuring five outstanding contemporary artists, From the Garden demonstrated the richness of expression possible when nature and art are brought together, and in particular when the garden serves as inspiration for ceramic forms, images and ideas. Featured artists included Kinji Akagawa, Eddie Dominguez, Jan McKeachie Johnston, Walter Ostrom, and Kurt Weiser. Guest-curated by Robert Silberman, who also wrote the catalogue essay.McKnight Artists
(current and past exhibition catalogues)
These catalogues document exhibitions that featured artists who have received grants from Northern Clay Center under the McKnight Artist Fellowships and Residencies for Ceramic Artists program, over the past 10 years. The exhibitions included work made by the artists during their fellowship years and their 3-month residencies at Northern Clay Center. This program is underwritten with generous financial support from The McKnight Foundation, Minneapolis. Essays by Robert Silberman. Catalogues are available from 2003 through 2010.Minnesota Hotdish (1995)
This exhibition featured ceramic baking and serving dishes by artists from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ontario, and was juried by Judy Onofrio of Rochester, Minnesota. The catalogue is also a cookbook, with “hot dish” recipes from the artists and Land O’Lakes, which provided generous support for the exhibition. The catalogue also includes an essay (funny) on the role of the casserole in history, by University of Minnesota historian Karal Ann Marling; and song lyrics by Garrison Keillor in honor of clay casseroles.New Works:
Lawson Oyekan Solstice Lip Series, Minneapolis (2006)
This exhibition featured work created at Northern Clay Center by Lawson Oyekan, during a five-week residency in spring, 2006. Oyekan, a Nigerian artist who lives and works in England and Denmark, creates works that are, as described in the essay by Rick Newby, “conceptually, emotionally, and spiritually enriched by a rigorous inquiry into his own experiences…as a person who straddles several worlds.” Oyekan’s slab-built cylinders were perforated and incised with numbers and other symbols, glazed with colored slips reflective of the colors he observed in Minneapolis, and fired in either a reduction or soda kiln. The spare, elegant installation encouraged contemplation and reflection on the life of this young, peripatetic artist. Essay by Rick Newby.Nina Hole and Ron Fondaw (2004)
Nina Hole and Ron Fondaw conflate means and ends into distinctive objects and experiences that make us re-think our assumptions about clay and permanence. Both create objects that must be appreciated in the moment, for they are designed to change over time and in a particular place. Holes’ fire sculptures are made of clay, but they become their own kilns; the result is a process of creation that produces an “experience of awe.” Fondaw’s adobe sculptures are subjected to environmental forces, which may be as gentle as dripping water, that change what we see. The insides of his pieces are gradually exposed to sight; inside becomes outside. This catalogue documents residencies by both artists in Minneapolis in fall, 2004, when they created sculptures in the Northern Clay Center gallery and on the grounds of the University of Minnesota. The exhibition also included drawings by each artist of the pieces they built. Essay by Emily Galusha and Carrie Robbins.Ten Years in Retrospect: Northern Clay Center 10th Anniversary
This book was one of ten special projects and events, which marked the 10th anniversary of Northern Clay Center in 2000 and 2001. We commemorated the first ten years with a mix of programs similar to the mix which has characterized the Center for the past decade—and which continue to describe our activities: exhibitions that show the almost infinite possibilities for artistic expression in clay, whether a classic tea bowl by a master Japanese potter or a spare, attenuated rendering of legs emerging from the earth; education programs which go beyond technique to ideas; opportunities for the serious collector or the happy buyer of the occasional pot to acquire some of the best examples of clay objects being made today. Essays by Mary Barringer, Robert Silberman, John Driscoll, and Emily Galusha. The book also includes a time-line history of the organization and a catalogue of the 10th anniversary exhibition, which now forms the core of the Center’s teaching collection.Perforation (2006)
Ceramic objects have historically been assigned to one of two categories: utilitarian or sculptural. Often the criteria used to classify an object are arbitrary: one pot is utilitarian, another is sculptural, though either could be useful and both can be beautiful. The Perforation exhibition literally poked holes in the delineation of ceramics into two categories, prompting questions about what purposes such a categorization serves; what, if anything differentiates a utilitarian object from a sculptural object; and what devices, like perforation, are used to classify objects as one and not the other. Participating artists included Tony Marsh, Jeffrey Mongrain, Mary Roehm, Marit Tingleff, and Xavier Toubes. Essay by Rick Newby.The Social Life of Pouring Pots (2005)
The pouring pot serves not only as a container of liquid, but also as a symbol of human routine and behavior. The traditions of making and using pouring pots have required potters to make objects that function specifically to this liquid, this room, this group of people. A sampling of the resulting variety of pots tells a story about each pot’s one-time social life. This exhibition featured pots from around the world and from the 16th century B.C. to the 20th century A.D.; the majority of the objects in the exhibition were generously loaned by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Guest curator, Mary Barringer, editor of Studio Potter magazine.Tatsuzo Shimaoka, 2001 Regis Masters Series (2001)
This publication includes the written version of the lecture delivered by Tatsuzo Shimaoka, a Living National Treasure of Japan, for his 2001 Regis Masters lecture. It is illustrated with images of Shimaoka’s pots that were included in the exhibition; subsequent to its display at Northern Clay Center, the exhibition traveled to the Babcock Galleries in New York, and the Japan Information and Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. The exhibition and catalogue were produced in partnership with Babcock Galleries. What’s Clay Got to Do with It? (1995)
As part of a three-year series on craft criticism funded by The McKnight Foundation, Northern Clay Center organized a symposium comprising three conversations between artists and critics with a moderator, and a concluding lecture summarizing and commenting on the exchanges. The conversationalists were Adrian Saxe and Ed Lebow (moderator – Steve Carpenter), Betty Woodman and Janet Koplos (moderator – Cliff Garten), and Mark Hewitt and Janet Mansfield (moderator – Emily Galusha). The concluding speaker was Gary Kornblau, editor of Art Issues magazine. This chapbook includes edited transcripts of all four presentations, which lively exchanges among the participants and the audience. Edited by Emily Galusha.World Ceramics: Transforming Women's Traditions (2008)
Pottery Made by indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, and some parts of Asia is frequently associated with women. Ceramic practices however, are never static. Forms, functions and methods adapt to changing tastes, new materials, and expanding markets.In companion exhibitions at Northern Clay Center and the Carleton College Art Gallery, World Ceramics: Transforming Women's Traditions, highlights ceramicists and ceramics from points around the world where the makers are usually female, and explores innovative contemporary work based on transformations of older forms and designs. These exhibitions draw from over five regions around the world, showing work by women who maintain strong links with their indigenous identity and lifestyle but shape their ceramics in response to new markets and audiences. World Ceramics also presents work by artists raised and educated in the First World who effectively reinvent traditions to which they are connected by ethnicity or ancestry.
Moira Vincentelli, noted scholar from Aberystwyth University and author of Women Potters: Transforming Women's Traditions and Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels, is the lead curator on the project, which is jointly produced by Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, and the Carleton College Art Gallery, Northfiled.