I am so thrilled to be participating in the annual exhibit of the 2017 NCECA conference and I can’t wait to get up to Portland next week to see the exhibit in it’s entirety. The piece accepted for this show is my Hive Series Installation which is comprised of approximately 200 individual pieces that are nested together in a cluster to create a dynamic structure resembling an abstract hive. This piece was part of an In the Field installation in Nisene Marks State Park in 2015.
About the exhibit curated by Gail M Brown:
A breadth of implied and articulated dramas will be staged as a personally defined natural landscape or more formalized garden scenario. In works of ceramic sculpture, installation, object and vessel format, each participant will offer a new or recent work- some potent objects as-metaphors, with sub-text and, others as choreographed scenes with figuration or the figure/s implied in a verdant location, in vocabularies from nuanced realism to personal symbolism.
Each will be designed to reference an array of issues- nature’s fragility and sustainability, the wild and the tame, life’s appetites and dilemmas, conflict and resolution, the everlasting and the temporal- social and historic events, of the natural world and the human condition. Artists remind us that nature and the articulated garden, as context, stimulation and tactile allure, is a seductive, universal, ever present enticement.
The article below was first posted on the NCECA blog by Exhibitions Director Leigh Taylor Mickelson, photo credit to Lisa Conway.
The highly anticipated NCECA Annual “The Evocative Garden,” curated by Gail M. Brown, opens this weekend, kicking off the 2017 NCECA conference “season” with a whirlwind of garden-centric delight and botanical wonder. The exhibition, held at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, features five artists who were invited by the curator along with 29 artists who were selected from the call for entry.
Invited artists Megan Bogonovich, Jess Riva Cooper, Kim Dickey, Linda Sormin and Dirk Staschke set the tone for the exhibit which is indeed what the curator intended: “a breadth of implied and articulated dramas… staged as a personally defined natural landscapes or more formalized garden scenarios.” The exhibit offers variety in approach to the ceramic medium as well as in conceptual interpretation of the theme, and captures the imagination as spring slowly approaches.
Participating artists include Christopher Adams, JoAnn Axford, Lisa Marie Barber, Chris Berti, Megan Bogonovich, Jess Riva Cooper, Deirdre Daw, Audry Deal-McEver, Jennifer DePaolo, Kim Dickey, Caroline Earley, Carol Gouthro, Karen Gunderman, Dawn Holder, Cj Jilek, Chuck Johnson, Tsehai Johnson, Heather Kaplan, Paul Kotula, Annie Rhodes Lee, Nancy Lovendahl, Andrea Marquis, Lindsay Montgomery, Grace Nickel, Anne Drew Potter, Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Dori Schechtel Zanger, Linda Sormin, Dirk Staschke, Claudia Tarantino, Hirotsune Tashima, Colleen Toledano, Jenni Ward, Stan Welsh.
I’d like to give special thanks to Disjecta for hosting the exhibit, and a big shout-out to our On-Site Liaison Brett Binford who orchestrated the installation of the exhibit, beautifully I might add. A sneak peek of the exhibit can be seen here…
This not-to-be-missed exhibit is easy to reach via Portland’s Blue line. Hours during NCECA are Tuesday 10:30am-5:30pm; Wednesday – Saturday 10am-5pm. Or come to the reception on Thursday, March 23rd from 6-9pm to have the opportunity to meet the curator and the artists. I’ll see you there.
Leigh Taylor Mickelson, NCECA Exhibitions Director
Want to visit pre- or post-conference? Visit Disjecta Arts for gallery hours and details.
