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POTTERS Circle Craft Graduation Award for Ceramics. Photograph: Phyllis Schwartz

COLUMBIA

When Alexanders Library Burned

Emily Carr University Grad Show 2) Phyllis Schwartz

When the Library at Alexandria burned down in 48 B.C., the only
remaining permanent history and cultural information available was
found in metal work, stone work and ceramics. These days we are
investing deeply in virtual documentation, knowing that permanence
relies on the fragility of electronics, while ceramics remains a reliable
medium that preserves contemporary cultural ideas. Currently the
complexity of contemporary ceramics has reached a stage that far
surpasses any one civilization of the past. Many people have spent their
artistic careers exploring and reviving techniques from a multitude of
civilizations. This is why a brief walk through the ceramics on show
at Emily Carr's Graduation Exhibition, demonstrates how today’s
ceramic arts reverberate back through time before anyone ever dreamed
of Alexandria. The Emily Carr University 2010 Grad Show offered up
a feast of ceramic works grounded in ceramics history that document
contemporary culture. The Emily Carr Ceramics Studio is a place to
explore, invent and develop the vast possibilities of industrial and fine
arts multiples. Four installations in the 2010 Graduation Exhibition
push these boundaries while demonstrating the technical proficiency
essential to a series of multiples and raise questions about the nature
of permanence.

Catherine Chan’s Untitled (Song Dynasty Mercury Jar), a lightjet
c-print, summons the viewer into the conversation about permanence
and impermanence that weaves its way through the ceramics
installations in the 2010 show. Chan's photograph shows an antique
mercury jar strategically placed on the beach at the edge of the ebb
and flow of an ocean wave. The ceramic object at the edge where sand
meets water in this photograph is the precarious point where this
material object meets the element with the capacity to dissolve it over
time. The image is juxtaposed with a Formula for Making Gold Elixir,
a concoction said to produce immortality.

Two Grad Show ceramic installations speak about permanence
and impermanence in both historical and contemporary terms:

Tofu Residue Construction by Di (Fan) “Woody” Wau and Alchemy in

Modern Tradition in Blue and White, by Ti-Nan (Jenny) Lu. White
porcelain and blue decals, 2009. Photograph: Phyllis Schwartz

Porcelain by David M. Robinson. Tofu Residue Construction (2010,
earthenware and woodware) is the winner of the 2010 Circle Craft
Graduation Award for Ceramics. It is comprised of three large-scale
vessels mounted on black ladder-like plinths. The unique surface
treatment of each vessel is an essay of textures created from clay pressed
into a mold, oxides, white crackle glaze and pierced vessel walls. The
effect of this surface treatment is a reminder that even ceramics are
impermanent. In antiquity, these big-shouldered forms would have
been both functional and decorative, typically embodying a story from
mythological times or a recent military victory. In this installation,
Wu's vessels stand above us, admirable for
their size and control of form, with the viewer
below asking questions about the title and
wanting to know the story about residuals.
Alchemy in Porcelain (2010, porcelain and
clear glaze) is a suite of textured porcelain
cylinders that are healed and sealed with
a gold bead bulging from the join. This
thin gold line is a reference to Aintsugi, an
Asian technique of ceramics repair made by
sprinkling gold powder onto lacquer resin.
Unlike the flawed and damaged ceramic ware

that loses value in western culture, kintsugi

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increases the value. Robinson's gold-joined
cylinders, like Wu's vessels, are statements
about material impermanence, an opportunity
for commentary about human marks made
on an industrialized form, a dialogue between

Tofu Residue Construction, by Difan “Woody” Wu. Clay and wood, 2010. Winner of the

Continued on Page 5, Installations

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - June 2040

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