o N C ECA Ove rl oad By Keith Rice-Jones Even before we left there was a sense of being overwhelmed, with a 54-page exhibition guide! It certainly wasn’t any better when we got there—there was SO much. This wasn't helped when the convention centre was invaded by fantasy characters, streaming up the escalators for a parallel Comic Convention. It was quite bizarre! However, we had sat down earlier with a coffee and made a plan to focus on what we felt were important things for us, certain of the exhibitions and just not worry about what we didn’t see. We had a pretty good time. Avoiding indigestion seemed to be the name of the game; giving yourself space between exhibitions, meeting old friends—there were so many from B.C.—making new ones, mooching, enjoying getting around on Seattle’s excellent transit system, watching and listening to demos and more exhibitions. We were pretty full by the time we got to the many exhibitions at the Seattle Design Centre on Saturday morning, and perhaps it was this that underlined my overwhelming sense of American bombast in much that we had seen. Sure there was much that was quiet and thoughtful, intriguing, clever and skillful but I tired of the sense of “look at me,” a predilection for the grotesque and ugly, trying to be different for the sake of it, and why all the bunnies? I certainly don't think that we have anything to apologize for in B.C. Our work, well illustrated in the two shows at the Fraker-Scott Gallery, The Edge of Here and. The Salish Sea has a quiet competence, is strong and varied. Yeah, Canada! After the visual indigestion of the Design Centre we had a break and felt we were fortunate to end our experience on such a positive note with the superb show at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Around the Bend and Over the Edge: Seattle Ceramics 1964 — 1977. It was a bit like going back to source material, like reading Darwin in the original rather a pastiche of accumulated ideas. It was easy to see the roots of so much current “edgy” work but this was so ground breaking at the time with Seattle artists playing such “a vigorous role in a widespread revision of what constituted ceramics and ceramic art” (Martha Kingsbury, Guest Curator). Artists at the forefront of this revolution were Robert Sperry, Patti Warashina, Fred Bauer and Howard Kottler. It was great to not only see work by David Gilhooley, whose zany frog kingdoms were often referenced in my teaching of kids, but also pieces by Pat McCormick, who had been my instructor Serious Business, 1973, by Patti Warashina. Slip-cast, slab and hand-built earthenware with stains and luster glaze. Sesame Frog with Pigeons, by David Gilhooley. Work by Howard Kottler. at Western Washington University just after the end of the time window covered by the exhibition. Most of the work was sculptural, a pivotal subversion really of the predominant traditional vessel forms of the time. However, in a sub- part of the exhibition, some of this earlier work was shown alongside influential Japanese work. In particular, Patti Warashina had made a witty version of historical Japanese bottles and it was a double-take before you realized quite what was going on. Also it was a revelatory reminder of roots to see an early traditional large stoneware casserole by Peter Voulkos near one of his iconic loose dented plates. While one aspect of exploration was food—in a way, a subverted extension of the vessel, using wry cartoonish humour and pushing the accepted limits of using clay—other work was decidedly political, as with Robert Sperry’s Spirit of 76, a gruesome Easy Rider skull head, a commentary on the Vietnam war. Much of this new work stepped away from the earlier devotion to high-fired stoneware and comfortable forms. It made use of the vivid, even garish colours available with low temperature. At the time, it was shocking and controversial but showed an impeccable craftsmanship. ‘The show is on at the Henry Art Gallery until May 6. a For more on the Henry Art Gallery, see: www. henryart.org/exhibitions GUILD ee of BRITISH COLUMBIA a Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - May 2012 4