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The Artisan Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibit of ceramics artists Stephanie Craig & Todd Leech.
Friday, May 26 through Sunday, July 8
* Opening Reception with the artist: Saturday, May 26, 5-8
Stephanie Craig - ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Available Stephanie Craig work on sale at The Artisan Gallery
"The aesthetics of my artwork are rooted in keen
observations of form and design in nature. I am
captivated by encapsulated forms, revealed interiors,
skeletal structures, surface textures and patterns,
symmetries, and the scars of erosion. Although
organic, my art forms are interjected with human made
markings; text, numeric codes, industrial stampings.
I am interested in the ambiguous place between natural
and human-made: is it cultural artifact or natural
object.
My earlier artworks pursued the challenge of
"fossilized memories". I was exploring the notion of
recording thought and personal history, of visually
representing the elusive, fragmented nature of memory.
Growing from that body of work, my research continues
to investigate our human impulse to collect, sort and
organize ideas and objects. These "specimen
collections" are a personal Wunderkammer Ð a cabinet
of curiosities, filled with wondrous objet natura
categorized and displayed for examination and study.
The pseudo-scientific presentation furthers the notion
of artwork vs. artifact vs. nature.
In the spirit of exploration and discovery, the
treasures for my modern-day cabinet of curiosities are
retrieved from the stunning world of microscopic
imagery. I am delighted if my collections offer an
occasion to examine, explore and wonder."
www.stephaniecraig.net
Todd Leech - ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Available Todd Leech work on sale at The Artisan Gallery
My current artwork addresses the themes of
time, mortality and the disintegration of the human
body. These themes, at once very personal to me, are
universal. I address the duplicity of my themes and
my choice of working with a permanent material such as
clay by using non-traditional firing techniques and
dry textured glazes. The results are artworks that
appear aged and eroded by time.
I am ever aware of the passage of time, and
this preoccupation is evident in the dates and numbers
layered into my work as I am recording history.
The inclusion of text keeps a record of my individual
fears and fascinations. Notions about progression of
time are further reinforced by my impulse to work in
series; making explicit the evolution and maturity of
objects and ideas. By extension, notions of mortality
and human fragility prevail. Even the resilience of
clay can be challenged, and as my ceramic works
undergo aggressive and non-traditional processes they
mirror the challenges and endurance of the human body.
Most recently, my artworks include molds of the human
figure; the completed pieces are dry, scarred, and
eroded.
Dry, foaming and blistering glazes, which
cover the ceramics, relate to themes of
disintegration. The heavily textured and pitted
surfaces allude to disease and decay of the physical
self. Interestingly, I selectively erode away the
surfaces of my pieces, revealing deeper layers and
details concealed beneath. This final process
confirms the complexity of the artwork, as well as
that of human existence.
www.toddleech.com
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