BmoreArt

Ted Neal’s pieces hail from a duskier, more enigmatic aesthetic realm. Composed of iron-rich stoneware, his plates and vessels are ominously dark, with mottled and seemingly oxidized surfaces. Gridded forms imply an industrial origin, but swells in the clay suggest cells or sutures. Both surreal and vaguely apocalyptic, Neal’s wares evoke a range of precedents, from the shadowy sculptures of Louise Nevelson to the carbonized loaves of bread found in Pompeii, and from the retrofuturism of steampunk to the sobriety of a Cormac McCarthy novel. These are potent, Stygian works.

Several objects by Marret Metzger also impress, although in different ways. Metzger’s pieces celebrate the flora and fauna of her native Midwest, while echoing her training as a printmaker. When working in clay, she often carves into a black underglaze, creating forms that bear the heavy graphic quality of a woodcut. She also tends towards technically ambitious effects. A sizable basin decorated with insects against a bright patch of zinnias, for instance, is dotted with daring voids. 

Such details hint in turn at larger ideas. Those voids, for example, emphasize the thick clay from which the vessel is made, and remind us of the distance between the resoluteness of fired earth and the almost unimaginable thinness of a butterfly’s wing. They also speak to disappearance and loss, at a moment when rich ecosystems are under immense pressure. Nearby, in a clever vase also by Metzger, the handle is a heron’s neck: a further reminder of the precarious state of the natural world, in our hands.

The second show also alludes to an ecosystem—but one of potters, rather than critters. Lines and Patterns is the first of three planned exhibitions in which former recipients of the Lormina Salter Fellowship will show their work alongside pieces by their mentors and peers. Thus, while it’s limited to a single room, it’s dense with personal connections and points of artistic contact. Still, the works are pleasantly diverse. Harris Deller’s pieces are marked with thickets of linear patterns that recall the graceful intellectualism of Ruth Asawa’s wire sculptures, while Sarah Mae Caudill’s leathery surfaces and applied ornament imply the sensibility of a thoughtful interior designer.

But it’s the works by Yoshi Fujii and Sam Briegel, the former Salter Fellows at the center of this reunion, that really shine. Fujii, who first came to Baltimore Clayworks in 2008 and now directs the facility’s shop and exhibitions calendar, has established a local reputation as a maker of exquisite wheel-thrown functional wares. In a refined five-piece stoneware tea set, for instance, hand-carved quatrefoil forms enliven the surfaces of cups and kettle alike, unifying the group and enriching its effect. Emphatically patterned but cut in appealing deep relief, the vessels invite one’s touch.

Briegel’s work, in turn, is at once gorgeous and conceptually ambitious. A part-time faculty member at MICA who works out of a home studio, Briegel uses clothing from her own wardrobe and recycled prints to cast patterned porcelain slabs, which she then combines in graceful functional vessels. In a sense, then, these are something like piecework quilts, as they retain wisps of lived pasts. Moreover, Briegel frequently accents the seams in her work, honoring the importance of physical and social connections. 

But the bold juxtapositions of form and color also kindle a lively postmodern energy; Pierre-Félix Guattari might be tempted to call Briegel’s vessels intertextual pastiches. The rest of us, in the meantime, can simply appreciate her playful use of loud hues and labial folds, as in an impertinent ruffled teapot. Boldly iconoclastic, cerebral, and visually appealing, the teapot is typical of Briegel’s recent work, which is just shy of gaudy and completely alive to the history and potential of her raw materials.

Of course, such work requires years of practice—and the last of the three shows acts as a reminder of how such an arc can begin. The Community Arts Spring Showcase is a celebration of efforts by locals who took part in Clayworks’ various community arts programs (partners have included Baltimore City Public Schools, Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Maryland School for the Blind). And while no one would mistake the 33 unlabeled ceramic pieces on display for masterpieces, they manage to fill the room with a spirit of earnest inquiry and experimentation.

Most of them are hand-built, rather than thrown—learning to work on a wheel takes time— and their thick walls and trembling contours communicate a tentative attitude towards clay’s physical properties. Bright glazes recur, and recall the timeless advice attributed to the graphic designer Paul Rand: “If you can’t make it good, make it BIG. If you can’t make it big, make it RED!” But, really, quality isn’t at issue here; rather, these objects are warm sparks, each capable of igniting a life-long exploration.

And with that in mind, we might return to the adjacent galleries, and think for a moment about what ceramics means in today’s world. Some of the oldest works of art and architecture are made of baked or fired earth; working with clay thus links us to the past. It’s also an intensely tactile craft, as anyone who has wedged clay or emptied a kiln knows—and so it offers a corrective to our largely digital existences. 

Relatedly, clay offers an appealing series of potential challenges. How far, exactly, can it be pushed, or pulled? And how might a thrown piece of clay suggest an environmentalist’s conviction, or queer glamor? The English potter Charles Fergus Binns once wrote that ceramists will cheerfully accept a difficulty “if in the overcoming there is found success,” and many of the works currently on display at Clayworks seem to embrace that philosophy. Success, of course, can mean many things. But surely it’s a term that can be applied to many of the committed, experimental, and sometimes even dazzling works on display in these three satisfying shows.