Kathy Erteman is a ceramic artist and designer who works out of Manhattan creating vessels and architectural wall pieces. She’s a full-time studio artist and a has been part time teacher at the Parsons School of Design. She’s also been a guest lecturer at The Brooklyn Museum, SUNY New Paltz and the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. She currently teaches at Greenwich House Pottery.
Last year, The Brooklyn Rail heaped praise on an exhibition of hers at the George Billis Gallery in New York. They picked at a thread in this body of work, saying it’s indicative of what a master ceramist can accomplish with vessels that eschew utility, noting that her forms, “defy gravity,” “soar” and enclose space within their profiles. They state of her exhibition:
“In her current exhibition Erteman is showing three forms: bottles, buckets, and horizontally stretched buckets. It would be ridiculous to use one of her “buckets” to hold water, even white roses, or anything less rarefied than air. They are meditations on the elegant functionality of a commonplace tin bucket. This approach, the non-functional derived from the functional, is not unique in the current ceramic dialog. There is no reference to the millennia of Mediterranean ceramic traditions. Nor the heady chroma of Chinese porcelain. Nor the rustication of Japanese Mingei pottery. Instead, the artist pushes the work in a different direction: North. She revels in a synthesis of mid-century northern European sensibilities: Dutch, English, German, Austrian, Scandinavian. Erteman creates straightforward, clean, historically modern expressions.”
Photographs of her minimal buckets from this exhibition are included below.
Featured image: Kathy Erteman, Swerve, 2013
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Kathy Erteman, Orange Pop, 2013
Kathy Erteman, Ochre Monoprint Vessel, 2012
Kathy Erteman, Albers & Indigo Vessel, 2013
Kathy Erteman, Saint Rosa, 2013
Kathy Erteman, Squeeze, 2013
Kathy Erteman, Black/White Bucket, 2013
Kathy Erteman’s installation at the George Billis Gallery, 2013
As a collector of fine ceramics and pottery from early 20th. Century to mid century modern, I have recently become acquainted with the beautiful work of Kathy Erteman. Though her newer design pieces are outstanding, my true love is with her mid century appearing, hand curved black & white early 1990’s bowls and dinner plates / tableware. They’re so beautifully done. And very pleasing to the eye. It is with great pleasure that I collect Kathy Erteman’s ceramics.
Kathy’s work is breathtaking, but to round out the perspective — she is also a woman with a beautiful soul. She is gentle, kind, and she has made an enduring contribution to the lives of Tibetan potters.
lovely!
Kathy’s work has been quite wonderful for some time, consistently changing in subtle and beautiful ways. She is one of the most committed, diligent artists out there today. What a pleasure to see her recognized for such in your column.