Jenni Sorkin, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been selected to be the first editor for CFile’s Ostracon Journal for Critical Writing on Contemporary Ceramics. The journal will debut May 15, 2014. Each issue has a theme that the editor and three to four other scholars will explore. In addition, the journal will include ten to fifteen book reviews. It is, like most of CFile, free to subscribers online. CFile News will keep you updated.
Sorkin writes about the intersection of gender, material culture, and contemporary art. She is currently finishing a book titled The Rural Avant-Garde: Experiments in Ceramics, which examines the confluence of gender, artistic labor, and the history of post-war ceramics. She has published widely as an art critic; her writing has appeared in New Art Examiner, Art Journal, Art Monthly, NU: The Nordic Art Review, Frieze, The Journal of Modern Craft, Modern Painters, and Third Text.
She has written numerous in-depth catalog essays on feminist art and issues around material culture. In 2004, she received the Art Journal Award. In 2010, she co-organized “Blind Spots/Puntos Ciegos: Feminisms, Cinema, and Performance,” for the eighth edition of SITAC, the International Symposium of Contemporary Art Theory, held in Mexico City. On September 28, 2013, she gave the Keynote Address “We Can Work It Out: Feminist Labor and the Future of Craft” at the FlashBackForward: Rethinking Craft Symposium at Arizona State University.
For a taste of Sorkin’s erudition and depth, view the video, The Pottery Seminar at Black Mountain College, below. It’s 45 minutes and well worth the time.
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