As part an ongoing fundraiser to help support the educational programs of CFile, we are excited to present a new limited edition plate, by Chris Staley at CFile Shop. Produced exclusively for CFile, this artwork features a portrait of the artist covered in slip. Staley, who has a gift for verbal eloquence as well as visual elegance, writes:
I have always liked that the word humble comes from ‘humus’ which means earth. Life comes from dirt and in the end returns to the dirt. Like the circularity of the plate, what comes around, goes around. Putting my head in the clay felt like I was returning to some primal sludge. A form of prayer from which we came.
Chris Staley is a Distinguished Professor of the Ceramic Arts at Penn State University. He was recently selected to be the Penn State Laureate for 2012-2013. In 1977, Chris was rejected to all the graduate MFA program’s he applied to. However, after attending the Kansas City Art Institute for a year as a special student, he went on to earn his MFA from Alfred University. He has traveled extensively as a visiting artist from Bezalel Academy in Israel to Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants and two Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Grants. His work is in many collections, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London as well as friend’s cupboards. He authored an essay titled “The Hegemonic Eye; Can the Hand Survive?” He has served on the Board of Directors at the Archie Bray Foundation, in Helena, Montana and on the Board of Trustees at The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Above Image: Chris Staley, Surrender to Now, 2014. 10 inch porcelain plate with onglaze decal. Produced in an edition of 25. $200.00 at www.cfileshop.org
Backstamp of Chris Staley’s, Surrender to Now, 2014. 10 inch porcelain plate with onglaze decal. Produced in an edition of 25.
As Penn State Laureate (2012-2013), Staley produced some videos about creativity, art, and ceramics. This is one in which he talks about the body as vessel.
Support CFile: Buy Chris Staley’s Surrender to Now at CFile Shop
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