Spotted | A Vitric Celebration, Mouth Pieces, Swamped Ceramics and more!

Welcome back to Spotted, our weekly top picks from the worlds of contemporary ceramics and contemporary ceramic art. This week we’re jumping off, not with ceramic, but a designer and architect’s stunning never-before-seen vitric undertaking. Be sure to peruse the post all the way to the end; we left a little treat for you there.

Above image: Chris Staley, Large covered jar (Screws and Nails) (detail), 1990, Glazed stoneware, 27 × 13 inches

Ettore Sottsass

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italian architect Ettore Sottsass (1917 – 2007), Le Stanze del Vetro in Venice is showcasing the artist’s glass and crystal production in a never-before-seen exhibition Ettore Sottsass: The Glass, DesignBoom writes.

Sottsass established working relationships with the famous glass makers on the Venetian island of Murano during the 1940s, showed a few glass works at the 1948 Biennale, and continued working with the city’s craftsmen over the following decades, producing Murano glass pieces under the aegis of his Memphis group during the 1980s. His glass oeuvre, spans from the series he designed in the 1970s for Vistosi to symbolic forms of the 1990s, the stunning constructions for the millennium house in Qatar, and the famous kachinas.

Explore previous Sottsass posts by Cfile

Eve Ariza

Andorran artist Eve Ariza’s series Murmuri (murmur) is a reflection on a universal language. The collection from Venice Biennale 2017 earlier this month is an in-depth search on mutating material and the origins of forms and sounds, InfoCeramica writes.

Reconnecting with the tradition of ceramics, Eve Ariza works on the multiplication of the millenary form of the bowl, one of the first human creations with concrete utility. By voluntarily “acquiring” the base of the bowl, the artist gives the appearance of a mouth from which the precious murmurs escape. The utilitarian essence of the object disappears and its simple form becomes a true symbol of the interhuman connection.

Check out Cfile’s previous musings on Ariza’s work.

Kathy Butterly

New York-based artist Kathy Butterly brings a painterly sensibility to her idiosyncratic ceramic sculptures. To realize her witty, quirky, sexy little beasts, she applies a range of sophisticated glazes and delicate textures, Tabor de Nagy Gallery writes.

For Butterly the kiln is a crucible of possibilities. With each firing, a playful intuitive sensory dialogue ensues. Over decades she has mastered teasing out highly associative meaning with each additional glazing. Her aesthetic synthesizes Asian ceramics and California Funk.

Read more of Cfile’s reflections on Butterly’s work.

Rago Auction

Artsy presented its Rago Auctions: Mid-Mod, which featured pieces by Frank Lloyd Wright, George Nakashima, Charles and Ray Eames, and more. Unfortunately, the auction is closed (sorry!), but we wanted to share with you some Cfile favs, like this beautifully glazed pot by none other than the ‘Mad Potter of Biloxi,” George E. Ohr.

And just for you…

We know all-too-well Mondays can be rough, so we’ll leave you with this masterpiece for your eyes to feast on. We’re just kidding…or are we?

(I initially felt compelled to tongue-in-cheekly compare the image to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, but I restrained myself. That infamous comb-over is no where near worthy for that ranking, and, nevertheless, just where it belongs.)

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