We have a variety of things being featured. In the main gallery there's
ceramics and recent acquisitions to the university collection. In the gallery
downstairs we look at fantasy coffins.
The British Studio Ceramics are part of
the Arkansas Art Center collection. Most of the pieces are vessels in the
exhibition that can contain something. This collection focuses on studio
ceramics created in Britain from the 1970s to the early 1990s. There's a
variety of techniques and forms in this exhibition which you will see. Works that
focus on functional objects like cups, vases, and teapots.
And they're one focus of
the ceramic movement. The other focus is sculptural ceramics that celebrate
texture and delicate decorative designs.
Fantasy coffins can make us think of the body as a vessel or the coffin as a
vessel. And the fantasy coffins downstairs are made by an artist from
Ghana. And people can commission him to create coffins that reflect their
professional experiences or personal passions.
Kane Kwei is Ga so the ethnicity the people is Ga and and they have very lively
funerals. And so the coffins are paraded kind of through the town as part of the
funerary rites on the way to the grave. And so this was also a publicity, right?
Lots of people saw this amazing coffin and commissions started coming in.
And often when a commission will come in it will take you know one to two weeks
for a coffin to be completed. But they also tend to have some in the shop ready
on hand. And so fantasy coffins are kind of a growing thing.
Coffins tend to have to do with the person's life and occupation. But they may also have to do
with aspirations of a person. So sometimes a Mercedes-Benz or a an
airplane or maybe a business shoe something that shows prestige may also
be used.
When I visited in 2017 the Kane Kwei workshop they asked what my
profession was and they had a Bic pen there. And said oh well this is for
teachers. And so I got in the coffin.
So one of the things about our collection
it's a teaching collection. And what we try to do is get examples of the best
studio material, processes available. So you'll see a wood turned vessel in this
exhibition it's exquisite. Harvey Meyer created this on a lathe.
It's hand turned and then he goes back in and creates a decorative pattern and
the furniture design students can use that. The ceramic pieces that you see in
this exhibition are great examples for our ceramic studio majors to come into
the gallery, look at all the different processes whether they're hand-built or
wheel thrown, the way they're decorated and glazed, that it becomes a laboratory
for our students in the studios to learn firsthand from art objects that they see
in front of us. One of the artists that we brought into the collection is
considered an environmentalist, Bryant Holsenbeck. And she collects materials
that are discarded in our culture and then she re-purposes them. And in this
case she's created a whimsical rabbit and a couple of cranes which are also in
the exhibition. One of our former students Morgan Hill has created some
jewelry using scorched maple and silver and other mixed-media material.
One of the fun pieces is a portrait. It's a ceramic face but it's created from old
teapots, cups, broken pieces of ceramics, as almost as a three-dimensional
of Picasso's cubism. And I thought that was fun and lyrical and that's one
reason that we brought that piece into the collection.
So our galleries are of course laboratories for our students.
But we also want to encourage the community
to come into our galleries to see what we're displaying