Kiln Visit 1

As those who have braved the Soho streets to come to the gallery recently have noticed, there are some new things afoot at Cavin-Morris. We are always pondering and testing what it is that keeps us active and involved. From the beginning, without really having the exact words for it, we have been pulled to art that combines a homeground intentionality with an intense process.
For us this is the active link between trained and untrained, tribal and non-traditional etc. As a method of determining degree of category and/or authenticity self-taught has always been important but it isn't the REASON we collect the way we do.

Studio pottery has always fascinated me as a potential marker of Place and Process. The potters we have visited recently have drawn us into this deja vu experience of visiting self-taught artists in the US and the Caribbean and Mexico where, aside from quality, the way the culture and the Place works upon the artist and the work is often extremely satisfying. The makers who interest us arent necessarily the ones who are directly engaged in dialog with the artworld and with art world dogma but those who may or may not have been traditionally or artschool trained but whose work is almost an evolving interaction with ancient roles of the artists involvement with Nature and with Time and Timelessness. Pottery is Nature. Even abstract sculptural forms, when woodfired have that involvement with landscape. The life of the artist is geared to forces of Nature and this is an eternal aspect of the artmaking we love. And so afte rlong reflection we decided to begin with Japanese woodfired pieces and gradually open that up as we go along.

This last weekend we visited two artists and everything we imagined was true. Jeff Shapiro and Tim Rowan both spent time in Japan learning but have gone in different directions with the work. Shapiro is the senior of the two and I am going to show a couple of the pieces we got of his first and show Rowan in a future post because I do not want to jumble them together visually as their takes on clay and intention are so different. Japan is very much an integral part of Shapiro's life while Rowan is very much about the haunted American landscape and the intense physicality of the East Coast stone and earth and tree scape itself; its battle between stone and ruins and forest decay and shadow and dream.

Both visions are close to our hearts. From Japanese pottery both utilitarian and sculptural I learn the silence of beauty and contemplation. The power of serious play. I think Shapiro is very important in his sensitivity to tribal and traditional cultures and his ability to break out of the expected in order to push forms that link these sensibilities.

More on Ryan in another post.