upcoming exhibition – Annabeth Rosen


Tie Me to the Mast 
February 16

March 18, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 16, 6-8 PM
P•P•O•W is pleased to present
Tie Me to the Mast,
a solo exhibition by Annabeth Rosen, a distinguished sculptor in the
community of West Coast ceramicists. Her work explores the fundamental
properties of
ceramics by directly confronting the aesthetic and chemical
relationships between sculptural form and painterly surface. Rosen’s
formally intuitive process is enabled by a complex understanding of
historical conventions, composite materials, and chemical properties,
placing her work in the tradition of experimental ceramicists including
Peter Voulkos, Betty Woodman, Linda Benglis, and Martin Puryear.
 
The
exhibition, her first with the gallery, will feature a series of
small-scale ceramic sculptures, elaborate organic forms that reveal
layer upon layer of clay,
glaze, and salt, fired using a ‘salt flux’ technique, which triggers a
self-glazing reaction. A signature innovation to this centuries-old
technique, through this process Rosen mixes surface chemistry into the
body of her work, creating a solid mass whose
glaze rises to the fore during the firing process. Rejecting historical
standards that distinguish decorative arts as ‘perfect’, Rosen’s
practice can be described as an effort to undermine established
conventions about an object’s merit, resulting in an extensive
body of work that embraces the challenges of a robust studio practice:
precarious balance, fissured surfaces, and accumulated fragments.
 
Among the works on view will be
Roil,
a large-scale sculptural work of individual ceramic forms, piled on top
of one another like layered gestures. Each individual piece is painted,
and together the work takes
on the effect of an abstract painting, ‘framed’ in a custom pedestal
made of metal. Pieced together, the work appears as if in motion, a
swirling, cascading form, seemingly driven by an inner velocity.
 
Rosen
describes the ceramic process for her as breaking down the barrier
between the visual and sensual. Her works invite not only an aesthetic
evaluation, but a
physical one as well. Creating works that appear as if caught in a
state of motion, the sculptures evoke a visceral response in the viewer,
inviting them to investigate the cracks and cervices visible on the
work’s surface. Interested in the way in which the
clay changes through being worked and formed, Rosen pushes the limits
of the material, building up works, firing them, adding new elements,
firing them again, and so on, exploiting the clay to create cracks in
the surface of the finished work that exposes
the nature of the materials.
 
“My
work represents a tally of touches that are informed by years of
deliberate working experience,” said Rosen. “My process may allude to a
desire to blur contemporary
experience into something timeless and familiar, like ceramics itself. I
engage in both recklessness and thoughtfulness at the same time,
embracing the awkward and the unfinished, the partial and the raw.”
 
Though
her works appear organic, found, or formed, masses of clay
un-heroically yielding to the weight of their material, Rosen’s work is
deliberate. Through the
process of creating her ceramic works, Rosen often breaks them, a
practice that she finds as interesting as the creation itself, as it
reveals the possibility and potency of a shard. She fires and re-fires
her work, interested in both the change in material
as the work accumulates mass, as well as the way the physical material
can be negotiated – its limits pushed, while simultaneously pushing the
limits of what a sculpture can be.
 
Born
in Brooklyn, New York, Rosen received her BFA from NYS State College of
Ceramics at Alfred University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of
Art. She was recently
announced as a 2016 recipient of a United States Artists fellowship.
She has been the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair at the University of
California Davis since 1997.  Rosen has taught at School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design,
Tyler School of Art and Bennington College. Rosen has received multiple
grants and awards, a Pew Fellowship, two National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowships, several UC Davis Research Grants, and a Joan Mitchell
Award for Painting and Sculpture. Rosen’s work
is in the collection of the LA County Museum of Art, The Oakland Museum
of Art, The Denver Art Museum, and The Everson Museum, as well as
public and private collections throughout the country.
Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped, Rosen’s first
major survey chronicling 20 years of her work in ceramics and drawing,
will open at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in August of 2017. She
is represented by Anglim Gilbert Gallery
in San Francisco.
For images or additional information, please email Trey Hollis at
[email protected].
P•P•O•W
| 535 West 22nd St. 3rd Floor | New York, NY 10011 US |
ppowgallery.com

Make and Do + National Clay Week want to see you working!

We all know that being an artist is an incredibly rewarding job but it’s also a lot of grueling hours and hard work. One of the most successful ways in which we as artists can help educate the buying public about the value of handmade objects is to share our stories and our processes with them. 

Make and Do and National Clay Week want to share these unique stories and processes with the world. We’re asking you to share with us little peeks inside your studio to help share the “behind the scenes” of what goes into each mug, bowl, sculpture, and work of art.

It’s easy to participate:
Step one – go to work on Monday morning (October 10th)
Step two – take a picture of what you’re working on in the studio that day.
Step three – tag it with #mondaymorningmaker and @nationalclayweek and @make_and_do_ceramics
Step four – upload it to your instagram account.

The rest is up to us!
So sit back and follow @make_and_do_ceramics to see into the studios of artists around the world.
Some submissions will also be shared on @potsinaction on Monday so send us your best photos.

And as always please help us spread the word by sharing this post. Maybe even send it to a few artists who you’ve been dying to see what they’ve been up to!

Thanks
xoxo
Carole + make & do members: Mariko Paterson, April Gates, Krystal Speck, Lesley McInally, Marney McDiarmid, Heather Braun-Dahl, Robin Dupont, Cathy Terepocki, Shane Weaver, Russell Hackney, Sarah Pike, Jenna Stanton, Katy Drijber