This is my new “America” — my response to the xenophobes running for President. I’m angry at politicians who would build walls and close borders. The poem on the Statue of Liberty’s base reaches much farther than the sympathetic “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The very next words are “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” That’s a tough message, but generations of exiles who came here in desperation helped build America into the most powerful nation on earth. Their descendants shouldn’t pull up the drawbridge. Calling…

I am angry at politicians who preach fear and stigmatization against minorities and ethnicities.  The legacy of color divisions, which those politicians would only perpetuate, still drags on the strength of our great country.  When any of us is held back, none of us can truly move forward.  I know that many people sincerely believe we live in a post-racial society and economy.  But if that were true, the fear-mongers would not be finding such an audience.  That is why I wanted to show a vigorous figure that drags race-color blocks on its feet.  And when I wrapped those stenciled…

I am very pleased that two of my Raku-fired torsos have been accepted in juried shows in Baltimore and Brooklyn. The Baltimore Clayworks is having a “35th Anniversary Exhibition” to celebrate its decades of providing first-quality support, instruction and show space to ceramic artists.  Co-founder Deborah Bedwell is the juror for this show, and I am very glad that she chose a piece of mine, Well Met, to be part of the experience.  It is bold and engaging and I think a good fit for this show.  The exhibition opens on Friday, September 4th from 6 to 8 pm and runs…

A while back, I posted about fabricating my own Raku kiln.  It’s up and running!  And I am firing groups of figures that are the current exploration in my work.  Please take a look. The thread through all of my drawing and sculpting has been the expressive capacity of the body — particularly the torso.  The emotional states coded into and expressed by our core muscles don’t lie.  And I measure the success of my pieces by their capacity to reach out to viewers and connect on an emotional level. Starting last year, I got interested in putting expressive figures…

     I’m loving the Brooklyn art scene!  Last year, I was juried into a terrific figurative sculpture exhibition at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC).  Now I am heading back.  One of my figures was accepted into BWAC’s Wide Open 6, which will open on May 9th. This show is indeed wide open — all media on any subject, 2-D and 3-D.  BWAC received nearly 1350 submissions, and my sculpture “Listen” was one of 100 artworks selected.  The juror is Rujeko Hockley, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, who had the challenge of putting…

  Raku is still producing beautiful surfaces for me. And it is one of the ways I am trying to capture a new sensibility in my figures — gesture and movement that show an intrinsic quality of openness to human interaction. These pieces are a new series that I call Relationship, and I am pleased to preview it here. These pictures are from a raku firing that I did with the very expert David Flohr last Saturday (11/8). The first is a “naked” raku piece, as it is cooling down. The black coating still clinging to the shoulders is a…

In my last post, I wrote that a piece from my Figures in Space series had been accepted to a national juried show at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition.  Here is how it got to a prize-winning pedestal.  On the left, just out of the raku kiln, as the firing slip is being brushed off to reveal the craquelure.  The next picture shows it on the way to installation at the BWAC gallery, seat-belted into the passenger seat of my car.  The third picture is me with Lilly Wei, a noted modern art critic, curator and writer, who juried the…

I am very pleased to announce that two of my works have been selected for national juried exhibitions. “Figure in Space 4” will be in Art in Clay II:  Figuratively Speaking at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition.  It was selected by juror Lilly Wei, a New York art critic and contributing editor at ARTnews.  BWAC is located at 499 Van Brunt St. in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.  The show opens on September 27th and will run through October 26th. “Family” will appear in Looking at Ourselves:  A Survey of Contemporary Figurative Sculpture at the Baltimore Clayworks, 5707 Smith Ave. in Baltimore….

In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, Professor Lane Faison and his colleagues at the Williams College art history department launched a generation of art museum directors, curators and other professionals — often called the “Williams mafia” for how that department’s undergrads, after their various grad schools, became a dominant force in the American art world.  The early 70’s were my years there — graduating with highest honors in art history in 1974.  But I decided not to go on, much to the disappointment of my teachers, although I always felt I was right.  And having just returned from a wonderful…

Yes, raku firing is as immediate and exciting as it is cracked up to be.  Hands-on intervention in the ceramic process, working directly in high heat, atmosphere and combustion to transform pieces on the spot (for us a parking lot next to a tennis court).  The normal firing process of heating and cooling a closed kiln over a day and a half is not exciting.  Raku is. I had some doubts going in — not surprising to people who know me.  My passion is the emotional content of form, and I did not want to end up with surfaces that…