The Montclair Art Museum opens an exhibition
by the renowned sculptor and ceramicist Betty Woodman in the Museum's
dramatic Grand Staircase Gallery. Betty Woodman: Two Bronze Benches and
Four "Ceramic Pictures of Korean Paintings" is the second installation to be
featured in this lofty staircase, and features four of Woodman's vividly
colored, monumental ceramic wall installations, consisting of fragmented
vases filled with blossoming plants. The works merge sculpture and painting
in a dynamic assemblage of bright color and cultural interplay.
The genesis
for Ceramic Pictures of Korean Paintings installed at the Museum was an
excursion to Korea in the summer of 2001 and the particular styles of Korean
Painting she saw while there. One of Woodman's sinuous painted bronze
benches will accompany the staircase installation, and another will be
placed on MAM's entrance walkway, creating a dialogue between the indoor and
outdoor components of the artist's works.
Betty Woodman lives and works in New York City and Antella, Italy,
and is internationally recognized as one of the world's premier living
ceramicists. Since the 1960s, she has exhibited her work in more than
eighty one-person shows and her work is included in more than forty public
collections. Woodman's work is known for its dazzling inventions with form
and color and its consistent challenge of the limits of her medium.
The
writer Arthur Danto has commented, "Woodman's art so magnificently
transcends the boundary between art and craft, drawing its power from both,
that quite apart from the immense pleasure her work gives me, I admire her
example, since I too have struggled with such a boundary, the one that
separates two modes of writing - philosophy and literature."
Betty Woodman will present a slide lecture in the Museum's Leir
Hall, Sunday, January 26th at 3 p.m. A reception to meet the artist will
follow the lecture.
The exhibition is curated by Patterson Sims, Director of the Montclair Art
Museum, and will be on view through April 13, 2003. Sims has curated
numerous one-person shows, including exhibitions of works by Viola Frey,
Ellsworth Kelly, Jan Matulka, John Storrs, and Fred Wilson. The generosity
and assistance of Lynn Glasser, the Max Protetch Gallery, and individual
donors is greatly appreciated for the funding of this project.
IMAGE:
Betty Woodman
Camellia Tree Vase, 2001/2002
Fired and unfired clay
7.5 x 10 x 1 feet
Courtesy of Max Protetch Gallery, New York
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