"Betty Woodman: Ceramic Floral Works"
2002-11-23 until 2002-04-13
Montclair Art Museum
Montclair, NJ, USA

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

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of New Jersey

Other Important Exhibitions in United States