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POWELL, Wyo. - An exhibit of work by eight ceramists from the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana, opens Tuesday, Jan. 28, with a 7 p.m. artists’ reception at Northwest Gallery in Powell.
This is the seventh year Red Lodge Clay Center ceramists have exhibited at NWC, bringing together artists with distinct styles from disparate parts of the country.
“Red Lodge Clay Center: Current Works” is a combination of functional and decorative ceramics that includes both wheel-thrown and hand-built pieces.
Featured resident artists this year are Molly Anne Bishop, Perry Haas, Koral Halperin and Ryan Matthew Mitchell.
Viewers will find a spectrum of work that stretches from functional to purely fun and from colorful to rustic.
Bishop primarily creates functional dinnerware, calling it her “subversive canvas.” She draws inspiration from the natural world, particularly reptiles and travel.
Haas takes a historical approach to the many common pottery forms he creates. His ceramics studies in Korea and China are evident in his work, which consists mostly of functional wood-fired ceramics.
Halperin concentrates on building sculptures using coils. His decorative work explores directional change and forced hard angles to create space for specific patterns.
Mitchell, also a sculptor, says in the creative process he stays focused on one simple task: putting ambiguity and paradox between commonly held polar concepts like creation/destruction, artifice/artifact, past/present.
Also contributing to the exhibit are Red Lodge Clay Center staffers David Hiltner, Markus Urbanik, Jill Foote-Hutton and Andrea Moon.
The Red Lodge Clay Center exhibit is displayed through Friday, Feb. 28, in Northwest Gallery. Located in the Cabre Building on the Northwest College campus, the gallery is open from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays and Thursday evenings from 7-9 p.m. Admission is free.
