News Archives
First off, I want to extend a generous
'thank you' to Penn State and
Bowling Green State University for
having me come this past weekend for a visiting artist/ demo/
lecture. I had *great* time! I met some really fantastic
students working in clay, and it was a real pleasure to spend some
time with Chris Staley and former Bray resident, John Utgard at
Penn State and John Ballisteri and Steve Roberts at Bowling Green
State University. I managed to sketch out a pretty good sized
demo piece at Bowling Green (a 3ft? goat tangled in a rope and pulley
situation), and I wish them the best of luck getting it through its
firing! (I didn't get much time to hollow the 200lb mass
out). I also made a trip to Shippensburg, PA to deliver the Black
Rabbit and Pack
Hunt to the collection of Tom Mitros where I was treated to home
cooked Greek feast that still makes my mouth water. Thanks to
all of you guys for your support!
Secondly, I just heard this morning that the "Spanish Feral Meat Goats" were a hit at the St. Petersburg Clay National this past Friday and they won Best of Show, Non- Functional !! Huge thanks for the folks down there in Florida in being so patient with the last minute arrival of my pieces!
I also would like to mention that I drove down to Santa Fe, New Mexico last month to deliver the drowning goat, "Object Lesson: Apathy", to Sandy Besser. Wow. Not only was he a generous host, but his collection is absolutely stunning. I have never seen so many incredible ceramic works by top contemporary artists all in one place. I was honored and humbled by the inclusion of my work in his collection. I hopped over to Santa Fe Clay to help disassemble the Archie Bray Resident show there and to pack up the Spanish Goats for their trip to Florida. The people at Santa Fe Clay are some of the best people on the planet...no kidding. Included on my list of favorites were Avra and Dave who were an enormous help to me while I was in the area. If you are ever down there, make sure to stop in and meet them and see their beautiful new gallery space. The whole trip was overwhelming. The food, the people, the profusion of art galleries, the Folk Art Museum (!!!), and the landscape was beyond my ability to sum up. Suffice to say that it was a great trip.
At the Archie Bray Foundation, we are busily getting ready for our Holiday Sale opening this Thursday. I have a small herd of studies that I will include in the show, as well as a few porcelains and maybe a large beast or two. I will also be sending a grouping of porcelains down to The Art Spirit Gallery for their "Small Works" invitational at the end of the month. I heard that the The Reclining Rabbit arrived safely at the gallery and is now looming large in the front window.
As usual, I have much to do, and the clock is ticking.....stay tuned in the next month or so for new images in the gallery......
Visiting Artist Workshop: Spokane Arts Commission, Spokane, Washington
October 4th, 2003 (10am-4pm)
http://www.spokanearts.org/hottopics.aspVisiting Artist Lecture: Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA
November 6th, Thursday (time an details to be announced)
http://www.sva.psu.edu/ceramic.htmlVisiting Artist Lecture and Demonstration: Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH
November 12th, Wednesday (time an details to be announced)
http://digitalarts.bgsu.edu/majors/description.cfm?m=ceramics
We will be in a flurry of activity at the Archie Bray Foundation this fall with a number of smaller exhibitions. If you would like to know what we are up to, feel free to visit the Archie Bray Foundation site for the Christmas schedule. I will also be sending work to The Art Spirit Gallery and River Gallery for the holidays. In the meantime, I am using the bulk of my studio time to work on the largest pieces for my 2004 exhibition schedule. Hoping to get the three big 1,800 pound pieces roughed in and finished between now and January...wish me luck!
After all those hours of pouring over grant materials, the tense expectant waiting period, the anxiety of having to leave the Archie Bray Foundation due to lack of funds.....
I got the American Craft Council Emerging Artist Grant!!!!
So where does
this leave me? Since I had already given my place at the
Bray away to a new incoming resident, I was now left with
the problem of not having a place to make my work. I
talked to the director here at the Bray, Josh DeWeese,
and let him know that if by some bizarre chance, one of
the new residents cancelled, I would like to stay for a
second year..... Another tense waiting period...... I began
looking into other residencies or the possibility of
setting up a studio back in the mid-west to be closer to
my husband.
To my incredible
good fortune, Josh let me know at the beginning of June
that a residency spot had opened back up.. I'm staying another year at the Archie
Bray Foundation! Yay!!! I have got *a
lot* of work to do.
My
Exhibition Schedule for
this fall is filling up rapidly. My 'exit' show
at the Archie Bray Foundation, "Animal
Body, Human Space" went really well. I have
included some images of the work from that installation
under Current
Work in the Gallery section. Many of the pieces from
this show are traveling this fall to a number of other
venues. Right now, "Object
Lesson: Apathy" is included in the ANA show
juried by Richard Notkin at the Holter Museum
here in Helena, Montana. After that, it will be traveling
down to Santa Fe to be a part of a large collection of
ceramic sculpture owned by Sandy Besser. Hopefully I will
be able to exhibit the piece now and then as a loan from
his collection, since it is still one of my best pieces
yet. I sent another good sized body of work down to Couer
d'Alene, Idaho to a Clay Invitational Exhibit at the Art
Spirit Gallery. Steve Gibbs, the owner and curator has
been a real pleasure to work with. Among the work being
shown is "Object
Lesson: Dissension", "No
Tongue Can Tell", "Spanish
Feral Meat Goats", "Shelf
Rabbit 1", "The
Inquisitors", "Thesis
Studies". The "Cornered
Rabbit" is on it's way to a show curated by
Josh DeWeese at the Wichita Center for the Arts in
Kansas, and the "Spanish
Feral Meat Goats" will be joining an exhibit of
work by Archie Bray Resident Artists at the Santa Fe Clay
Gallery later in September.
In 2004,
Rebecca Hutchinson has invited me to be a guest artist in residence
sometime in early spring at the University
of Massachusettes, Dartmouth for a three week workshop.
Keen! I'll try to post a definite date when I have one. On
a similar note, I have also been invited to be a Guest Artist in
Residence at the Clay Studio
in Philadelphia for two months next fall, August-September. On an
extremely cool note, Steve Gibbs at the Art Spirit Gallery has invited
me and a former Bray resident, Chis Antemann, to do a show together at
his gallery in April. I have a solo exhibition scheduled at
River Gallery a couple of months later in June. It will
certainly be a crazy late summer, since I will be at the end of my
residency here at the Bray as well as putting on my solo ACC Grant
Exhibition at the The
Contemporary Craft Gallery in Portland, Oregon. I am still hoping to
apply for another residency position for 2004/2005, but I expect I
won't know what my plans are until next spring/summer.
Wow. Seeing all that in print is intimidating.....I'd better get into the studio!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
4/30/2003
Last month I spent a heavy block of time applying for grants in order to continue a second year as an artist in residence here at the Archie Bray Foundation. Unfortunately, I discovered that I needed to have my decision made before I would hear back from those grants. Based on some hair pulling conversations with friends and family, I decided that it would be best to save my second year here at the Bray for another time...possibly when they have finished their big multi-million dollar renovation in 2005.
Although this was a very very very hard decision, I am gearing up for the next challenge, and trying to enjoy every last minute that I have here in Helena, Montana. I will be applying for a few other residencies with fellowships on the east coast, and there is also a strong possibility that I will decide to move back to the mid-east and set up a studio.
In the Meantime.....I am now madly trying to produce work for my Exit Exhibition here at the Archie Bray Foundation on May 22. I just found out about it two and a half weeks ago, and I am in full blown panic mode. If any of you reading this would like to receive a postcard announcement for the show, please send me an email with your address. I am trying to begin a long-overdue mailing list.
*Exciting News* The Contemporary Craft Gallery in Portland, Oregon, contacted me this week and offered me an exhibition next fall 2004. I hope to visit Portland later this summer, talk to the gallery folks, and scope out the space. The primary challenge will be the financial end of shipping all the work out there, but I am really excited about working on another large installation, like my last show, “tremble, shiver”.
Most notably, I have added images of Recent Work completed:
• during my graduate school studies at Ohio State University,
• the summer in between my first and second year,
• my first major installation, “tremble, shiver”, and
• a sample of the Current Work I am creating through my residency
at the Archie Bray Foundation, in Helena, Montana.
I decided to convert the bulk of the site over to images, rather than text. I know this makes for lengthy loading times, but I am gambling that it is worth the wait. If you have problems viewing any portions of the site, drop me a note.
As intimated in the list above, I have been a bit occupied over the past several years. Here is a brief summary:
After a very stressful two-year period of examining and re-examining, deconstructing, sorting, trashing, bashing, and hair-pulling in graduate school, I finally emerged in July, 2002 with a new body of work that I am really excited about. Most importantly, I decided to try approaching my work about human psychology without using the human form (for further details, I have posted a new artist statement outlining this line of thought).
This concept formed the heart of my Masters thesis work during the last three months of my studies, culminating in the installation, “tremble, shiver”. This exhibition was held in a raw warehouse space in the old industrial district of Columbus, Ohio. Although I have included images from this show in the gallery, the installation derived much of its power from its physical presence, the smells, sounds and lighting of the work. As part of my work on the exhibition, I spent a lot of time writing about my thoughts and past and present experiences relating to the installation. If there is an interest, I will try to have this writing available through the website.
In order to have some time and space to develop the work, I applied for a year-long residency at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana. It was a tough decision to live apart from my husband, Matt, who is pursuing his PhD in philosophy at Bowling Green State University. So far, the Archie Bray Foundation has lived up to its enormous reputation. The landscape is incredible here, and within the 26 acres of the Foundation, the old brickyard buildings and beehive kilns provide perfect places to install my work.
I am currently working on another large group of animal figures for an installation--similar to my last exhibition, but with a sharper edge. I would also like to return to the human figure soon…my sketchbook is already filling with a back log of ideas and thoughts for further work.
David Zapf Gallery
2400 Kettner Blvd. Suite 104
San Diego, California 92101
619-232-5004
I’ll keep you posted.
-Beth