Artaxis conversations

Richard Notkin – John Michael Kohler Arts Center – Arts/Industry Program

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Richard Notkin

BIO:
Richard Notkin is a full-time studio artist who lives and works in Helena, Montana. He received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1970, and an MFA from the University of California, Davis in 1973. Mr. Notkin has worked mainly in ceramics for more than thirty-nine years, averaging over one solo exhibition per year. His series of Yixing (China) inspired teapots and ceramic sculptures have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan. He has held visiting artist positions and conducted over 250 workshops throughout the world. Among his awards, Richard has received three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.

Artist’s Statement for “All Nations Have Their Moment of Foolishness”:

We have stumbled into the 21st Century with the technologies of ‘Star Wars’ and the emotional maturity of cavemen. If we can’t find more creative solutions to solving worldwide social and political problems than sending young men and women to shred and incinerate one another’s flesh with weapons of ever increasing efficiency, we will not survive to celebrate the passage into the 22nd Century — the problems of human civilization are far too complex to be solved by means of explosive devices. And our country and too many of our world’s nations are now in the hands of right wing thugs and fundamentalist tyrants who are fumbling the planet towards World War III.

I continue to make ceramic sculptures which reflect on the social and political dilemmas of our world. As André Malraux observed, “Art is a revolt against man’s fate”. Need I say more?

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This video is for Artaxis conversations during National Clay Week 2019 – "Resources"

Ayumi Horie – Haystack Mountain School of Crafts

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Ayumi Horie

BIO:
Ayumi Horie is a studio potter in Portland, Maine who makes functional pottery with drawings of animals. In 2015, she was awarded a Distinguished Fellow in Craft grant from the United States Artists Foundation. She runs Pots In Action, a curatorial project on Instagram that features international ceramics and recently completed a collaborative public art project, Portland Brick, that repairs city sidewalks with bricks stamped with past, contemporary, and future memories. In 2011, she was the first recipient of Ceramics Monthly’s Ceramic Artist of the Year award. She has organized multiple online fundraisers including Obamaware in 2008 and Handmade For Japan in 2011. She is currently on the board of the American Craft Council and accessCeramics.org.

STATEMENT:
My work attempts to deepen connections between people and their communities, serving both a physical purpose and as a vehicle to open the softer side of a person. I want to explore individual vulnerability by drawing images that evoke an emotional response and also explore how public art invites a community to deepen their link to one another and to their sense of home.

My work has multiple directions- functional ceramics, tote bags, photography, social media and social practice. My primary work for the last twenty years has been that of a studio potter. I use imperfections in form as evidence of human vulnerability to link the user to the maker. I am interested in the anti-masterpiece and the anti-monumental, because I think one kind of meaningful connection to an object, and by extension another person, takes place through daily interaction in intimate domestic spaces.

My pottery, photography, Pots In Action and my collaborative public art project, Portland Brick, reflect my interest in relational aesthetics. The dialogue and impact on both parties is concrete. Much of my work is given as gifts, and the social exchange aspect of my practice overlaps with my explorations in community projects that have participatory elements, storytelling components, and even fundraising goals supporting social change.

To find out more about Haystack Mountain School of Crafts

To find out more about Ayumi Horie

This video is for Artaxis conversations during National Clay Week 2019 – "Resources"