Archive Tony Marsh Keisuke Mizuno Tony Marsh and Keisuke Mizuno April 3, 2004-May 1, 2004 click here for exhibition artwork     In two separate one person shows at the Frank Lloyd Gallery from April 3-May 1, Tony Marsh and Keisuke Mizuno will each present new ceramic sculpture.  Marsh continues his exploration of vessel-based forms filled with objects, introducing a rich new palette of colors and surfaces.  Mizuno presents his superbly crafted leaves and flowers, heightening their complexity with new elements ranging from broken clock faces to delicately balanced bones.  Tony Marsh  Marsh's new work, a series of vessel-based forms filled with objects, incorporates a rich variety of tones and surface treatments.  Exploring both roughened, tactile surfaces and enticingly smooth, uniform surfaces, Marsh expands his range of colors to include lush reds and blues among earth tones.  The forms that fill each vessel echo geometric structures found throughout nature, both at the microscopic and macroscopic levels.  These shapes, familiar but mysterious in their re-contextualized state, deepen Marsh's exploration of the traditional vessel form.    Marsh, who was born in New York in 1954, has worked in Southern California for the past sixteen years.  After receiving his B.F.A. from California State University Long Beach, he apprenticed in Japan for three years before returning to the United States to get his M.F.A from Alfred University in 1988.  He is now the head of the ceramics department at California State University, Long Beach.  Museum collections include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, in Sedalia, Missouri.  Keisuke Mizuno  New works by Mizuno build on his previous interests in the passage of time and the balance of natural processes.  Employing complex layers of symbolism, Mizuno makes his perfectly formed leaves and flowers into delicately balanced structures.  He accents them with decaying fruit, bones and even tiny slugs. Mizuno's forms, drawn largely from nature, are organic and sinuous, referencing natural processes of death, decay, and regeneration.  With their intricate, jewel-like tones and detailed depictions of decay, they have the power both to allure and repel.  Mizuno, born in Japan in 1969, has been working in the United States since receiving his M.F.A. from Arizona State University in 1997.  Identified as a promising emerging artist, his professional career began quickly.  His work has been included in numerous  museum  exhibitions including Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950- 2000, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles and Clay Body Rhetoric, at the Beach Art Museum, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas.  Museum collections include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art in Shigaraki, Japan.