Archive Group Show Six from California June 14-Jun 29, 2023 click here for exhibition artwork                    Six from California The Frank Lloyd Gallery is pleased to present an exhibit of six artworks by well-known Californian ceramic artists. The artworks present the diversity of approaches to the medium of ceramic art by West Coast artists. Ranging from the classic modernist heritage of Harrison McIntosh to the brilliant intellect and humor of Adrian Saxe, these ceramic artworks exemplify the region's experimentation with studio pottery and its influence on later artists. "Early Four Handled Tall Neck Vessel" from the1970s, is a remarkable example of Beatrice Wood's (1893-1998) signature luster glazing, which she developed over the course of her long and extraordinary life. The slender, tapering vessel is adorned with four small looping handles, and complements the rich surface of her work. This vessel has the elegant presence of an artifact unearthed from an ancient civilization. Shimmering, gilded colors animate this piece, catching the light and drawing in the viewer. Ken Price (1935-2012) returned to the cup format many times over the course of his career, working through variations on the familiar object. The inherently small size of a cup complemented Price's exploration of scale, and his belief that "The two most powerful sizes are very small and very large. Small scale has the connection of intimacy, and the fantasy of heroic proportions, since pieces slightly under hand-size are so easy to visualize as being monumental." The work in this exhibition, circa 1967, is an older example of the "rope" cup form. Price has described his continued engagement with the cup form: "Everybody knows what a cup is. To use it you put it to your mouth and drink from it, so symbolically it represents sensual life. The cup is its own subject matter so it doesn't have to be about anything else, and at the same time it's a great idiom to carry all kinds of references and cultural information if you want it to." Rare among artists working clearly within ceramic traditions, Adrian Saxe (b. 1943) receives critical comment and review in articles by writers in art journals and other publications that regularly exclude artists working in craft media. Peter Schjeldahl the late art critic for The New Yorker, wrote: "His fantastically ornate vessels, their academic orders exaggerated, are spectacularly skilled, harshly jokey, and show-off erudite. Saxe's ceramics are engines of simultaneous seduction and insult." Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote: "With outrageous humor and unspeakable beauty, (Saxe) makes intensely seductive objects that exploit traditional anthropomorphic qualities associated with ceramics." This is especially evident in the current piece, "Mystery Ewer (Marie-Ptooi)," from 1993. Born in Rimouski, Québec, Canada, Roseline Delisle (1952-2003) was meticulous in her fabrication and decoration.  Delisle's nonfunctional vessels are elegant and precise. The geometric rigor of her pieces is offset by their richly satisfying surface qualities. Kristine McKenna wrote that "As aesthetic forms, they're structured around a number of oppositions: profile versus surface; vertical thrust versus horizontal stripe; order versus whimsy; color versus form. Perhaps most important, what they do is take another opposition – art versus craft – and skewer it with wit and shocking grace." Consummately crafted, perfectly proportioned and full of sophisticated design, Harrison McIntosh's (1915-2016) vessels have been a strong part of Southern California's modernist heritage for over six decades. He was the model of studio craft, and his work is receiving continued recognition. Consistent and productive, McIntosh typically presented a refined and balanced vessel with smooth glazes or geometric decoration. With influences from European design, Japanese ceramics and some California traditions, the works have a timeless and elegant refinement. Suzanne Muchnic wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "McIntosh gently nudged the boundaries of traditional studio pottery by elevating functional objects to a rarefied state of art. Over the next 50 years, he produced an internationally revered body of work that exemplifies a classical vein of the postwar crafts movement."