DRAWN TO THE SURFACE

On display at the CCC Gallery and online in the shop
June 9th - July 8th

First Friday Reception Event
July 7th | 6-8PM


With the understanding of the depth of decoration within the ceramic field, Drawn to the Surface celebrates the diverse ways that ceramic artists are decorating, designing, and embellishing the surface of clay. 
This show serves as a window into the various styles of decorative clay objects being created in contemporary ceramics

Sunshine Cobb, Christina Erives, Breana Ferreira, Sam Harvey, YoonJee Kwak, Liz Pechacek

Thank you to our 2023 Gallery Sponsor
Slifer Smith & Frampton!

 
 

sunshinecobb.com
Instagram: @shinygbird 

SUNSHINE COBB

BIOGRAPHY
As a full-time studio artist living in Helena, MT, she specializes in handmade functional pottery. She frequently travels the country as an invited lecturing and demonstrating artist. Her work has drawn both critical praise for its whimsical rustic style. She is considered an important contemporary functional potter, hailed in both academic and commercial circles, and is consistently featured in art exhibitions throughout the country. With a strong social media following and online media presence, she represents an innovator in online business models in the ever-changing ceramics field and a leading advocate for functional art in modern living. She devotes time and effort into growing a ceramics community locally and nationally. Besides volunteering demonstration time for local k-12 art programs, she works with artists, seeking mentorship, to develop their practice and learn about the field they are seeking to enter. She also authored a book “Mastering Hand Building”, in 2018 with Voyager Press.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I want my work in clay to represent growth and accomplishment, in which I believe reminiscence and nostalgia play a part. I rely on texture and color to create a sense of motion and time in my work. I hope to instill a sense of age, like one finds apparent in discarded objects, with the aim to infuse feelings of nostalgia and wanderlust in my ceramic objects. By exploring and creating vessels kept within arms reach, I hope to communicate how an object’s significance can grow and change depending on the path of a person’s life. And how the relationship between function and ornament shift throughout the course of a day/week/year. Through form and surface my goal is to communicate a sense of home and memory but also to evoke that feeling of wanderlust that has informed my own life and visual sensibilities.

 

CHRISTINA ERIVES

BIOGRAPHY
Christina Erives was born in Los Angeles, California.  She received her BA and MA from California State University of Northridge and her MFA from Pennsylvania State University. She has worked as a Resident Artist and Instructor at New Mexico State University, Belger Craneyard Studios in Kansas City, Missouri, the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, and the University of Montana.   Christina Erives is an emerging artist in the field of Ceramics. In 2017 she received an Emerging Artist Award from NCECA the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. 

ARTIST STATEMENT
I think what has stood out to me most since entering the field of ceramics is the community of people it seems to always attract. Clay has the power to connect people from all over the world and as a material offers us so much malleability giving us the opportunity to share our individual stories in such a beautiful way as it takes on an endless possibility of color shape and form. Ceramics as material has permanence , it is one of the ways we were able to learn about ancient cultures. There is so much beauty in these traditions and my aim has been to make a mark of my time that will be preserved in the history of ceramic objects.

 

BREANA FERREIRA

BIOGRAPHY
Breana Ferreira (she/her) was born and raised in Southern California and received her BFA in Ceramics in the Spring of 2022 from the University of North Texas. She is of Scottish, Portuguese, and Guatemalan descent, is a first-generation student, and is the eldest of four daughters. Breana is currently an emerging studio artist working with clay in association with the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA as a long-term artist in residence from September 2022 - September of 2023.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice revolves around a personal preoccupation with the daily discoveries and melancholy mundanities of my own everyday life. I look to the past and the present at the curated spaces and faces called home, the ornamentation of a building or a body, and even the makeshift maintenance of an object or a community. Through this daily practice of active observation, I collect and draw from personal and cultural familiarity. I look internally and externally in this way with a focus on the discovery and rediscovery of self, space, and society.

 

harveypreston.com
Instagram: @samharveyart

SAM HARVEY

BIOGRAPHY
Sam Harvey – Co-founder of Harvey Meadows gallery; subsequently, Harvey Preston Gallery, received his MFA from Alfred University and BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. He has taught workshops nationally and internationally, including Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, in Taiwan and in Japan. He has shown nationally at such venues as Lill Street Arts Center, Chicago; Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe; Baltimore Clay Works, Baltimore and Trax gallery, Berkely, Ca..

ARTIST STATEMENT
I am attracted to beautiful objects, to those which convey the thought process, sensibility and history of their maker. Whether an object of art is constructed of clay, molded styrofoam, steel, or canvass and paint, it conveys an idea, an intent to communicate. Out of cognition and the creative thinking process comes the desire to construct and make visible our individual stories, questions and desires.

 

YOONJEE KWAK

BIOGRAPHY
Yoonjee Kwak is an artist and educator originally from South Korea. With a passion for expression through art, Yoonjee has worked in a variety of artist residencies and has taught workshops both nationally and internationally, while showcasing her art in numerous venues. Yoonjee is a former Long-term resident artist of the Archie Bray Foundation, MT (2017-2019), and Pottery Northwest, WA (2021-2022). She received her MFA in ceramics from Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, and her BFA in ceramics and glass from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Clay allows me to tell the story of my memories that are left behind from diverse and unpredictable relationships between others and myself. My memories are expressed by using precarious and fragile forms. These memories can be represented in my work through exploration of the duality between weakness and strength.
The body of work is composed of sculptural vessels. I use this form to represent human beings as iconic symbols of the Korean culture. In Korea, when people talk about someone’s personality, we often use “vessel” as a metaphor of one’s spirit of tolerance. For instance, when we talk about someone who is very generous or broad-minded, we say, “His vessel is big”. The structure of the vessel that gradually widens from a narrow base symbolizes human relationships; people can have deep or shallow relationships or have both relationships at the same time. I explore this theme through forms that are derived from minimalism, nature, and geometry. The work incorporates organic and architectural elements into the structure of my open vessels and uses the shape as a metaphor for people who interact with their external character. I believe when the vessel of a person is open, they can have true connections with their environment.

 

LIZ PECHACEK

BIOGRAPHY
Liz Pechacek was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, by her artist mother and chemist father.  She found her way to clay in college and earned a BFA in ceramics and a BA in art history from Indiana University in 2012.  She now exhibits and teaches out of Minneapolis, MN.  

ARTIST STATEMENT
I am fascinated by the burst of energy that finds a new form, and inspired by the calm obsession required to winnow that shape into the most ideal proportions. I then apply color and line to the surface of an object in a playful re-examination of the original idea. I use this process of invention, perfection and appraisal to charge a cup, bowl, or sculpture with a vibration which can create a positive disruption in usual patterns of living. If I can create and share something unexpected through this exploration, then I feel that my objects can be of use. The implied expectation of interaction with pottery is deeply ingrained in our culture, making this medium a perfect vehicle for my work. My desire to sculpt comes directly from within the patterns of my work as a potter. I do not think I can do one without the other, for each experiment fuels the next in a studio practice of perpetual motion without conclusion.