To see the art is to know the artist.

A collection of pottery produced and organized by local artists Polly Harris, Nicole Copel, Lori Hannan, with Mark Dillon, Mary Daly, Dian Gebhardt, and Elizabeth James, as well as special guest artist, New Zealand lecturer and potter, Brian Gartside.  The show is billed as a "continuum"--and that it is.  Each of the artists works with the same materials:  earth, water, fire, colorants.  Each has traveled widely.  Each is keenly aware of the role clay has played as a primal, enduring record of human history.  But the multiplicity of form, line, function, texture, and color when these human hands touch earth is astounding.  There are wheel-thrown and hand-built pieces, porcelain and stoneware, abstract and classic, functional and purely decorative, sophisticated and earthy, firestorm colors and pastels. Diversity all along the continuum that is contemporary pottery.
 

Nicole Copel 

Nicole Copel takes her inspiration from the world as she sees it as well, but her world is softer, curved of line, executed in pastel porcelain, only subtly textured, and often rich in history.  Parturition sets--stacked vessels originally gifted to mothers-to-be as a talisman against The Plague ravaging Renaissance Italy--are compelling.  She also produces an almost symphonic set of slightly abstract, gracefully cut bowls each of which nests in the other.  Each piece seems to vibrate with life.

Polly Harris' work is different, still.  Its underpinning is meticulous craftsmanship, but its glory is good design.  Large, hand painted black-and-white motifs evocative of early Anasazi artists decorate large platters and bowls.  Elegant forms, some ringed with feathers and tied with leather thongs are singular in impact.  There is a tension between the teacher/craftsman and the dreamer/artist that informs each piece.  Work-in-progress sketches framed and matted back up the finished product and take the viewer on a tour of the process that is her art.  Glazes range from creamy whites to highway browns and grays, to ocean bottom greens, to night sky blacks.  Her range is prodigious.
 

Born and educated in England, lecturing and conducting classes throughout Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and the U.S., Gartside brings an entirely different aesthetic to the show.  His work is more about color and texture than form and function.  For over 40 years he has broken the rules for glazing and firing.  A "painter in clay," Gartside works to produce unique crazing and textures, to push the normal color ranges of traditions glazes beyond their limits.  The result is a dizzying array of  objets d'art that can raise your pulse rate.