Join us in the Gallery this September for Our Annual Craft Show
Show opens Friday, September 5th, with a Champagne Saturday event on Saturday, September the 6th
Featuring John Taylor (ceramic & paintings), Eric Pardue (ceramic & assemblage pieces as shown on his instagram), Shane Fero (glass), Michael Poness (ceramic), Brad Sells (wood), Denise Stewart-Sanabria (plywood sculpture), Ashley Benton (ceramic), Tommie Rush (glass), and many others
John Taylor
My studio practice revolves around pottery, ceramic processes, color, pattern, and the figure. I make ceramics, paintings, and works on paper. I use very similar methods of building surfaces with ceramics as well as in my painting. Line, pattern, and color all come into play, I enjoy the formal elements of art, and I enjoy the “building of a surface”. Many times the figure emerges, the figure is a reoccurring subject in my work. And there is humor in this figures life.
My painting process begins with many layers on the surface that are scratched or drawn through. After hardening consecutive layers are applied and removed. I enjoy the intuitive nature of my painting process. I use a variety of materials including watercolor, oil and urethane.
Work on paper, technically a form of painting. These mainly start as Trace Prints. A plate is inked and paper laid on the surface. I then draw on the back and the pressure from the pencil picks up the ink on the other side of the sheet. After the ink dries I go into the drawing with watercolor and a fine pen. The surface of pure pigment from the watercolor produces a vibrant color surface.
Ceramics and ceramic processes suit me just fine. I enjoy the feeling of clay, the touch of the soft clay in my hands, throwing on the wheel, the melting of various natural minerals in the kiln, and, always, the unexpected kiln delight! My ceramics can be divided into to groups, Tabletop and Objects (including the large jars).
The tabletop work is made of stoneware or porcelain, slip, stains, and glaze. They are made for and are fully functional for every day use with food service. Food safe glazes, tough stoneware clay, made for use in the kitchen, microwave oven, and dishwasher. The work is made in the manor of a studio artist, these are not production pots. I make, trim, and glaze each piece. There may be a repetition in the themes, but each pottery piece is original.
Objects are work I make that tend to vary with experimentation. These cross off into working with skeletal structures to long time pottery motifs. The large Jars have been a long time favorite of mine. In the past I called them “story vessels” They have evolved from my life in the northwest.
Eric Pardue
After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University, Eric Pardue went on to serve a Winter Residency at Watershed Center for Ceramic Art in Maine and a studio assistantship at Peter’s Valley in New Jersey. Along with these, Eric spent a year as an apprentice for Jeff Shapiro in New York. After completing this apprenticeship, Eric moved back to his home state of West Virginia to set up the studio that he maintains in Milton, WV.
“In my current ceramic work, I am combining layers of underglaze, slips, glazes and decals of images that I come into contact with during my daily activities into a narrative. These narratives may refer to a specific current situation, past experience, a specific song lyric, or passages from books. Although the references I make are personal and come from my experiences, I do intend for the viewer to build on my intentions with their own ideas and to develop their own story as they interact with the piece.”
Shane Fero was born in Chicago, IL in 1953 and has been a flameworker for 50 years and maintains a studio next to Penland School in North Carolina. He participates in international symposia and conferences by lecturing and demonstrating. Fero is also an educator and has taught at institutions such at Penland School, Urban Glass, the Pratt Fine Arts Center, the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, the University of Michigan, Eugene Glass School, Espace Verre, Montreal, Quebec, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pilchuck Glass School, Bild-Werk, Frauenau, Germany, the International Glass Festival in Stourbridge, UK, Scuola Bubacco, Murano, Italy, Chameleon Studio, Tasmania, Taiwan, China, Australia, Turkey and in Seto, Osaka, and the Niijima Glass Art Center in Japan.
His work can be found in collections both private and public institutions worldwide. He has had over 33 solo exhibitions since 1992 and has participated in over 400 group exhibitions during his career. He has been honored with three retrospectives; a 30 year at the Berkowitz Gallery at the University of Michigan in 1999, a 40 year at the Huntsville Museum of Art in 2008 and at the Christian Brothers University in 2010. His work can be found in over 30 museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Art & Design NY, The Corning Museum of Glass NY, GlasMuseum, Denmark, the Asheville Art Museum, NC, the Huntsville Museum of Art, AL, the Museum fur Glaskunst, Lauscha, Germany, and the Nijiima Contemporary Glass Museum in Japan. He is the Past-President of the Board of Directors of the Glass Art Society and received the Lifetime Membership Award from GAS in Chicago in 2014, honored in 2009 for Extraordinary Contribution to the Glass Art World, Salem Community College, Carney’s Point, NJ and Award for Significant Contributions to the Chinese Glass Community from the Hejian Government, Hejian, China in 2017.
Michael Poness
Award winning architect, Michael Poness draws on many sources of inspiration in his pottery. Ranging from the obscure, like ancient war machines, to the familiar, like the paintings of Jasper Johns and Paul Klee, these sources look outside the discipline of pottery. Vessels typically begin as wheel thrown forms that are then altered to produce nontraditional pottery. Mr. Poness works out of the Glen Echo Pottery, Glen Echo, Maryland.
Brad Sells
“I appreciate the relationship between man and tree. There is a co-evolution present. I am interested in how man uses the forest and how the relationship grows and thrives in worldly cultures. My curiosity has taken me as far as South Africa, the Amazon, and the Hawaiian Islands where indigenous people believe the forest is a spiritual place where ancestors dwell.” —Brad Sells
“As I carve deeper into a piece. I am carving through time and space captured in those growth rings. For me, it’s like trying to grasp the universe.” —Brad Sells
Sells works in his own Bark Studio in his hometown of Cookeville, Tennessee. Though located in a relatively rural area, Sells’ artistic reputation, strong work ethic, and recognition of his unique skills have led to invitations to travel and carve rare woods on distant continents. His work has been exhibited in museums and private collections throughout the world, including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Denise Stewart-Sanabria
Denise Stewart-Sanabria was born in Massachusetts and received her BFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. She has lived in Knoxville, TN since 1986.
Sanabria paints both hyper-realist “portraits” of everything from produce to subversive jelly donuts. The anthropomorphic narratives often are reflections on human behavior. She is also known for her life size charcoal portrait drawings on plywood, which are cut out, mounted on wood bases, and staged in conceptual installations.
Her work is included in various museums, private, and corporate collections including: The Tennessee State Museum, The Evansville Museum of Art in Indiana, The Knoxville Museum of Art, Firstbank TN, Pinnacle Banks, Omni and Opryland Hotels, Scripps Networks, Knoxville Botanical Gardens, Jewelry Television, TriStar Energy, and the corporate offices of McGhee Tyson Airport.
Visit Stewart-Sanabria’s website.
Ashley Benton
Ashley is a mixed media artist living in Savanah, GA. She has been exhibiting her work for more than twenty years across the county and beyond. After graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design she followed her love of big mountains, clear rivers and blue skies to Colorado . There she continued to make art, raise a son, teach art, open a yoga studio and ride horses.. In 2014, Ashley moved home to Georgia and began focusing on gallery representation and expanding her pracice. Currently she is represented by the Wally Workman Gallery, Austin, TX and the Ivy Brown Gallery, NYC.
Ashley’s work is based on the emotional experience of living a life. She attempts to unveil the marvelous in the everyday, create a sense of wonder, engage her mind and open a dialogue with the viewer. The work is never an exact representation much like a writer of fiction. The work hovers in the in-between —Less than Reality More than a Dream…
Tommie Rush
I want my work to convey the human touch and a link with nature. I work in the vessel format because I enjoy designing and using well-made, functional objects. There are many considerations that come into play when I start to work on a new series, such as the color palette I will use, the interplay of form and the surface treatment, and ultimately how the object will be used.
I feel we live in a world that is becoming less and less personal, and I view my objects as a link to something handmade and very individual and personal. I want my pieces to be held, touched and used to make the everyday more enjoyable. The pieces, of course, stand on their own as objects. I also have to confess to the fact that I am an avid gardener, especially of flowers, and I am selfishly on a quest for the perfect vase for every flower.
Each piece that I make is unique, no molds or preformed parts are used, and I feel it imparts to each vessel an individualistic feel. It is a combination of imaging, teamwork, skill of execution and many hours spent developing a vocabulary with my medium that enables each piece to appear effortless.
