Hepworth’s Garden

The Tate Museum London has a slew of great videos on YouTube. My favorite is this one on Barbara Hepworth. Her simple organic shapes were often over shadowed by Henry Moore’s beautiful sculptures, but the garden with her work in this video is amazing.

Three Exhibitions: California Crafts & Ceramics in the Mid-Twentieth Century

These three on-going  exhibitions are for those lucky enough to be in Southern California soon. They are all part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, a joint effort of over 60 cultural institutions to document the Southern California art, craft and design scene. San Diego’s Mingei International Museum has a survey of SD crafts people starting in the 1940’s and continuing through the 1970s: San Diego’s Craft Revolution-From Post-War Modern to California Design. This will end on April 15, 2012.

http://www.mingei.org/craft-revolution

Presented by Craft in America and the Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM), Golden State of Craft: California 1960 – 1985. This show ends very soon, January 8th, so get some tickets.

http://www.cafam.org/GoldenState.html

The last show is presented by The American Museum of Ceramic Art: Common Ground: Ceramics in Southern California 1945–1975 and is focused on ceramics. It is centered around an influential artist, art administrator, and designer—Millard Sheets (1907-1989). This show is running until March 31st, 2012.

http://www.ceramicmuseum.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions

Tags | California Crafts, origins, post-war, Southern California

Run it up the flagpole…

Will anyone salute? The Modern Reason Studio website now flies it’s modernist colors. I’m very excited and proud to start this showcase of hand built ceramics. Look for a range of objects both functional and decorative. With influences from mid-century California crafts to modern European potters. A deep respect for the great designers Russel Wright, Ben Seibel, Arthur Umanoff, Tony Paul, Eva Zeisel, Frederic Weinberg and Ettore Sottsass brings functionalism to the work, but my deep-seated crunchy hippie ethos balances all that modern minimal. I guess I could say “Let’s throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” or “Drop it in the water and see if it floats” but the flag in the logo flies, so let it be.

Tags | mid-century modern, pottery