Animalia

This exhibition highlights some of the animal representations in the Museum’s permanent collection. These owls, snakes, cows, various birds, an elephant, cat, dog and tapir, to name a few, are each made of ceramics by various artists.

The artists include Akio Takamori, Alanna DeRocchi, Artus van Briggle, Beth Low, Bill Ross, Bruce Gholson, Casey O’Connor, Coille Hooven, David Weinrib, Hannah Niswonger, Helen E. Kruger, Henry Varnum Poor, James Klein, Jenny Lind, Kurt Weiser, Linda Cordell, Maija Grotell, Matthew Metz, Peter Morgan, Sam Haile, Shoko Teruyama, and Sue Tirrell. Some of the animals are freestanding on all fours while others are on just two. Others are in low relief, cleverly growing from a vessel and another’s head becomes the finial of a lid. There are examples of animal images utilizing the sgraffito technique on the sides of vessels from the fourteenth and the twenty-first centuries and others with two-dimensional rendering in slip or glaze. A Peruvian zoomorphic pot made more than one thousand years ago will share the gallery with an object representing the same animal, but produced last year - reminding us again of the long history of clay’s interaction with the life forms sharing our earth.

Alfred University News Release for Animalia