an illustration of artwork by Marc Leuthold
Four Times
January 14, 2003 - March 30, 2003

Four Times, a solo exhibition of work by Marc Leuthold, opens at the Museum on Tuesday, January 14, 2003. The artwork in the exhibition will consist mostly of carved, circular, radiating ceramic forms. Included with these will be thrown forms and a glass form. The exhibition title is derived from an excerpt from Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery. The excerpt will accompany the objects in the show as enlarged text on a wall hanging. The text describes Booker T. Washington's famous "sweeping examination."

Washington gained entrance to college by cleaning a "recitation-room" for the "lady principal." After Washington cleaned everything "four times," the lady principal could not find a "particle of dust" anywhere. As a result, she quietly remarked, "I guess you will do to enter this institution." *

Marc Leuthold says of the exhibition's inspiration:
"Oftentimes we do not want to do things four times. I recall refinishing floors in my home. I managed to refinish most of them three times, but only in the kitchen and dining room did I apply varnish four times. Yet usually this extra effort is worth the trouble. Booker T. Washington's sweeping examination transformed his life. By gaining admission to Hampton Institute he secured the education he needed to become one of the greatest Americans. The extra effort was well worth it for Washington and for the thousands of people he educated at Tuskegee Institute. I am inspired by this kind of perseverance. In our busy lives, those of us who take the time to do things four times are sometimes considered compulsive and obsessive. Yet as potters and sculptors, making things four times is a natural part of our studio lives. What potter does not work in series, quietly studying and perfecting a form? The results can be powerful and the intrinsic rewards, fulfilling."

*Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington, Bantam Pathfinder edition, 1963, page 36.

About the Artist

Marc Leuthold was born in Mount Kisco, New York in 1962. He currently lives in Potsdam, New York, and is an assistant professor of art at the State University of New York College at Potsdam, where he teaches ceramics studio courses. In 1985, Marc received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1988. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and an adjunct professor at South Hampton College, Long Island University, South Hampton, New York, and Parsons School of Design, New School for Social Research in New York City. His work has been reviewed and celebrated in many art books and periodicals, as well as catalogues accompanying exhibitions of his work.

Marc’s past solo exhibitions include shows at the R. Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Marc’s work has been displayed at SOFA/NY (Sculpture Objects Functional Art, New York) the last three years and he has also participated in exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Craft Museum in New York City, the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Longhouse Foundation in East Hampton, New York, and the Chicago International New Art Forms Expo. Internationally, Marc has shown in Finland, France, Germany, Korea, and New Zealand. His work is included in several permanent collections, including those of the American Craft Museum, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Takashimaya America in New York City, the Brooklyn Museum and Urban Glass Archive in Brooklyn, New York, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Mint Museum of Art.

Special projects and honors for Marc include receiving artist’s grants and fellowships from the Craft Alliance of New York in Syracuse, the JINRO International Ceramic Workshop in Korea, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and been a guest artist at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Edgecomb, Maine. He has participated in artists’ residencies at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska, the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, and La Napoule Foundation Fellowship in France. In 1999, Marc became an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva, Switzerland.

For more than a decade, Marc has been creating intricately carved ceramic discs, wheels, and cones in earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, and even glass. His work is occasionally glazed, but often left in the biscuit stage. The exhibition includes 19 objects, including some of his most recent work. Many of Marc’s trademark circular, radiating forms are displayed, as well as his delicate wheel-thrown work.

Marc Leuthold, Rococo Dyad, 2002, carved, biscuit, pigmented porcelain, H:10"xW:13"xD:2.5", On loan from the Artist. Photo by Eva Heyd.