Current Exhibition
Bill and Jack and Other Friends
Bill and Jack and Other Friends
Opening Reception: February 22, 2024 5pm
February 22 - July 31, 2024
Bill and Jack and Other Friends honors Jack Earl, 1934-2023.
Earl was a major figure in American contemporary ceramic art. The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum recently received eight Jack Earl sculptures as gifts to the Museum’s permanent collection from the Crown Equipment Corporation. This major gift forms the basis for the exhibition.
Jack Earl was born near the small town of Uniopolis, Ohio. His sculpture celebrating the American vernacular of the Ohio mid-west became central to his career as an artist. Acts of daily life featuring a fictional, composite figure of the ball cap wearing Bill reveal a romantic idealism in Earl’s work associated with common place wisdom. Earl wrote lengthy “titles” to his pieces which may add a bit of irony and humor to his work while simultaneously touching on a sincere respect for a magical sense of meaning in prosaic reality. In numerous works Earl used an approach to configuration referred to by the French term dos-à-dos or back-to-back which involves juxtaposing two seemingly incongruent images that provoke the curious viewer to speculate on the compelling gap between them.
“Other Friends” in the Museum’s exhibition title refers to selections from the Museum’s permanent collection --- functional, object or sculpture --- that complement the art of Jack Earl and offer a continuing opportunity for the Museum’s audience to see into the holdings of the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum at Alfred University. Thank you again to the Crown Equipment Corporation for creating this opportunity.
List of artists in the exhibition:
Kathleen Adams, Javaria Ahmad, Elissa Armstrong, Nora Arrieta, Wayne Bates, Peter Beasecker, Zimra Beiner, Amy Bennett, Trevor Bennett, Aaron Benson, Andy Brayman, Mark Burns, Sheldon Carey, Nancy Carman, Rebecca Chappell, Du Chau, Chad Curtis, Mark Derby, Alanna DeRocchi, Kim Dickey, Eddie Dominguez, Jack Earl, Gary Allen Erickson, Caryn Fried, Michael Fujita, Bruce Gholson, Andrea Gill, Gerit Grimm, Sam Harvey, David Hicks, Ayumi Horie, Mathew Karas, Karen Koblitz, Sinisa Kukec, Sean Kunz, Louis Marak, Andrew Martin, Frank Martin, Paul McMullan, Eric Mirabito, Kristen Morgin, John Neely, Hannah Niswonger, Paige O’Toole, Pablo Picasso, Will Preman, David Regan, Wayne Reynolds, Jesse Ring, Kate Roberts, Amy Santoferraro, Shushank Shrestha, Lee Somers, Akio Takamori, Hirotsune Tashima, Chase Travaille, Nick Weddell, Stan Welsh, Frans Wildenhain, Maura Wright, Arnold Zimmerman
Upcoming Exhibition
September 26 - December 29, 2024
Li Hongwei in his studio Beijing, China, December 2022. photo Li Hongwei studioLi Hongwei (b.1980) is a contemporary artist. He works and lives in Beijing and New York. His works have been acquired by The British Museum, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Israel Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Philadelphia Museum of Art. His works have been exhibited in a number of international art institutions, including the National Art Museum of China, The US Embassy, The New Mexico Museum of Art, The Fox Art Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Dublin Castle, Ireland.
Li Hongwei is celebrated in China and here in the US as well as internationally. Li is known for his artistic, conceptual and technical fusion of the past and present in innovative work with classical Chinese ceramics and the tenets of western modernism-postmodernism. He established an astonishing approach to contemporary sculpture with his Upwelling Gravity series. Tao Wang Curator of Chinese Art at the Chicago Art Institute speaks to this series as a remarkable meditational allegory of balance achieved in harmony with great skill creating polished steel and ceramic sculpture that has never been done before.
Hongwei holds a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and a Master of Fine Arts degree in ceramic art, 2007, from the New York State College of Ceramics at the Alfred University, Alfred, NY.