Cristina Cordova: Jungla

The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum is pleased to host a major new exhibition of sculpture and drawings by Cristina Cordova. Cristina’s figurative work has established her as one of the preeminent ceramic artists of her generation. Her work renders the figure as a mysterious, sensual force of compelling urgency. Her masterful use of the ceramic medium empowers her work with a mesmerizing, at times uncanny presence.

Cordova writes: “At its most basic level Jungla refers to a region of dense, intractable wilderness that sustains an ongoing evolutionary dance governed by uncivilized forces. This tropical landscape of my youth is a beacon to an identity, tying me back to a specific geography and the sediment of generations.

Cristina Córdova received her BFA degree from the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez and graduated in 2002 with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., the Fuller Craft Museum, MA, the Mint Museum of Craft and Design NC, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico and the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum in Alfred, NY, as well as numerous prestigious private collections.

Also Opening February 2, 2018

Mysteries of Place : Selected Prints from the Institute for Electronic Arts

New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University

Featuring Elisabeth Pellathy, Lee Somers, and Scott Stephens

The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum is very pleased announce a collaboration with the Institute for Electronic Media, School of Art and Design, Alfred University, which has resulted in the magnificent exhibition Mysteries of Place: The Cahaba River Project, prints by Elisabeth Pellathy, Lee Somers and Scott Stephens. This collaboration lies at the core of the Museum’s exhibition policy, which acknowledges works in all media.

Mysteries of Place is an exhibition of large prints curated from the results of a week-long collaborative residency in 2017 at the Institute for Electronic Arts (New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University). Elisabeth Pellathy, Lee Somers and Scott Stephens, came together on a project centered around Alabama’s Cahaba River, a free-flowing river that connects Birmingham to Montevallo and contains some of the greatest biodiversity and historic significance in the South. Each artist pursued individual interests with the Cahaba and then worked together in combining images through printing. The primary themes of interest in the Cahaba River centered around the natural environment, the human history that stretched from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, and its ecological and geological features that fed local economies, such as coal, limestone, and iron ore that were key components to the foundation of the iron industry in the area. Throughout their residency Scott, Lee, and Elisabeth collaborated on laser etched acrylic plates which were used for both relief and intaglio printing. Each produced images from their own research on the Cahaba River and layered their images on top of each other to produce a series of prints. Each print contains multiple layers of the history and environmental features of the watershed and the hand of each artist, with photographic, CAD generated, and images from 3D models contributing to each piece. The prints feature images derived from drawing, photography, 3D scanning of natural objects, and 3D modeling from original maps and diagrams.