Intimate Immensity: Reflections on the Work of Stanley Rosen Mary Barringer

Fifteenth Dorothy Wilson Perkins Lecture Alfred Ceramic Art Museum

October 18, 2017 4:30 p.m., Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center

Mary Barringer has been a studio artist since 1973, making both sculpture and handbuilt functional pottery. She received a BA in art from Bennington College, and worked as an assistant to Michael Frimkess. Her work has been exhibited widely, in contexts ranging from museums and commercial galleries to craft fairs and pottery tours.

Mary Barringer

In addition to her studio practice she has taught at craft schools, community colleges, and universities including Ohio State and Ohio University, and has written and lectured on the history of ceramics. From 2004 to 2014 she was editor of The Studio Potter journal. She lives and works in western Massachusetts.

“During my tumultuous college years (1968-72) all the established authorities … were up for smashing, and ceramics offered a vehicle for different values. Stanley Rosen, my teacher at Bennington, conveyed a mysterious passion for the medium. He taught me to look at pots, and was my only formal teacher aside from Michael Frimkess.”

Prior to the opening reception of the exhibition Holding the Line: Ceramic Sculpture by Stanley Rosen, Mary Barringer, master potter, writer and recently retired editor of Studio Potter Magazine will give the fifteenth Perkins Lecture in Nevins Theater in the Powell Campus Center. Ceramic sculptor Stanley Rosen’s (MFA Alfred ‘56) retrospective is revelatory. Rosen has long been a quiet visionary. His little known work from the late 1950’s, 1960’s and 70’s will astonish. This exhibition provokes a serious reassessment of twentieth century ceramic art confirming Stanley Rosen as one of the major ceramic artists of our time.

Read Mary Barringer's lecture in PDF

Exhibition Catalog