{"id":74330,"date":"2024-03-04T10:38:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T17:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=74330"},"modified":"2025-01-08T09:03:27","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T16:03:27","slug":"fired-and-inspired-nehma-exhibit-surveys-the-evolution-of-ceramics-in-the-american-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/fired-and-inspired-nehma-exhibit-surveys-the-evolution-of-ceramics-in-the-american-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Fired and Inspired: NEHMA Exhibit Surveys the Evolution of Ceramics in the American West"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Entrance to NEHMA’s “Unearthed,” with Viola Frey’s \u201cStanding Woman (Woman with Hands Over Heart).” Image credit: Brandi Chase<\/p><\/div>\n

The growing number of pottery studios in Salt Lake and Utah counties suggests an uptick in ceramics interest in the area. Sadly, an accompanying expansion in venues to enjoy and discover the very best the medium has to offer has yet to manifest\u2014at least not in these locales. Meanwhile, a passion for pottery has been raging for more than a half century just a few hours away in Cache County\u2014with no sign of abating. Unearthed: The NEHMA Ceramics Collection & The Woman Behind It, t<\/i>he ceramics retrospective at Utah State\u2019s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) encompassing 300 works and spanning 100 years of ceramics\u2019 history in the American West, will make that assertion clear.<\/h4>\n

A giantess\u2014one of Viola Frey\u2019s monumental ceramic sculptures\u2014awaits your arrival. Poised at the exhibition\u2019s entrance, exuberantly hued and aptly titled \u201cStanding Woman (Woman with Hands Over Heart)\u201d (1994), she welcomes you with a tear of joy in her eye. Katie Lee Koven,\u00a0 Executive Director & Chief Curator of NEHMA, sees this giantess as an embodiment of Nora Eccles Harrison, the museum’s namesake, whose future-minded philanthropy made this retrospective possible. Harrison, who preferred to be called \u201cNoni,\u201d was herself a ceramics enthusiast, student, and teacher and had a profound influence on ceramics in the American West. From the ’50s to the ’70s, Noni was a vital part of the innovative Bay Area ceramics scene where then (as now) potters shared facilities and resources and worked together to load and fire the kilns to produce their work. To Noni, clay\u2019s appeal lay as much in the community it fostered as it did in its practices and artifacts.<\/h4>\n

In 1982, the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation gifted the funds for the eponymous museum in her hometown university, Utah State, donated 400 ceramic vessels, and established an endowment to provide for annual purchases of ceramics. Noni’s beneficence also extended to the nearby Cain College of Fine Arts with the establishment of a graduate fellowship and an undergraduate scholarship in ceramics. In the 40 years since, thanks to the wise choices of museum directors, curators, and the guidance of esteemed ceramics professor John Neely, who joined Utah State just two years after the museum\u2019s founding, the collection now comprises 1500 works from prestigious Western American artists and a cadre of national and international teachers, who have transited the region in general and Utah State in particular.<\/h4>\n
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Installation view of Unearthed at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. Image credit: Shawn Rossiter<\/p><\/div>\n

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Rudy Autio, \u201cAurora,\u201d 1998, stoneware, 4 x 24.5 x 24.5 in. Image courtesy of Nora Eccles Museum of Art, Utah State University<\/p><\/div>\n

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Santana Martinez and Maria Martinez, “Plate,” earthenware, 1.5 x 13.125 x 13.125 in. Image courtesy of Nora Eccles Museum of Art, Utah State University<\/p><\/div>\n

Many Utah State alumni\u2014diverse in their output and currently working and influencing the field today\u2014are part of this prestigious collection. Forrest Lesch-Middleton\u2019s \u201cVessel\u201d (2006) and Ruti Audio\u2019s \u201cAurora\u201d (1998) stand alongside the likes of Jackson Shaner, Patti Warashina, Peter Voulkos, Frey, Antonio Prieto and many, many other greats in this exhibition. While the alumni\u2019s success owes a great deal to the leadership of Neely and his colleagues Dan Murphy and Todd Hayes\u2014all of whose works appear in this exhibition\u2014no one should underestimate the impact Noni\u2019s gifts had on these students and through them on ceramics in the American West and beyond. While Neely\u2019s innovative yet traditional approach to the practice, as well as that of his team, take pride of place in Utah State’s ceramics tradition, the graduate fellowship and undergraduate fellowships certainly bolstered the program early on. Yet most profoundly, Noni’s investment in ceramics at NEHMA through the facility, the endowment, and the educational ethos she instilled there enabled decades of Utah State ceramicists\u2019 access to a preeminent and expanding collection of examples to inform and inspire them. In fact, the second floor of the exhibition houses what curator Billie Sessions calls the \u201cStudy Collection,\u201d where decades of ceramics instructors have curated and taught from works they have selected to suit their students\u2019 interests and needs. To the burgeoning ceramics community due south take note: you too can, and should, avail yourself of this resource.<\/h4>\n
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Installation view of Unearthed at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. Image credit: Shawn Rossiter<\/p><\/div>\n

The restropective\u2019s title, Unearthed<\/i>, captures the consequence of the curatorial team\u2019s aim to select pieces from the museum\u2019s collection that reflect the range of possibilities within the medium, sorting them according to clay body and firing type and then grouping them biennially to demonstrate who was working within that era and how their explorations influenced the clay community of the time. This criteria \u201cunearthed\u201d lesser known artists from the clay community\u2014women and Native Americans predominantly\u2014and placed their works in conversation with those more acclaimed. The arrangement invites us to eavesdrop\u2014so to speak\u2014on the conversations each era\u2019s representative vessels evince. The accompanying wall text eases into discussions already in progress.<\/h4>\n