Mobilia Gallery is pleased to present Travels Through Time and Light, to coincide with the NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Conference in Providence this March: a collection of outstanding work by four masterful ceramic artists, Dorothy Feibleman, Pippin Drysdale, Karen Thuesen Massaro, Richard Shaw. Please join us in this exciting exploration of innovation and tradition, form and color, shadow and light.

DOROTHY FIEBLEMAN

“Dorothy Feibleman’s spare porcelain forms — precise and finished to translucent, weightless perfection — elevate the art of pattern making to an extraordinary degree. In Feibleman’s hands, the ancient Japanese technique of nerikomi — in which ceramic objects are decorated with patterns created by combining different, often differently colored, clays — has been reinvented through the introduction of ideas drawn from glassmaking, mosaic art, jewelry making and other disciplines. Obsessively ornamented, with patterns that multiply across their surfaces, Feibleman’s most striking works are reminiscent of objects as diverse as blue-and-white Delftware, central Asian metalwork and printed Indian textiles.”

– Scott Norris

Feibleman has received numerous grants and awards for her accomplishments including: Guest artist at Jikken kobo, INAX, Tokoname, Japan; British Crafts in Japan sponsored by Crafts Council of G.B.; Seto Ceramic and Glass Center, Seto City, Japan; Japan Foundation Fellowship; Guest Artist at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural park, Shigaraki, Japan; Arts/Industry Program, Kohler Company, Kohler, Wisconsin; Porcelain Bowl Symposium, International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemet, Hungary; INAX Design Prize, Tokoname.

Selected Museum Collections:

• Bankfield Museum, Halifax, England
• Buckinghamshire Country Museum, Aylesbury, England
• Darmstadt State Museum, Germany
• Evansville Museum, Indiana, U.S.A.
• Harnburg State Museum, Germany
• INAX Corporation, Tokoname, Japan
• Indianapolis Museum of Art, U.S.A.
• International Ceramic Studio Museum, Kecskemet, Hungary
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A.
• Museum of Contemporary Ceramics, Shigaraki, Japan
• Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, U.S.A.
• Saga Prefectural Art Museum, Saga, Kyushu, Japan
• Stuttgart Museum, Germany
• Tokoname City Museum, Tokoname, Aichi, Japan
• The Ulster Museum, Belfast, N. Ireland
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

PIPPIN DRYSDALE

“Although an urban artist, [Pippin Drysdale] seeks out places that have a special character or resonance, such as the Tanami Desert in central northern Western Australia or the Hunsa Valley at the end of the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan. Once she has absorbed the site, she carries its colours, patterns and ambience back to the studio, where she patiently re-creates their glow and echo in the delicate web of glazes etched into and brushed onto the surfaces of her elegantly shaped forms. The process of analysis, review and revision continues until she is convinced she has captured the character of each new place. The thin, tense lines, sometimes relaxed, often flowing, occasionally broken, trace the shadow gaps between the rows of dunes blown into long scarifications by the wind or the stratified rocks laid down over millennia, the rows of spinifex woven through the desert or the meandering tracks of reptiles cut into the red dirt. Sometimes she combines them with broadly brushed colour, emulating the explosion of spring, an approaching storm, the red dust sunsets of Pakistan, or with rich gold lustres evoking the riches below the surface in the eastern goldfields.”

– Ted Snell, Lines of Site

Pippin Drysdale’s sumptuously colored ceramic forms recall the vibrant colors of her native Australian landscape. She creates installations of porcelain vessels with subtly different color, texture and size that provide a fascinating landscape for the viewer.

Selected Public and Museum Collections:

• Australian National Gallery, ACT, Australia
• Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, United Kingdom
• Cheongiu Museum and Art Gallery, Korea
• The Gifu Prefectural Museum, Japan
• MAK Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
• Museo del Ceramica, Faezna, Italy
• Museum of Modern Art, Gifu, Japan
• National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
• The Powerhouse Museum, NSW, Australia
• Tomsk State Gallery and Museum, Siberia, Russia
• 21st Century Museum, Kanazawa, Japan
• The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom

KAREN THUESEN MASSARO

“I make poems for the eye and the hand. Composite moveable arrangements of forms support fired layers of color. Most of my sculptures have remained intimate in scale, and nod to the tactile and visual potential of clay surfaces. The current forms display new geometries that stem from organic shapes of previous work. Added Color further differentiates real and implied space. Surface patterns, visual trails left by repetitive hand motions, lead the eye over shadows and enveloped spaces. I use ceramics, an integration of form and surface, to pose questions about placement, movement and perception. I have been interested in making installations/arrangements since the early 1970’s.

“Making my current sculptures involves experience, curiosity, and chance. So much of ones time is spent in the studio: ideas and process should be engaging. I try to imagine how forms, colors and patterns might read. It is intriguing how complex, juxtaposing characteristics of repeated lines plus hue and value can be when working with multiple parts and views. Most sculptures are fired 10-15 times. Everything is subject to change until the last firing after which the piece is on it’s own.”

– Karen Thuesen Massaro

Selected Museum Collections:

• Chazen Museum of Art, Madison Wisconsin
• Decorative Arts Museum, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California
• Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
• Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

RICHARD SHAW

“I try to stand back and be the absent arranger, creating a poem about a person using humor, irony, and elegance. Sometimes the subject is actually me, as in the watercolor box jars, where I reference my role as the artist, using images from my sketchbooks.

“The human aspect of the still life or assemblage acts as a person memorializing their identity using the objects from their personal narrative. The narrative itself reveals their tastes, pastimes, intellectual pursuits, sins, habits good and bad, obsessions, etc.

“Identifying as another person in the arrangement of objects allows me the freedom to make unconscious decisions and to act spontaneously, to experiment and take chances, and to let the conflict of self-imposed rules go.”

– Richard Shaw

Selected Museum Collections:

• Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
• The Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Stanford, California
• Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
• Cantor Museum, Stanford University, Stanford, California
• Contemporary Arts Center, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California
• de Young Museum, San Francisco, California
• Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, California
• Ichon World Ceramic Center, Ichon, Korea
• John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
• Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois
• Levi Strauss Collection, San Francisco, California
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
• Lowe Art Museum, University of Florida, Coral Gables, Florida
• The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Mint Museum of Craft & Design, Charlotte, North Carolina
• Museum of Art and Design, New York
• National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
• The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
• New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico
• Nora Eccles Museum of Art, Logan, Utah
• Oakland Museum, Oakland, California
• Palm Beach Museum, Palm Beach, Florida
• Petits Lu Collection, Paris, France
• Rene Di Rosa Collection, Napa, California
• Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
• St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
• San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
• Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska
• The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan
• Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
• University of Miami, Miami, Florida
• University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
• University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
• Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut