Michael Wisner

Pink Oval

Earthenware with colored slips. Epoxy. Cone 04 textured and satin glazes. Signed, titled, and dated in ink on bottom. Milnes served as Dean of the College of Visuals Arts and Design at the University of North Texas from January 2006 to his retirement in August 2014, when he moved to Asheville, NC with his wife Karen, re-establishing Arbitrary Forms Studio there. A sculptor and ceramist, he served previously as Director of the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University in California, Director of the School of Art at Louisiana State University, and as Chair of the Art Department at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He taught at the Penland School of Crafts in 1972 and 1979. Milnes is the past president of the National Council of Art Administrators and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. He has served as a consultant or evaluator for more than sixty universities, colleges, and independent schools of art in the US and abroad and served in Dallas on the Board of Directors of the Business Council for the Arts and as Chair of the Community Advisory Board for KERA, the NPR station for North Texas. He was recently named a Fellow and Lifetime Member of NASAD and served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC and as co-chair of the Blue Ridge Public Radio Strategic Planning Committee. He is a member of the Southern Highland Crafts Guild.

Earthenware with colored slips. Epoxy, acrylic paint. Cone 04 textured and satin glazes. Signed, titled, and dated in ink on bottom. Milnes served as Dean of the College of Visuals ...

Vertical 4, a ceramic sculpture of wood-fired clay pigmented with oxides, is a work by New York artist Harold Wortsman. Vertical 4 was recently exhibited at "Harold Wortsman: Time and Space" at the Orange Art Foundation, February-March 2022, New York City. Note the blending of geometric and organic forms in this work – it is characteristic of his practice – warm, contemporary, uniquely crafted, yet speaks to ancient, primitive traditions of art-making that cross cultures and histories. Highly attuned to the art of Africa, the Middle East, India and Asia, his forms are organic abstracts with masculine and feminine attributes that resonate together as a pleasing enigma. They make sense immediately, yet never give up all their secrets. From Harold Wortsman – "With sculpture, my material of choice is high-fired clay. Pieces are first low-fired in an electric kiln. I do not use glazes. Instead, I use oxides applied to the bisqued (low-fired) clay. As with a tattoo, oxides permit the surface underneath to breathe. The work is then high-fired in a gas kiln with double reduction to cone 10. The final temperature is 2,300 degrees F. At a certain point, oxygen intake is reduced to the kiln. Because the fire has reached a critical mass, it needs oxygen and chemically takes it from the clay and the oxides. Like a jazz improvisation, each kiln load comes out slightly different." From Jonathan Goodman – "Wortsman has increasingly moved into his own – a place in which the relations between the abstractions of volume and the intimations of very old culture are merged in a way that is new." – Essay, "Harold Wortsman: Time and Space", Orange Art Foundation, February 2022, New York City. Harold Wortsman is a sculptor and printmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. He “creates forms that bring to mind archaic cult objects and exude a quiet concentrated strength.” (Argauer Zeitung, Switzerland). His work, an edgy mix of freedom and clarity, can be found in public and private collections in the US, including The Library of Congress, Yale University, The New York Public Library Print Collection, The New York Historical Society, Smith College, Indiana University’s Lilly Library, Brandeis University, The Newark Public Library Special Collections Division, and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Print Archive. Also in private and public collections in Europe, including the Municipal Collection of the City of Brugg, Switzerland. Harold studied at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, with sculptor George Spaventa...

Vertical 1, a ceramic sculpture of wood-fired clay pigmented with oxides, is a work by New York artist Harold Wortsman. Vertical 1 was recently exhibited at "Harold Wortsman: Time and Space" at the Orange Art Foundation, February-March 2022, New York City. Note the blending of geometric and organic forms in this work – it is characteristic of his practice – warm, contemporary, uniquely crafted, yet speaks to ancient, primitive traditions of art-making that cross cultures and histories. Highly attuned to the art of Africa, the Middle East, India and Asia, his forms are organic abstracts with masculine and feminine attributes that resonate together as a pleasing enigma. They make sense immediately, yet never give up all their secrets. From Harold Wortsman – "With sculpture, my material of choice is high-fired clay. Pieces are first low-fired in an electric kiln. I do not use glazes. Instead, I use oxides applied to the bisqued (low-fired) clay. As with a tattoo, oxides permit the surface underneath to breathe. The work is then high-fired in a gas kiln with double reduction to cone 10. The final temperature is 2,300 degrees F. At a certain point, oxygen intake is reduced to the kiln. Because the fire has reached a critical mass, it needs oxygen and chemically takes it from the clay and the oxides. Like a jazz improvisation, each kiln load comes out slightly different." From Jonathan Goodman – "Wortsman has increasingly moved into his own – a place in which the relations between the abstractions of volume and the intimations of very old culture are merged in a way that is new." – Essay, "Harold Wortsman: Time and Space", Orange Art Foundation, February 2022, New York City. Harold Wortsman is a sculptor and printmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. He “creates forms that bring to mind archaic cult objects and exude a quiet concentrated strength.” (Argauer Zeitung, Switzerland). His work, an edgy mix of freedom and clarity, can be found in public and private collections in the US, including The Library of Congress, Yale University, The New York Public Library Print Collection, The New York Historical Society, Smith College, Indiana University’s Lilly Library, Brandeis University, The Newark Public Library Special Collections Division, and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Print Archive. Also in private and public collections in Europe, including the Municipal Collection of the City of Brugg, Switzerland. Harold studied at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, with sculptor George Spaventa...