Richard Hirsch and Michael Rogers Time Sculpture, 2007

Contemporary American ceramic artist Richard Hirsch's Mortar and Glass Pestle Sculpture #1 was assembled in 2007. It's wheel thrown and hand built clay with green and black watermelon glaze, raku rust patina and hot blown glass. Two separate pieces of wood fired stoneware are assembled with a third piece -- a hot blown glass pestle. "The glass "masher" is lightly sand-blasted, suggesting opacity but yielding subtle light penetration, the perfect foil for Hirsch’s heavy clay concavities. Conceptually, Hirsch enjoys the compatibility of the two heat-driven materials, and the alchemical issues with shared chemistry seems right for themes involving vessels and raw geologic age." This three piece sculpture...

Contemporary American ceramic artist Richard Hirsch's Mortar and Glass Pestle #27 is raku-fired, hand built and hand sculptured. This piece is made of three separate pieces of green rust patinaed wood fired stoneware. "In his process, Hirsch is a reducer, endlessly honing and refining his forms to their simplest and most powerful presence. It is the same “less is more” aesthetic evidenced by the work of Noguchi, Brancusi, and Giacometti, artists he holds in greatest esteem. His content is principally the vocabulary of form, color, and surface, subtly referencing utility while defying overt narration and cultural specificity. A mortar and pestle like this one, for example, might be discernible in a piece, but presented with such economy that it becomes only important as a stand-in for larger issues; their anima/animus relationship or as a record of human use and wear over considerable time. For Hirsch, the particular only exists for the purpose of making the universal palpable. His is a point of view similar...

Contemporary American ceramic artist Richard Hirsch's Altar bowl with Ladle #3 was made in 2007. It's wheel thrown and hand built clay with low fire white glaze and raku patinas. In the book "With Fire: Richard Hirsch, A Life Between Chance and Design" Scott Meyer said; "As Hirsch's work progressed over the years, it would be a mistake to portray these advances as chronological. In fact, items found provocative would be added to the roster of possibility. The vessel might change in character with the deep interior space of a mortar becoming the shallow concavity of a Japanese, stone Tsubi basin or natural geode form. The corresponding implement might change from bulbous pestle to delicate ladle, alluding to the ceremonial cleansing for participants in the Tea Ceremony. In this sense, the proximity of these objects to their implied ceremonial use was similar to that which traditional Raku bowls...

Contemporary American ceramic artist Richard Hirsch's Mortar and Pestle Sculpture was assembled in 2010. It's wheel thrown and hand built clay, lowfired slips, black glaze, raku pati...

Richard Walsh freeform sculpture. Tubular metal bent and welded to torch-cut circular base, Brutalist in form and patina. Sturdy stabile sculpture, circa 1975.

Michael Cutler was an American Artist from California. Trained as an electronic technician, he turned to kinetic sculpture in the 1970s. The sculpture 3 precision balanced elements...

A porcelain sculpture by Wayne Fischer. Perfect original conditions. Signed. Unique piece. 2007. How can an inert object produce deeply unsuspecting, indecipherable, uncontrollable emotions? Wayne Fischer is an artist who can create works that force one to ask such moving questions as this. If he doesn’t know why, if he can’t explain the deepest reasons of his artistic research, he definitely knows the workings and limitations of the artistic process he invented. He has never deviated from the course he set for himself since university; translate life. The works presented here show the evolution of his creations over the past thirty years. If Wayne Fischer has received several international prizes and quickly obtained the recognition of his peers in ceramics, nevertheless he retains a singular position at once unavoidable and disturbing. His sculptures are paradoxical, powerful and sensual, and cause a certain unease. They are beautiful, carnal, touchable, all the while being outside the standard idea of beauty. The ambiguity of attraction and rejection is at the heart of this evolution. The pieces from the 1980s and 90s are imposing by their size, stature and symmetry, which give them balance. They generate surprise, curiosity and play between contrasts that are both soft and aggressive. They reference the body, muscles, and torso, without presenting an exact reality. They are double-faced, seductive, and enigmatic. Wayne’s shapes are inspired by shells, bivalves, sometimes presented as though they are floating in space. But the reference of the marine world to the mysterious female body has only one interpretation and only history and emotion condition the reaction of the spectator: he accepts or refuses to see, to be seduced. He is touched or he flees. The more recent sculptures are appreciated in the fullness of their round volume and the search for a pure universal beauty. “Metamorphosis,” the work recently awarded by the Bettencourt Foundation, is from this series of pieces wheel- thrown and deformed which pushes the porcelain from the inside so the bulges evoke the movement of waves or the musculature of several bodies. The exactness, the clean breaks, the assurance of lines and valleys are testimony to the interior power that governs the creation. The life energy expressed is also felt by the artist as the origin of ceramics. All the pieces are curved and tense. They show no marking, no sign of the hand, no imprints, and yet give an impression of spontaneity, as if a dropped piece of clay found its form by chance. Depending on the angles, the content becomes “the origins of the world”. Femininity and sensuality are exalted. Inspired by the body, before and after birth, or simply the sea, the parts of the sculpture conjugate around a mysterious interior cavity, secret and troubling. The interior wall doesn’t correspond to the exterior, and has its own volumes, deformities, and intimacy. The pieces present two kinds of interior: one open, and partially uncovered, the other totally hidden inside. The differences of their respective deformation reinforce the impression of life : the subjective representation of muscles and bones, of bulges pushed by an interior force, like a visceral movement of respiration. The surface of the ceramic is crackled but soft and fine, even reflecting light like the skin. The nuances of color reinforce the expression of sensuality. The alignment of technique and what it causes one to see and feel has rarely been so intimately successful. Wayne Fischer perfected his technique in the 1970s and has remained faithful to it. He adds fibers to porcelain clay that has been chosen for its whiteness to create and accentuate volume around empty space, by assembling slabs or thrown pieces. Then, he makes another piece that takes its place inside; both parts are formed with no hand...

Crocodile sculpture by Richard Orlinski, 2006. Gold crocodile sculpture by Richard Orlinski, resin, 2006. H: 38cm. W: 109cm. D: 47cm.