POP4
Lincoln Square Pottery Studio - Learning Center's Pottery of Protest exhibition is back for its fourth year, and will feature work inspired and inflamed by recent world events.
The studio is abuzz with activity each new year in anticipation of POP, and this time is no different. The event, which is virtual, kicks off on March 1st, and runs through the month. While we would love to physically invite art lovers and activists into our space, the pandemic is hindering in-person viewing. Each work created for this show will be featured on our website and social media, with insight into the artist's piece. The studio's 2020 exhibition showcased more than thirty pieces and saw hundreds of people come through the doors. This year we hope to entice the fans of this show to interact and comment on our work online. Keep checking in for previews, news, articles and videos surrounding the event. For questions email: mieke@comeplaywithclay.com
Artist: Ann Cibulskis
Title: Calendar of Lost Potential, Chicago, January 2021
Description: During January 2021, 54 people in Chicago were shot to death - mostly male, mostly identified as black. Gunshot, that is the way people are murdered here; there is only one other recorded murder, by stabbing. The newspaper stories are bare, no details and no subtly - was anyone transgender? multi-racial? Did they have children, friends? Obituaries will be written, tears will be shed, and memories will be shared by smaller groups, but all of Chicago loses from this epidemic of violence.
As stark as the number of individuals is, if each had lived to the average Chicagoan’s age of 77, the number of years of life that are lost is 2,519. Each bar on this calendar shows the number of years that each person killed might have lived. Over two thousand five hundred years - already gone. What can be accomplished in that time? Think of what we are missing; poems not written, children raised alone, celebrations passed over, degrees not earned, baskets not made, small businesses not opened…hugs, fights, trips to the grocery store, walks in the park, all not done. Years of potential life, lost.
Artist: Nancy VanKanegan
Title: Story Spool
Description: Spools are objects that hold threads, wrapped around them. A thread is like a story through line, thread is used to stitch disparate objects together. This spool is bigger than most (12” high and 9.5 “ in diameter) and made of fired porcelain clay. The threads are symbolic of events in the late fall of 2020, beginning with the coat hanger, symbolically related to the beliefs of Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed in very late October as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Other materials forming the threads are the NY Times pages from the day Joe Biden was declared winner of the presidential race. Strings from an upright bass, a reminder of musicians and all artists who are still unemployed because of the pandemic. Leather shoelaces – made from the hides of the animals that serve us. And the green is braided yucca. A hardy plant that grows in the cold of Illinois and is plentiful in the southwest and used by first nation peoples for garments and bindings. The red leather on the top is from my friend’s deceased parents’ inventory of shoe and drapery fabric. They came from Germany in the 1950s and raised their daughters in the suburbs of Chicago. The machine embroidery 11/2020 reminds me of our rural high school athletic ‘letter’ jackets.
Artist: Meg Biddle
Title: I’m Not Listening
Description: The golden haired white man grows red with rage as his ears are covered with American Flag ear muffs, shrieking his rage to all the world around him.
Artist: Mieke Zuiderweg
Title: Whitewashed; The spoils of denial
Description: My birth land, The Netherlands, has a long-standing reputation for progressive politics, as well as a deep well of finances to support infrastructure and social programs. What most other countries uphold as something to attain, is really rooted in a history rife of theft. Delving into your own country’s background, and the atrocities it committed in the name of wealth and commerce, is sobering. Like in most places, students are taught about their land’s colonialism and what they gained from it. Rarely do they get a deep look into how it affected the people who were enslaved and used up, as well as exploiting their resources and environment. This series will explore multiple aspects of my country’s history, notably the parts that are purposefully left in the dark to avoid harrowing truths.
This mixed media piece is title “The Spoils of Denial,” in reference to all the products the Dutch traded for or took outright from lands across the globe. The VOC, or the Dutch East India Company, started sailing out to gain control of the spice trade in 1602. What started out as a voyage to bring back pepper from Java, expanded to plundering sugar cane from Suriname, nutmeg from Moluccas and tin oxide from Indonesia. The Dutch were also a prevalent part of the trade involving enslaved peoples from the African continent. While the Dutch colonized in South Africa, more than 60,000 enslaved people were used to bolster the economy as well as served in private homes. It is thought more than half a million people were transported to the Caribbean by the Dutch, and ultimately became enslaved in the United States. My piece includes clay depictions of these materials (including a child’s shackle), as well as gold bars at the bottom of the the piece stamped with the VOC mark. The piece is entirely one hue, as the series is called “Whitewashed.”
Artists: Alice & Tabby Hollowed
Title: Phoenix
Description: This past year, it’s felt like the world has burned down around us, but the day after the inauguration we began working on this piece. Out of the ashes something beautiful can emerge. This piece was built by Alice, and painted by her daughter Tabby in hopes that tomorrow will be better.
Artist: Paul Schultz
Title: LEAP FOR-WORDS
Description: In these turbulent times, “Leap For-Words” beckons us to express ourselves with positive and productive words when sharing with, and listening to, those with differing lifestyles and beliefs.
For it is the threads of affinity and empathy that will mend the torn fabric of our beloved and diverse society.
Artist: Melanie Liss
Title: IN(CON)FLICT
Description: More about conflict than conflict resolution and ultimately about peace through conflict this piece us first and foremost meant to be interacted with.
Spin the petal-like discs, read the words to yourself or outlaid. These few phrases that resonate with me, just one person, are a jumping off point for a tall tower of possible phrases and feelings that may be meaningful to you. Please participate by adding to the list of words of conflict. Expletives, languages other than English, pictograms and rebuses welcome!
Artist: Matt Roeder
Title: Emotions on my sleeve
Description: These pieces reflect my yo-yo of emotions and perspectives over the back half of 2020. One minute I have an overwhelming desire for peace and then the next second I want to decapitate billionaires. This tumultuous time has come with more responsibility for self care and emotional awareness than any other period in my life. The funny thing is, through creating this work, I took time to look past the chaos of the daily shit show and embrace the bond between the clay and my fingers.
Artist: Kellie Blanchard
Title: Revolution and Celebration
Description: For those that are Black and Gay, their very existence is an act of resistance against hatred, white supremacy, and homophobia. To be in love while Black and Gay is a revolutionary act worthy of celebration. Instead of protesting the values, acts, and individuals that are worthy and deserving of our ire, this year, I choose to lift up and celebrate love in the face of hate.
Artist: Mel Grundleger
Title: Pissing off corrupt people
Description: Homage to Rachel Maddow
Artist: Richard Zeid
Title: Fallen Idol
Description: “Oh how the mighty have fallen” - Samuel 2 1:19 Too often, who you vote for, isn’t who you voted for. Eventually you see them for who they truly are. They reveal themselves and their horns show! They are just grabbing and holding power, Not serving the people that voted for them. The complacency and recklessness they have for their offices soon becomes their undoing.
Artist: Rebecca Hamlin Green
Title: Albatross
Description: Our oceans are one of the last vestiges of true wilderness left on our planet. Yet, more and more each year, the Earth's precious seas and their valuable ecosystems are at risk of permanently changing- and changing our planet along with them. As an artist, there is difficulty in portraying the monumentalism of not only the ocean itself but also its cry for help. I made this expressive, loosely constructed albatross form as a way to embody the imminent loss of the oceans of the past. Rather than graphically depict the albatross with a stomach full of plastic or after an oil spill, I chose a gesture that instead resembles mourning. The figure too, not outstretched to a magnificent wingspan that can cross entire oceans on prevailing winds, but closed, seated, and lonely as if she had already given up. My hope is that we don't ever give up. My hope is that we can see each individual life that is dependent on the ocean for survival as a reflection of our own, and just as deserving of reclamation.
Artist: Christopher Whittington
Title: Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United State b. March 15. 1953 – d. September 18, 2020
Description: Justice Ginsburg stood for so many things we hold as vital for the freedom and liberties of all Americans. Even before her tenure on the High Court her entire career was a model of protest for the indignities of past laws written by old white men. Short list of her formal successful arguments:* She fought for women’s rights, gender equality, protection for people with mental disabilities, the environment, pay discrimination, voting rights, affirmative action, rights for Native Americans to retain their rightful lands, Search and Seizure (where women in particular could not be forced to remove all clothing and be searched for suspected drugs), and of course abortion rights. As a research associate at Columbia between 1961 and 1963 Mrs. Ginsburg learned Swedish to co-author a book on civil procedure in Sweden. It was there that she was exposed to forward thinking gender equality ideas. She was inspired when she saw that women were 20 to 25 percent of all law students. One close colleague, a judge, was eight months pregnant and still working. Law was a man’s world in the US (and still is.) She could barely get a job out of university. Certainly, a pregnant women had no place on the judicial bench. There are not enough words to describe all of her remarkable career and accomplishments. Note on the design. The black and white lace design is of course for her lace collar over her judicial robe, grey, the school color for Cornell (BA), burgundy for Harvard, and sky blue for Columbia University (LLB) *Extended details and case names are excluded for time’s sake. Look her up!
Artist: Meg Biddle
Title: Sacrifice of the Future
Description: In ancient North European culture human sacrifices, to appease the gods and to insure a fertile season, were some times buried in peat bogs. When these remains were discovered centuries later, their skins are tanned black and hair bleached red by the bog.
This bog man is a sacrifice, not of a living human, but of our future selves. For plentitude in the now, we Sacrifice the Future, wreaking havoc on our environment with no care for what the long term effects will be for humanity.