Copyright © 1999 Doug Browe
Ceramics Monthly
April 1998, pp. 52-54

                  
Functional and sculptural clayworks by 13 artists were featured in the invitational exhibition "Friends and Inspirations," at the Mendocino Art Center in California. In curating the show, studio potter Doug Browe (Ukiah, California) originally intended "to assemble a group of pieces that would somehow tell the story of how my work has come to be."

Instead, his selections became "a showcase for a group of important artists who work, for the most part, outside the mainstream of contemporary ceramics. Not in terms of the cutting edge or the hot and newest or the vanguard of clay. Quite the contrary.

The majority of artists in this show have dedicated themselves to making work that touches people with compassion and embraces their political commitments by creating a complete circle, a closed loop of designer-maker and user, person to person, a model not based on the starmaker machinery of the academic art world of universities, museums and galleries, but on the practical needs of daily life of family and friends.

These are the makers of pots designed for the needs of our lives. They encourage us to take time for tea, to enjoy sharing a dinner with friends and family, to look for the beauty in all our tools and toys."

Friends Gallery: see more than a dozen works from the exhibition.

More: a detailed review of "Friends and Inspirations" from Mendocino Country Entertainment, October 1997.

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