I just wanted to remind the others, who work with material and not concept, that there are things in life that are exciting and satisfying and for a potter this is one. A loaded kiln waiting for the fire, beckoning for that lick of flame to impose a permanence on this delicate earthen surface. Do not forget that life is not a concept and neither is your work. Make sure that in the end it is still fun...

John Cage

John Cage was an American composer. Cage was a pioneer in the music scene and one of the leading figures in post-war avant-grade. He was one of the leading members in the Fluxus group. He was influenced by both of his teachers Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, but his primary influence was in the Eastern cultures. He studied Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism. He worked with chance music, electronic music, and the non-standard use of musical instruments. He was a key person in the development of modern dance. He was best known for his 4'33?, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. A performance of 4'33? can be perceived as including the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence.

Fluxus

Fluxus is a network of artists that is made up of composers and designers that are known for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They were seen as an intermediate group through their involvement with Neo-Dada noise music, literature, urban planning, architecture, visual art, and design. The groups’ early work explore the idea of chance in art. The Fluxus boxes that were organized with Geogre Maciunas. He was the one that gathered the printed cards, games, and ideas, then organized them into the small boxes. One of the ideas that was a part of Fluxus was that each person is their own composer, as well as the idea that art was created by the artist creating the work and “doing it” which was the art itself. Fluxus performances were usually brief and simple, which they called event scores. They were to be performances that sought to elevate the banal, to be mindful of the mundane, and to frustrate the high culture of academic and market-driven music and art.

Gutai group

Gutai group was an avant-garde Japanese artistic movement. It was founded by Jiro Yoshihara and Shozo Shimamoto in 1954. The name Gutai means concrete. The group was composed of Japanese artists. Jiro Yoshihara wrote the manifesto for the Gutai group in 1956. In the manifesto, it expresses a fascination with the beauty that arises when things become damaged or decayed. The process of damage or destruction is celebrated as a way of revealing the inner "life" of a given material or object: "Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?" This group would later influence the Fluxus group.

Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow was an American painter and was one of the pioneering artists that established the concept of performing art. He helped create and develop the “environment” which installation art incorporates almost any media to create an experience which is the environment. He helped develop the term “ Happening” which is a performance, event, or situation meant to be considered as art. He created 200 performance pieces. He was influenced by the Fluxus group and installation art. His work started out a scripted pieces that were planned out. His work soon evolved and became looser in the planning of them. He also involved more everyday activities in his work to integrate art and life.

Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist who was an important figure in post-war European art. His parents were both painters and were involved with the abstract movement in Paris. Klein was known for his monochrome paintings. He got his influence of Zen with the idea of a void. The void is a nirvana-like state that is void of worldly influences. His work can also be linked to performance art when he had his audience formally dress up and have models go around making the paintings with their bodies. As he was directing the piece, a monotone symphony played during the event. He was also known for the photograph “Leap Into the Void”, in which the artist is jumping off a wall with his arms stretched out while falling to the payment below the wall. He also did a series of fire painting where he would paint using a torch in his work. He would use this alone or paint before he would use the fire.

Carl Jung

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology. His approach to psychology has been influential in the field. In his work, he understood the psyche through exploration of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. The most important ideas that he introduced included the concept of psychological archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity. These archetypes represent innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge. In order to be synchronous, the events should be unlikely to occur together by random chance.

Atsuko Tanaka

Atsuko Tanaka’s work as an artist in several medias includes abstract painting, sculptures, performances and installation art. Her work consisted of everyday objects like textiles, doorbells, light bulbs. She was one of the pioneering avant-grade artists. She was also a part of the Gutai group, an avant-garde artists' movement. The Gutai group was an artistic movement and association of artists founded by Jiro Yoshihara in Japan in 1954. Her best known work was called “The Electric Dress”, which consisted of electric wires that lit-up colored light bulbs which she wore to an opening exhibition. The work symbolized post-war Japan’s rapid transformation and urbanization.

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys was a performing artist who was most famous for his public performances. Along with his performing arts, Beuys also produced sculptures, prints, posters, and thousands of drawings in his lifetime. Beuys was encouraged to become an artist after he returned home from World War II. He gathered about 327 drawings between the 1940’s and 50’s and created a book which was entitled “The Secret Block for a Person in Ireland”. The title draws reference to his inspiration of James Joyce was an Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Through his involvement with Fluxus, Bueys pushed the boundaries of art. He took a different focus than the Fluxus group who were interested in the radical Dada. Bueys had a different message “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated” with his practical focus of Duchamp and the Readymade. This created the primary aspect of controversy that surrounded Bueys in his work. Beuys was motivated by a utopian belief in the power of universal human creativity and was confident in the potential for art to bring about revolutionary change.

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was educated as a psychologist and had a minor in photography. She had started her photographing career in San Francisco where she opened up a portrait studio. With the onset of the Great Depression, she focused on the people at that time. With unemployed and homeless people, she captured the attention of other photographers. She turned to the Federal Resettlement Administration, which was later called the Farm Security Administration. She documented the rural poverty and exploitation of the sharecroppers and migrate laborers, bringing them to public attention. Her images became iconic of the era with the distribution of a free newspaper. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, her focus went to the Japanese-Americans and the “relocation camps” in America. She covered the evacuation to temporary centers and then to Manzanar, the first internment camp. Her images were critical of the Army and the containment of people that where detained without charging them with any crime or any appeal.

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was one of American early photographers who witness the radical change in the landscape of American society and culture. He saw New York go from a sleeping giant to a vibrant symbol of the modern metropolis. The body of his works were filmed in the first full length film that was entitled “Alfred Stieglitz - The Eloquent Eye“. As a photographer, and through the use of the medium, he was able to open a window onto many crucial developments of the time. He rebelled against the academic assumption that photography, though useful to the artist, was inferior to painting. He strived to have his photos equal to paintings. There were two kinds of pictorials: soft and hard. Alfred was a hard in the way he wanted infused photographic prints to predominate; he allowed his images to evoke the character of painting. He was interested in the condition of life in America and using a black and white format to depict his images of the New York environment.

Ansel Adams

One of America’s famous photographers, Ansel Adams was best know for his black and white photos of the American West and Yosemite National Park. His photography is straight forward of nature in a crisp and realistic way. They portray the beauty and elegance of nature with an underlying motivation of persuading the people of America to value the land and to preserve the American wilderness. His first artistic career was as a pianist, but he than began experimenting in amateur photography. He became serious about photography in the 1920s with the dispute of photograph being more persuasive than a hand-drawn illustration. He had several technical accomplishments, one being the use of his own zone system. The zone system allows photographers to calculate and control the range of gray-scale tones in their negative by using a light meter.

Rachelle Thiewes

Rachelle Thiewes is a metal-smith which creates wearable pieces of jewelry. She works with the materials of steel, gold, silver, and slate to create her artwork. Rachelle creates her work to be not just wearable but also to be an extension of the human body. Her metal creations come in the form of highly-detailed necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Rachelle’s work captures the imagination because it challenges the modern perception of what art is and gives the word an entirely new meaning. She is interested in both integration of the piece of jewelry, the movement with the body, and the sound which it creates.

Marilyn da Silva

Marilyn da Silva works as a metal-smith in a narrative way. She has been using birds in her work since 1999 and has been inspired by them. She does not consider herself a bird watcher but thinks that the bird spend more time watching us instead. She is also inspired by small detailed drawings from the 19th century of bird identification. In her recent work, which included six of the panels in this exhibition, she depicts etchings of birds in their natural environments. Each one comes to life as a relief in the form of a brooch and is housed in a shadow box which frames the image. The subtle beauty of female birds is depicted in four smaller panels. Their placement and composition is inspired by the simplicity and elegance of Japanese flower arrangements. These birds are also removable and can be worn as brooches. To her they act as a metaphors for her everyday experiences, from personal to universal, in her sculpture and including her wearable pieces.

Helen Shirk

Helen Shirk is a metal-smith artist and works with the idea of hallow ware. Her inspiration comes from nature and the landscapes she encountered during her travels to Europe and Australia. In each piece she creates the feeling of sensuousness, strangeness, and vitality that is found in the natural word.
Through the challenge of physically manipulating metal Helen constructs the three dimensional object and then manipulates its mood with color to suit her own intention. The color she is able to produce with color pencils on to metal and a patina that is applied on top of the color pencils. The parts she uses in her work are orchestrated to create an intriguing and seductively energetic natural world.

Inni Parnanen

Inni Parnanen is a jewelry artist. Her metal works take on three-dimensional structures with a complex inner space that proceed from simple to geometric shapes that are characteristic of her work. The repeating lines create an elegant form that is both simple and complex. Interested in the interior and exterior aspect in her jewelry,s he will use different material in her work like parchment and cow horn. She takes an account for the use of each material as well. She likes to keep a simple beauty to her work while studying the structure of the form for its strength, durability and cellular forms. She also uses traditional material like sterling silver in her work, because the material is malleable enough to create the form that she wants and creates organic structure. While most of her pieces are one of a kind pieces, she will also work in editions.

Carol Windsor

Carol Windsor is a jewelry maker who currently works with metal and paper to create her pieces. Through her pieces she is able to create the fragility of life and the preciousness of the moment. Before she started working with paper, she would work with metal, enamels, and wood. The pieces then were physically and emotionally heavy. Putting aside the wood and the enamels, her work is drawn from the awareness of the beautiful and fleeting nature of life. Carol will create a structure of each petal using sterling silver. Then she laminates the sterling silver between the two pieces of paper to create her work.

Sharon Church

Sharon Church is a jewelry maker that uses nature to inspire her work. She takes most of her inspiration from her garden and domestic environment. Her brooch “Shimmer” is to be worn pinned above the heart, and she describes this placement on the body as both a lure and an animate curiosity. In the brooch she has accomplished the moist movement of a slug and combined it with the plumpness of her aloe plants. One has the potential to sting and irritate the skin, the other to heal it; both ooze protective moisture when touched or pierced. Church carved “Shimmer” from wood, studding them with old European cut diamonds, and using buttermilk paint to create a reminder of nature at its most vulnerable. In “Alone/Allure” she creates this piece from oxidized sterling silver, carved antler and old European cut diamonds. This piece is about life and longing.

Jayne Redman

With the linear quality that it brings from the stems and the fullness of the flower buds, nature inspires endlessly in reference to Jayne’s work. Redman primarily uses 18k gold and sterling silver. Many of her forms are multiples of the same shape, engineered to fit together with precise economy that results in an abstract interpretation of their botanical source material. She also uses a technique called keum-boo which is 24K gold that is heat-fused to silver. Redman uses different patina in her work as well. She uses handmade dies to cut out the pieces of her work so that she can make multiples quite easily .

Morley Price

Morley Price is a ceramic artist that works primarily in porcelain. Morley uses the coiling technique to make her work by pinching and pulling the clay coils into delicate convoluted shapes. She finishes with the use of a matt glaze that shows the dramatic concept of light and shadow. In the exploration of movement in her work she has used extensions in a repeating pattern to suggest this. Her works are characterized by numerous flanges. These flanges are paper-thin vanes or wings which are built onto hollow vessel or bottle shapes. These run vertically around each piece and convey a sense of movement while others add depth and illusion. She creates these form without the use of any supports during the making process.