Saratoga Clay Arts Center’s Schacht Gallery presents Architectonic : Wesley Brown & Bryan Hopkins, running March 25 - April 29, 2023 with an opening reception on Saturday, March 25 from 5-7pm. This duo exhibition showcases two artists who are pushing the material to its limits – exerting force, pushing the clay as far is it will go - all to achieve pieces that are refined and expressive, with sculptural and functional vessels being the result. In their process, both use intuition and improvisation to play with architecture, geometry, and the fundamentals of form.
About his work, which mainly features sculptural stoneware teapots, vases and covered jars bathed in a rich black underglaze and lithium wash, Brown states “Through clay vessels I explore the concept of human identity as the unification of varied experiences. Using the vessel as a medium I work on soft clay in two distinctly different manners. I use the potter’s wheel to generate forms that are refined, smooth, and geometric. This method of making is contrasted with my hand-built slabs on which I exert force to create storied surfaces where every action is recorded in soft clay. Both forms are allowed to become rigid before being joined, the evidence of their handing made more permeant through time. To join these two types of handled clay I use improvisation and intuition, cutting and fitting the two into one another to create a vessel. I make no attempt to reconcile the distinctly different surfaces when crafting the new composition. I only use stiffened clay that has been castoff from the process before to fill new gaps and refine the form. My process holds to the idea that you can only give from what you have. In the end the pieces varied as they are form a whole.”
Bryan Hopkins’ bright white translucent porcelain utilitarian works and sculptural vessels stand in contrast to Brown’s work, but the similarities in their inspiration and approach to the medium is undeniable. About his work, Hopkins states “I am interested in ideas of structure, architecture, containment, and permanence. My work takes those interests and applies them to porcelain vessels, adding to the continuum of expressive ceramic containers. Porcelain is my drug of choice. It satisfies and frustrates, and I am fully addicted. My interest in porcelain is its’ translucence and color, and I push the clay as far as it will go, firing to a very high temperature in a reduction atmosphere to obtain the whitest result possible. Porcelain is associated with the upper class and is seen as fragile and pure. My use of industrial textures and loose style of construction questions those assumptions. The surfaces and designs bring my working class roots to porcelain vessels. My urban environment, artists Gordon Matta Clark and DeChirico and Serra, Modernist architecture (earlier I.M Pei and Louis Kahn), backyard forts, model cars, 19th century European porcelain, Song Dynasty porcelain, and Modernism all inform and affect the work.”
Wesley T. Brown is a ceramic artist from Dayton, Ohio. Brown holds an Associates of Art from Sinclair Community College (2012), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University (2014), and a masters of Fine Art from Indiana University Bloomington (2018). During his schooling Brown sought out and worked for such potters as Mark Goertzen, Daniel Johnston, Alex Matisse, and Daniel Evans.
As a practicing artist, Brown has worked to develop bodies of work from large scale ceramic sculptures weighing several hundreds of pounds to everyday functional pottery. He has exhibited work both at the national and international level. Through clay Brown conveys both struggle and triumph through cracked surfaces, striking silhouettes, and bold compositions. His most recent explorations have been in the making of functional wares that are a dynamic meeting of hand building and wheel throwing.
Bryan Hopkins was born in Philadelphia, PA. He began West Chester University of PA as a mathematics major and found the ceramics studio in his junior year. Bryan went on to earn an MFA in Ceramics from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He has been a studio potter working in porcelain since 1990 and has lived in Buffalo, NY, since 1995. Bryan’s personal research in the field of ceramics centers on the vessel- both utilitarian and sculptural. Bryan teaches at Niagara County Community College. He has curated ceramics exhibitions both nationally and locally. Bryan’s work has been exhibited in group and solo shows nationally, including the NCECA Clay National Biennial. His work and research in ceramics has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Studio Potter , and numerous text books and e-books. Bryan is a founding member of the online ceramics group Objective Clay. He is also a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellow in Craft.