Say you’re a ceramics artist. A really good ceramics artist. So good, in fact, that the McKnight Foundation has awarded you $25,000 to spend a year working on whatever you want. What would you do?
Well, in 2010, Roseville artist Heather Nameth Bren used that time and money to go deeper into her study of “non-objects”: appropriated “found ceramics” that Bren re-glazes and then fuses into hand-built, abstract, and vividly colored sculptures. The result is a series of funky, extraterrestrial artifacts—ceramic cousins to Rauschenberg’s object-strewn paintings. Linda Johnson, from Lindstrom, Minnesota, took a more functional route, creating wood-fired pots of a beautifully spare design. Both McKnight Fellows—as well as a trio of Fellows from years past—show off their work at Northern Clay Center’s newest show, which opens tomorrow night.
If you go, be sure to linger a bit at the NCC’s Fourth Annual Spring Sale, where you can score handmade mugs, vases, bowls, and plates from the Center’s studio artists.
Five McKnight Artists exhibition
Opening reception: Friday, 6–8 p.m.
Fourth Annual Spring Sale
Friday, 5–8 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
2424 Franklin Ave. E., Mpls.
northernclaycenter.org
