Four, three, two, one!
We're a part of the School of Art at the University, and this gallery is part of the downtown community,
and we've been participating in First Fridays now for ten years.
This show is called of a feather, and it was organized by my director, Sam Yates, after
a gift to the university by an artist named Ellen Langen, and it's the big bird piece
and when you come into the room, it was gifted after her death to our collection.
That was the impetus for it, he started thinking about birds and what we had in our permanent
collection, and one thing built on another, and he started looking at our permanent collection
and faculty and artists in town and different people in New York and Chicago that we knew
that did birds in their work, and so over the past few weeks we just built the show into
what you see here, which is about 120 pieces that have a bird feather, egg, nest, all things
feather related.
We happen to have Elvis with wings, a piece by Gary Monroe.
He's a great artist and we're glad to call him a Knoxvillian, so we're glad to have him
in the show.
We have a Picasso print from our permanent collection that was signed by the artist, and
we have George Brock, and we have a lot of Guy Koliak, and we have a Ed Westcott show
here a couple years ago, so we have a piece of his.
It's a great night to come out and see all of the galleries, we're glad to be a part
of the downtown art scene.
The UT downtown gallery is open Wednesday through Friday 11 to 6 and Saturdays 10 to 3, so we're
closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
Every 10-10 is a university-sponsored and a student-run gallery.
It kind of gives us practice for maybe doing shows like Out in the Real World.
Every semester you get to apply like you would at a regular gallery.
This is a ceramics show, and the title is neither nor, so we're sort of exploring the
idea that ceramics can be more than just functional work.
Is it sculpture or does it just have functional purposes?
We kind of believe it's like a little bit of both.
I do functional pottery, and I use graphic decals on the surface of the pottery of the
glazed pieces, and I really am inspired by history and by geography, so I use a lot of
maps and a lot of images from historical references.
My work actually challenges the divide between ceramicists who are often questioned about
whether or not they are sculptors or potters, because I kind of do a little bit of both
in my work.
So that's really what my work poses the question of for people that come to view it.
This summer I visited Japan, specifically Echizen for a two-week study, and there at
this small community, it was one of the oldest kilnsight for ceramics in Japan, and there
were about 100 potters there, so these pots represent the 100 artists in that local region.
Thank you.
Thank you.
