open kiln
Lisa Stinson
Ken Sedberry
Jeremiah Underwood
opening reception : Friday, October 2 // 4 — 6 pm
Crack open a kiln while it's still cooling and you'll hear it before you see anything: a faint, scattered pinging, like ice settling in a glass. That's the glaze tightening into its final skin. Every potter knows the sound, and the small held breath that comes with it, because what goes into the fire is never exactly what comes back out.
Open Kiln gathers three ceramicists who let the fire have its say. Color drifts where the heat carries it. Glaze pools in a pressed line and breaks thin over the edge. A cow brushed onto the side of a cup comes out looking a little wilder than it went in. The work feels found as much as made, with surfaces like creek water and colors borrowed from reef fish.
The kiln door opens the same way for everyone who has ever loaded one. Come see what came out.
Run a hand across one of Lisa's platters and you'll feel the pattern before you see it : pressed lines, ridges and hollows where glaze pools deep and breaks thin at the edges. Her work lives in mark making, drawing and the rhythms of abstraction, and every surface is built on years of glaze research. Sometimes the abstraction blooms into something literal, with flowers crawling up the side of a vase.
Ken Sedberry
Turn one of Ken's pots around and you can still see where the flame traveled across its back. On the front, the life of a mountain stream: salamanders, fish and crabs, in colors wood firing isn't supposed to give up. Ken stokes his own wood kiln for up to twenty hours at a time along the Toe River in Burnsville. Lately the animals have stepped off the surface entirely, into sculptures of their own.
Jeremiah Underwood
Pour your coffee into one of Jeremiah's cups and you'll have company : a cow staring back, fish swimming around the side, birds wheeling across a plate, drawn in quick, dark brushwork. He was born on Hickory Nut Gap Road, minutes from here, and grew up on his family's dairy farm in Shelby, where the day starts before the sun. He chose geology to stay outdoors and landed behind a screen, until he found clay. He makes pots to be used, and works the way he was raised.
opening night
Friday, October 2 // 4 — 6 pm
The first look is the best one. The work will be fresh on the walls, and Ken, Lisa and Jeremiah will all be in the room, glad to talk about what came out of the kiln and how it got there. Pour a glass from a wine selection curated by Peabody's Wine & Beer Merchants, find something good to snack on, and end your week in a room full of people who care about clay as much as you do.
Free, and no RSVP needed.