Texture as Subliminal Experience

Texture is both weight and line; it also makes an object more holdable, a surface more readable. The rough surface of a textured form, however ephemeral, opens mass to sensation, just as the viscous clarity of a wandering, textured silhouette reveals form to be an emotional response to mass. Texture is often associated with fabric, with touch, with the warp and weft of heightened sensations, or memory, both figure and ground to an extended mass, as in the texture of experience, or the fabric of the Universe.

The organizing principle of this exhibition is the connection between the two artists, meeting twenty years ago as master and apprentice, a relationship that has fluidly developed into colleague and peer. In this exhibition, we are able to flow together again for a brief time. Working the surface of the clay in our own ways, leaving an imprint of a making, and firing into permanence this new moment.

The work to be exhibited by Sullivan is a series of tiled panels. Each composition is driven by tools meeting the material, repetition and pattern, and glaze enhancements. The deep marks play with light and variation in the value of color. The panels reference traditional tile making and stonework, such as a four point rotational pattern using a single image repeated, tessellations, and random ashlar arrangements while using advanced tools such as CNC molds and 3D printed tooling.

The work submitted by Protho is a series of voluminous jars with unique surface treatments. Bringing life to traditional forms, Prothro describes his process as following the pulse of the day, the wheel, and his fingers, each variation is the nothingness of play, and the well known, difficult to control consequence of practical chaos.