Art History 2, Gallery Write Up, Essay
I visited the Cohen Center and Gallery in Alfred, New York. When I visited I viewed the gallery entitled “Calibrating Color: The Visible Spectrum and the Ceramic Surface.” I visited on April 10th, 2015. This gallery features works by Brian J. Taylor, Kate Doody and many more. In total there was eighteen ceramic artists that showed their work at “Calibrating Color.” Brian J. Tayor and Kate Doody created this gallry in response to their book “Glaze: The Ultimate Ceramic Artist’s Guide to Glaze and Color.” The book talks about the techniques, recipes, and art of ceramics.
At this gallery each artist focused on a particular hue and created ceramics with their hue. This gallery showed the power the ceramic medium and have. The intentions of this gallery was to experiment with color and medium together. This gallery was successful in that most of the ceramic did have the vibrant hues that they wanted to achieve. I recall previously in high school when I was painting in art class and the ceramics never could hold the bright, vibrant hues that these ceramics held. Most ceramics I have seen have been darker earth tones instead of bright lime green. I would say this gallery is an effective one as the ceramics held the vibrant hues chosen for the pieces.
This gallery, “Calibrating Color: The Visible Spectrum and the Ceramic Surface” reminds me of a realism art movement combined with the abstract movement. The realism movement is art that represents subjects truthfully. This is seen in the gallery as viewers can look at a piece and understand what is in it. For instance, one piece has a bundle of bananas that viewers can look and and know what they are. The realism art movement avoided artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. This art movement goes hand in hand with the gallery “Calibrating Color: The Visible Spectrum and the Ceramic Surface” in many ways. For one, the gallery avoided artistic conventions by adding the bright, vibrant colors to the ceramics which is unexpected and not commonly done. The gallery also avoids the use of exotic and supernatural elements as ceramics have been used for many years for art so this gallery sticks to the natural materials. Yet, the galleries works have a sense of abstract with the colors in them. Abstract are uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a piece that is unlike any others. The gallery “Calibrating Color: The Visible Spectrum and the Ceramic Surface” has an abstract feeling as the pieces have the bright colors. These bright colors are nothing like earth tones which gives the pieces an abstract feeling. This is seen as although the bananas are yellow in one piece, there is another piece of a person with orange skin and green hair.