John Domenico and Gwendolyn Yopollo

LOCATION: Plinth Gallery - 3520 Brighton Blvd

CATEGORIES: Art Events | First Fridays

PAST DATE AND TIME:

• Fri, Nov 6, 2020 - Sat, Dec 19, 2020  

Open First Friday December 4th from 6pm to 9pm

As we proceed to navigate through the pandemic and these unsure times, art and beauty are constants that continue to enrich and inform our lives and experiences. We are committed in continuing to exhibit carefully curated ceramics that can help reduce the pressures and strains that are so evident in the current climate.

For our final exhibition of 2020, we are pleased to feature two outstanding ceramic artists and thinkers, John Domenico and Gwendolyn Yopollo.

John Domenico is a sculptor and vessel maker, his work fired in an anagama, a kiln specifically designed and built to fire with wood for many days. Domenico holds undergraduate degrees in ceramics and materials science from Arizona State University, and a Masters Degree in ceramics from Penn State University.

"Art is not an external thing, it does not exist in a painting or sculpture, it is not found in a gallery or museum, it isn't a beautiful day on a mountaintop, it isn't in the bottle of Crozes-Hermitage (wine reference), and it's not found in the sonic vibrations of Mozart or Beethoven. Art is a state of awareness. It does not only exist in the mind though; art is not purely conceptual. A mentor of mine, Chris Staley, often talks about a favorite word/concept of his: liminal. Liminal means to occupy a space at or on both sides of a threshold. I, too, think it is a great word/concept, and it aids in my definition of art:
Art | ärt | noun
Art is the liminal space between a person and a moment of reality in which the person is at once not only aware of their own humanity but also humanity as a whole."

Gwendolyn Yopollo makes work that stretches stretch boundaries and transform perception. Her visionary designs challenge us to rethink the ways we nourish ourselves and others within contemporary food culture. She earned an MFA in Ceramics from Penn State University, an MA in Education from Columbia University, and a BA in Sociology from Haverford College. The artist works in porcelain using matte crystalline glazes colored with rare earth oxides that show color shifts based on the type and quality of light that illuminates them.

"For us makers, the meaning is in the making. We can’t help but make the things that we need to have exist in the world. We can’t help but use processes that align with our own internal mental and emotional processes. Then, we tell stories about the objects and about our making of the objects as we present them to others. The words we choose to use, though, are just words. The objects themselves meet people’s hands and move with their gestures."