'Dialogues in Clay' to open at Arts Council

Opening today: one art exhibition by four women from different states of the union, bound together by one love -- getting their hands dirty.

People have been making objects out of clay for many thousands of years, and they're still making them. Silica, the most common ceramic material, is the oxide of silicon, the essential element in computer chips. These four women approach making art differently, but they share a fascination with forming clay.

"We all use clay to speak about ourselves and how we perceive the world," says Amy Kephart.

Three of the artists will be present when "Dialogues in Clay" opens today at the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri. The reception will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Lorimier Gallery and Gallery 100. Ethan Keller, lead singer and guitarist for the Wisconsin band the Green Scene (see Artifacts in this section), will provide musical entertainment.

Kephart, Petronella Bannier and Veronica Watkins met while graduate students in ceramics at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Kephart now teaches ceramics at Southeast Missouri State University, Bannier is at the University of Evansville, and Watkins lives in Red Oak, Iowa.

When Southern California artist Barbara Thompson approached her friend Bannier about doing a group show a year and a half ago, Bannier introduced her to Kephart and Watkins. Bannier and Thompson are both figurative artists, while Kephart and Watkins are potters.

Their different approaches are erased by the clay. Sculpting clay and turning pots essentially are much the same, Bannier says. "Pottery is about figures and using negative space in a positive way."

Many people look at pottery and see only its functionality. Often so much more is going on, says Kephart, whose latest work involves groupings of ceremonial jars. In the design on the jars, one stem might be emerging from another stem into a bloom. It might be a metaphor for her own growth. "All that goes back to human beings and how we are also," she says.

It's the same with figurative art, Bannier says. Because people can recognize the anatomical parts of her installations, they sometimes wonder what else there is to it.

Art that people can associate with easily makes it possible to bring them in to see more rather than being put off by something foreign, Bannier says.

Bannier broke her neck many years ago in a fall in Amsterdam. The ceramic body parts she makes lately threaten to become so large that "sometimes you have to make a kiln around your pieces."

Watkins is the only one of the artists who will be unable to attend the reception. She has a newborn baby. The tableware she creates reminds us of the daily rituals of nourishment and gathering of families, she says.

Her concepts often are based on solving design problems. "I like to play around with a combination of curves and angles," she says. "The curves having to do with beauty and geometric angles for strength."

Thompson's sculpture often involves plants, but they are used metaphorically. "My work deals with certain kinds of boundaries," she says. "It's very metaphorical for how plants act in the garden, the edges between kinds of flowers."

How things intermingle at edges interests her.

None of the work was created to fit in with any theme or conception of what the other artists might be working on. But a commonality beyond clay and glazing emerged.

"It's more what is emotionally going on in our lives that has a lot to do with division -- divided or being hurt, or putting two pieces together in order to make something whole again," Bannier said.

After the Arts Council showing through January, the exhibition also will travel later in the year to the University of Evansville, Santa, Ana., Calif., and St. Peters, Mo. In California, the four ceramics artists will join with six others in a show at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Arts. That show is being assembled in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts convention in March in San Diego.

The title of the exhibition describes what always happens with art, Kephart says.

"We're having a dialogue with our medium. When we get together, those pieces talk to each other. When you get all four people's work together there's going to be a huge conversation going on."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182