Continuing through February 23, 2011
University of Texas at San Antonio Gallery
Opening March 10, 2011
Texas A&M, Corpus Christi
Throughout his long and prolific career, Steve Reynolds (1940-2007) sought to elevate ceramics, perpetually mired in the "art vs. craft" debate, to the same high art status as painting and sculpture. Internationally-known artist Catherine Lee assembled this mini-retrospective of Reynolds' serial experiments with ceramics materials, pigments, shapes and textures in both figurative and abstract forms.
His heavy, earthy "kettle pots," splattered with colorful patinas, reference the earliest forms of vessels, such as lava rock mortars. A series of "cups and saucers" turn clay stereotypes into pure non-functional, richly-gestural whimsy. The bulky, free-standing "Black Stacks" evoke Industrial Age smokestacks, in contrast with the delicate birdlike and primitive figurative pieces that can be held in the hand. Late in his career, Reynolds created conceptual wall pieces mingling painting, ceramics and found object sculpture with text. These referred to art historical and philosophical sources that functioned as both inspiration and maps into his thought processes.
