I'm going to finish posting these displays on Friday this week.
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Cheryl Keffer has mastered the rainy day scene with people walking along sidewalks by a lit window. (Last year there was a similar painting. But they are evocative of pleasant times, at least in my thinking!)
Martha Grover's radiant porcelain is a splendid garden of shape, color, and movement. Her wheel-thrown and ingeniously altered forms evoke things organic and wonderful in nature from elaborate flowers to dancers twirling in billowing dresses to anemones and fishes dancing on a coral reef. This collection has gives us the impression of an orchard filled with juicy summer fruits. Her subtle surfaces bring intriguing texture to slick glaze surfaces that feel immaculately smooth in the hands. Fresh color fields interact with one another to make the pots shapes pop, and constellations of little dots punctuate and anchor form. Buttery bare clay delights the hands as these functional but magnificently elegant pots bring their vernal jubilance to your day-to-day.
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Martha Grover is a functional potter, living in Bethel, Maine, creating thrown and altered porcelain pieces. She attended Bennington College in Vermont, where she received her undergraduate degree in Architecture. After going to Syracuse University in New York as a fifth year student in Ceramics, she decided to pursue a graduate degree in clay. In 2007, Martha received her MFA in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Since then she was awarded the Fogelberg Fellowship for a residency at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Sage Scholarship for a summer residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. Martha completed a year long residency at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana in August 2009. She received the Taunt Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation in 2010. Her work can be found at the Red Lodge Clay Center, the Archie Bray Foundation, the Clay Studio of Missoula, Schaller Gallery, 18 Hands Gallery, Crimson Laurel Gallery, Charlie Cummings Gallery, and Cedar Creek Gallery. Her work has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Pottery Making Illustrated, Clay Times, 500 Pitchers, 500 Platters and Chargers, and 500 Vases. Martha's work was featured on the cover of Ceramic Monthly’s May 2010 issue.
I seek to enhance the experience of interacting with functional objects. I work toward creating a sense of elegance for the user while in contact with each porcelain piece. Reminiscent of orchids, flowing dresses, and the body, the work has a sense of familiarity and preciousness.
Direct curves are taken from the female figure, as well as the fluidity of a dancer moving weightlessly across the floor. The space between elements is electrified with anticipation and tension. I think of the fluid visual movement around a piece, as a choreographer would move dancers across a stage. Transmitting desire - there is a sense of revealing and concealing, a layering of details that serves to catch our attention immediately and then the details draw us in, to make a closer inspection.
In our lives, we often move past the objects surrounding us at a very quick pace. My work generates a moment to pause. My goal is create an undeniable presence, one that acts as an invitation to explore the work thoroughly, taking time to know all of its many facets. Only through sustained interaction we can truly know and appreciate someone or something.
