THE SPACE BETWEEN

(April 6 - May 27, 2023)

Miles Davis famously said, “Music is not in the notes, but in the silence between the notes.”  To Richard Serra, space was a “material,” the articulation of which took “precedence over other concerns.”  Whether it is a pause in time or a void in space, the design principle of negative space is encompassed in the Japanese concept of Ma, a philosophy maintaining that absences are as powerful as presences, that emptiness gives substance to the vacuum and defines the tangible.  Each of the artists in The Space Between makes the unfilled space within their work an essential element that imbues their work with meaning.  

Marc Leuthold “plays the silence” in the negative spaces of his subtly carved wheels.  Radial patterns of intricate crests and valleys correspond to the rhythmic repetition of notes and rests in musical arrangements. The clay “silences” that he removes in the carving process define and emphasize the lyrical quality of the raised clay ridges and provide the framework around which he composes a harmonious whole. 

Ceramic vessels and architecture are containers of space in which the inner volumes articulate the exterior coverings.  Linda Casbon and Allan Drossman find Ma within interior spaces. 

Silences in the form of absence define the work of Cheryl Ann Thomas, Judit Varga and Ruth Borghnicht.

The effect of high temperature firing on Cheryl Ann Thomas’s thin-walled porcelain abstractions results in slumped forms.  The extreme heat causes the symmetrical walls to gently collapse in the kiln, as if the forms were slowly deflating.  As the kiln cools, the drapery-like forms with their undulating surfaces and soft folds are captured, mid-fall, allowing air to flow over, under, through and into the curving contours.  The translucent walls provide sensuous silences of glowing light that act as visual resting places in the continuous movement.

Phyllis Kudder Sullivan and Judi Tavill construct forms that contain more air than clay.

Phyllis Kudder Sullivan builds her net-like sculptures from the inside out.  Starting with the space in-between the interlaced coil walls she builds the paper armature necessary to support the clay coils and is, in fact, the negative space.  It is only when the solid “emptiness” burns out in the firing that the Ma she envisioned is revealed through the open grid of the “woven” coils.  In her Water Series multiple interlaced units encompass the space between the perforated “walls” thus blurring the distinction between interior and exterior space.   

Judi Tavill’s organic sculptures breathe life.  Twisting biomorphic clay arms embrace and flow through the silences between multiple entanglements of ties and knots giving her forms the illusion of contracting and expanding. 

Drawing on a background of textile print design Tavill marks her surfaces with monochromatic graphite lines that, like the forms themselves, are intricate and gestural.  The 2 dimensional use of positive and negative space adds depth and further communicates the pulsating quality of the forms.

The multimedia artists in The Space Between manipulate clay and air; form and non-form.  Viewers are invited to take a slow, attentive, look at their work.  Those who take the time to appreciate the emptiness in the space between are rewarded with a greater awareness of Ma and a deeper appreciation for the power of stillness.

-Phyllis Kudder Sullivan