Images from Tubingen, Germany show

If you happen to be in Tubingen, Germany, stop by the Kunsthalle, adjacent to the Kulturhalle, and see some of your favorite WSG artists' work on display in this lovely space. A gorgeous, spacious, natural light-filled gallery, the Kunsthalle is about 30 feet from floor to ceiling with concrete floors and white stone and concrete walls. It's a very modern-feeling space in a city hundreds of years old, with cobblestone streets just outside the door. The above piece, by Valerie Mann, is one of the pieces that traveled across the pond for the exhibit.

Clothesline Show

WSG has a lot going on! Our artists returned from Tubingen, Germany from the Sister City Exchange last week. Our German hosts were most gracious and the Kunsthalle (city art gallery) is a gorgeous space for the show of our work "Ann Arbor Artists in Tubingen".

Also, our Clothesline Show is up for another week - through July 24! There are many smaller, more affordable pieces hung throughout the gallery on clotheslines for a fun shopping experience in celebration of the Ann Arbor Art Fairs!

And lastly, gallery artists Alvey Jones and Barbara Brown are doing an Artists' Residency at Hollander's in Kerrytown through July 24 - STOP IN AND SEE THEM! Hours for the residency are 10 - 5 weekdays.

Clothesline Show

WSG is trying something new for our next show!
We're having a "Clothesline Show" to celebrate summer in Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor Art Fairs. What's a clothesline show? Well, it's a great way to buy some great art for great prices from some of your favorite Michigan artists. We've dug deep in our studios to bring out work - some "never before seen", even. The work will be strung through the gallery on clotheslines, in clear bags for you to browse and priced for you to take home!

Check out Lynda Cole's image above. It's a digital, archival print and full of color to brighten up your living space!

The "Clothesline Show" goes up this weekend, opens to the public June 28, 2010 and goes through July 25. We'll be having a closing reception July 23, 7 - 10 pm. Yep, it's during Art Fair, so come enjoy some refreshments and air-conditioning! And take home some art!

WSG Artists' work to appear on the set of Scream 4

5 artists from the gallery will have several pieces gracing the set of the movie "Scream 4", filming in the Ann Arbor area starting June 28. We are excited, but we are not rookies to the movie business! Several WSG artists have had pieces purchased for movies filming in the area in the past couple of years, and Adrienne Kaplan even advised on the movie "Flipped" and her studio tools, brushes, etc. appeared in the movie, too! That movie is being released this summer, so watch for Adrienne's brushes!!!

Norma Penchansky-Glasser - Inside and Outside the Box

Step into WSG gallery's entry space and you'll be welcomed by a group of bronze sculptures first. You may stop, wait for them to draw a breath, lift an arm, flex on the ball of a foot, make their next move....

Norma has studied the figure as her primary inspiration, capturing each dancer at the point just before the next gesture - at a point that leaves the viewer anticipating what comes next.



On the walls, you'll see Norma's spectacular drawings. You can see the artist's work process in these pieces, as she sees the figure, records in on paper, imagines the figure's next movement, records it on top of the first drawing, and so on. The drawings have such a poetic nature - meditative, really. The black and gray lines are so elegant against the white paper!




A slight departure from Norma's bronze work and framed drawings are her wall-hung box pieces. I say slight, because her drawings and sculpture provide a stepping-off point for these little pieces. Norma starts with an antique sewing drawer and uses drawings of her dancers, beautiful papers, clay objects and parts from sculptures to create these assemblage pieces.

"Dance With Me", above, is one such piece. The box pieces provide the artist with more immediate satisfaction than the bronze pieces - a nice break from the labor-intensive process of sculpting, moulding, casting in wax, investing in ceramic shell, pouring bronze, chasing, patinating and mounting on a base (WHEW!). Working in several different veins, an artist can feed her soul, invigorate her thought process and, ultimately, discover things that translate among the media she explores.

Norma Penchansky-Glasser's work will be featured from May 18 through June 27, 2010. Gallery hours are Tu, Wed noon to 6, Th - Sat, noon - 10 pm and Sunday noon - 5pm. WSG gallery is located at 306 S. Main St., Ann Arbor.

Interview with Francesc Burgos

Study Model for a National Cenotaph
stoneware with terra sigillata

Interview with the Artist, Francesc Burgos

I had the pleasure of gallery-sitting one evening with Francesc and decided to ask him a few questions about his background, his work and his process. Read on to learn more!

Q. How long have you been working in clay?

A. I've been working with clay since 1990 or 91. Prior to that, I was an architect, working for a firm in San Francisco that did mostly residential, single-family houses. We did a few commercial projects - warehouses, malls and shelters. I also taught Spanish at U.C. Berkley, where I earned my graduate degree.

Q. How did you come to clay as a medium - how did you know that was the direction you wanted to go, after your architecture work?

A. It was a visit to the Asian Art Museum - I was simply AWED by the medieval Japanese ceramics on exhibit. I knew I had to be a ceramicist! So, I took classes at Laney Community College. Then I pursued an MFA in ceramics at University of Utah, where I was living at the time.

Q. What was it about that first contact with the ceramic pieces at the Asian Art Museum that drove you?

A. I was drawn to the Japanese medieval clay pieces because of their simplicity. They were unrefined, but very elegant and had a lot of presence. You could see the character of the maker in the piece - I'd never realized how expressive ceramics could be!


Q. Could you tell me a little about your working process - how you come from idea to form?

A. I make lots of sketches. Very often I draw cross-sections of the pieces - to plan structurally how they'll be built. I have to anticipate how firing will affect the clay. I start first with form and make full-scale drawings and sometimes templates.

Q. What are some of the things you think about, as you're making those drawings and planning the forms?

A. I am considering interior spaces, structure and the nature of dwelling.

Clay sculpture of Francesc Burgos at WSG gallery

Right now at WSG gallery, the gorgeous ceramic sculpture of Francesc Burgos is featured in our front window space. This delicate piece welcomes you into the gallery. Using porcelain joints and thin bamboo poles, Francesc creates a balanced structure that makes an ephemeral drawing on the wall with its shadows. The show continues through May 15, 2010.

"Abstraction of a Woman's Head with Hat (after Julio Gonzalez), Montserrat"
earthenware with terra sigillata
Francesc manipulates form in a way that makes it seem, well, not manipulated - like it might have just naturally occurred. The terra sigillata surface treatment further enhances this effect. Terra sigillata is a technique the artist uses to cover the clay form with slip (a thinned clay mixture), letting it dry to a certain degree, then burnishing the surface to bring out the natural eggshell-to slightly glossy finish of the clay. This labor-intensive finish really allows any texture in the surface to be enhanced.

"Propitia"
porcelain with terra sigillata



Here, Francesc continues his exploration of form simultaneously radiating and turning in on itself. The negative spaces are just as important - and interesting - as the positive spaces.

"Branch and Return"
earthenware and wood

Again, Francesc plays with space, growth, contraction and "drawing" with shadow. You can see a suggestion of the shadow drawing on the pedestal in this photo, but at the gallery, the shadows are much more dramatic. The genius of this piece (and the large pieces on the gallery walls - YOU GOTTA CHECK THEM OUT!) is that they define your perception of space with minimal materials.