Shelburne Museum presents the work of renowned British artist Paul Scott in the exhibition Confected, Borrowed & Blue: Transferware by Paul Scott that includes provocative reinterpretations of 19th-century transferware from Shelburne Museumâs permanent collection along with a work commissioned for the exhibition.
âExhibiting contemporary work that is inspired or influenced by the collections is a longstanding tradition at Shelburne,â said Kory Rogers, Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art. âPaul Scottâs wry way of using transferware, a major part of Shelburneâs decorative arts collection, as a medium for social commentary often delivered with a sense of humor, is ingenious, and picks up on a thread seen throughout Shelburneâs collections.â
Scott transforms his medium, commercially produced English and American ceramic plates, with his signature subversive imagery and insightful, and often ironic, commentary on both historic and contemporary issues. His work references traditional porcelain designs developed by late 18th-century English artisans, such as the Willow pattern or Spodeâs Blue Italian.
Press Coverage
Ferrin Contemporary in the news
19
Jul
2024
31
Jul
2023
ARE WE THERE YET? Featured in the Berkshire Eagle
A JOURNEY IN CERAMICS
NORTH ADAMS â Sometimes, the only way to move forward is to look back.
Leslie Ferrin, director of Ferrin Contemporary, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is doing just that with “Are We There Yet?” It’s an exhibition that is one-part retrospective, one part celebration. It’s a show about evolution, of transition.
It’s an introspective show, for Ferrin, who after 40-plus years in the ceramics market is pondering the next phase of Ferrin Contemporary.
10
Jul
2023
CERAMICS GALLERIST LESLIE FERRIN & âARE WE THERE YET?â Featured in Rural Intelligence
âAre We There Yet?â opening at Ferrin Contemporary on July 15 is not just another Berkshire summer gallery exhibition. Well, it is and itâs not. Most works, including newly created pieces, are for sale. But some are on loan from private collectors and artist archives, which is odd for a commercial gallery âparticularly one of this caliber. Ferrin Contemporary is renowned for its specialization in contemporary ceramics and introduction of living clay artists to a wider population of art appreciators and collectors.
But âAre We There Yet?â is a uniquely introspective exhibition for gallery owner Leslie Ferrin as well as the 20 participating artists and the community at large. You could call it a survey show, but not of a specific artistâs work. Itâs a survey show of the gallery itself.”
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05
Jul
2023
Courtney M. Leonard featured on NewsdayTV
“Courtney Leonard is the local artist behind two new exhibits on Long Island, at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington and Planting Fields in Oyster Bay. The Heckscher exhibit explores the different definitions of the word breach, focusing on the environment and Leonard’s heritage as a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation.” – NewsdayTV
05
Jul
2023
Courtney M. Leonard featured in WSHU Public Radio
“Leonard has opened her first retrospective art exhibition at The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington. It showcases her work over the years, exploring ecological issues and Indigenous culture with the whale as a common thread.
Printed on a wall in the exhibit, Leonard poses the question âCan a culture sustain itself when it no longer has access to the environment that fashions that culture?â
In the face of land loss and climate change, she tries to answer that question through her art, speaking to her communityâs resilience.
‘Ultimately, the thing that I’ve learned with the work of breaching this question is that we do our best to care for the place that we live on, because it is what we have, and what we love,’ she said.”
30
May
2023
Beth Lipman Featured in New Suns Interview
For Beth Lipman and Hiromi Takizawa, glass operates as a metaphorical container for the fluid nature of memory and human experience. It is also a material that holds endless fascination for them; it is malleable like clay, but with unique optical qualities that bring a broad range of associations to the various forms it can take. In the following conversation, the artists dig enthusiastically into the nitty gritty of this unique material and its place in their practices. In glass art, even a non-utilitarian work will often begin its life as a blown vessel before being shaped into something else, making the practice an opening for possibilities for form and meaning. In much the same way, the vessel here is a jumping off point into the endless possibilities of this material and all it can hold.
28
Apr
2023
Judy Chartrand in Studio Ceramic Canada
JUDY CHARTRAND featured in
Studio Ceramics Canada
Written by Amy Gogarty
Born in Kamloops, BC, Manitoba Cree artist Judy Chartrand was raised in Vancouverâs Downtown Eastside (DTES). While she is a status member of the Pine Creek Band in Camperville, Manitoba, where she has family, she has never lived on the reserve. One of thirteen children, she grew up in a multi-racial, urban environment, where she experienced both the positive aspects of diversity as well as the negative impacts of racial prejudice, poverty, and the inter-generational trauma of the residential school system, which her mother endured for twelve years as a child.
Although art was not important in her home, she was a curious and precocious child. She spent many hours in the Vancouver Museum, which was housed in the Carnegie Building at the corner of Hastings and Main between 1957 and 1967, when it moved to its present location in Vanier Park. 1 After sitting vacant for a number of years, the building was renovated and reopened as the Carnegie Community Centre in 1980. The newly refurbished structure, often referred to as the âDowntown Eastsideâs Livingroom,â housed a reading room, art gallery, dark room, pottery room, and other educational and recreational amenities.
05
Apr
2023
Sergei Isupov and family featured in The World
This radio segment explores how Sergei Isupov and his family use their unique forms of art to express the current war’s affects on each of them.
“Sergeiâs parents, Nelli and Vladimir, met in art school in the port city of Odesa in the late 1950s, during the Soviet period. They later settled in Kyiv to raise their two sons, Sergei and Ilya. And they basically insisted that their sons become artists, too.
Sergeiâs mother, Nelli, and brother, Ilya, still live in Kyiv. And Sergei talks to them all the time. ‘Sometimes [when] I talk to my mom, I hear sirens in the back,’ Sergei said.”
More on Sergei Isupov’s family, in Sergei’s own words
Excerpts below recently published in The Craft Quarterly from the James Renwick Alliance.
Read the full article HERE.
Nelli Isupova
“My mother Nelli can find something positive in everything that happens around her. Now because of the war, those with cars have left and she says she kind of appreciates that there are fewer cars and people in the city. She lives in the very center of Kyiv and still she goes for walks in the parks. She refuses to go to the bomb shelter even when the air raid sirens howl. During World War II, when she was three years old, she and her mother were evacuated via ship from Stavropol. Their ship was bombed while they were in the Caspian Sea but luckily they both survived.
My whole life my mother has been a working artist. Now, at age 83, she still works hard at her painting and exhibits her work a lot. She says that âpeople now need to see bright colors.â In March of last year, she had an exhibition at Sofia Kyivska. She went there every day and posted selfies with the visitors on her instagram feedâit looks so normal, and she looks very happy in her ceramic âgarden of joy.â Then in July, she had an exhibition at the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Art. That museum, housed in a beautiful 19th c. mansion, was severely damaged in a nearby Russian strike on October 10 and itâs feared that many parts of their extensive permanent collection may have been damage (editorâs note: Nelli removed her works from the gallery just a week before the bombing). – Sergei Isupov
Learn more about Nelli and her artwork HERE.
Follow Nelli on Instagram HERE.
Illuminating Space
exhibition by Nelli Isupova
The Kyiv Art Gallery National Museum
Kyiv, Ukraine
August 17, 2022
Ilya Isupov
“My brother is also an artist. He evacuated two of his children from the city to a seemingly safe place. His other two children are older and were already in school or working outside of the country. But pretty quickly the war came right to the village where he had evacuated his children. Even with the bombing, he still managed to save them and get them out by making his way through roadblocks and along forest paths. He and his wife took them to the Polish border. The children and their mother have remained exiled in France. According to what we hear it is not easy for them, just as for any refugee.
My brother returned home to Kyiv where his pet was waiting for him. Soon he learned that a bomb had hit the house in the village where his children had been staying. The relative who had taken in his children was buried under the rubble of a fallen wall, but she survived. The children are physically safe, they were taken away in the nick of time.
My brother had a job in the advertising industry, but it is gone now so he works from home; his paintings are full of dramatic unreality. They are beautiful and not intimidating but these paintings are reminiscent of the events happening all around him. It may be obvious for those who know what heâs going through. The paintings do not sell now. Friends who can are helping him survive. He recently exhibited in Paris at a group exhibition with Ukrainian artists and for that he received permission to leave Ukraine for two weeks. He is 51 years old.” – Sergei Isupov
Learn more about Ilya Isupov and is artwork HERE.
Follow Ilya on Facebook HERE.
View a catalogue of additional artworks HERE.
06
Feb
2023
Kadri Pärnamets: Choreography of Water Featured in Ceramics Now
Kadri Pärnamets: The Choreography of Water is on view at Ferrin Contemporary, North Adams
December 3, 2022 â February 11, 2023
After installing her work in the gallery, Pärnaments stood outside in the rain, looking in on her work.
âItâs amazing to me, we all share this substance. Everyone all over the world is sharing the same water,â said the artist whose primary inspiration for this work is rain.
The exhibition features her biomorphic, organic vessel forms. Thinking of herself as a choreographer, the artist explores shapes that connect to water, from cloud to cup. Pärnaments interests range from fragile, natural environments to female identity and this is evident across form, color, and function.
19
Jan
2023
Sergei Isupov Interview Featured in the JRA Quarterly Winter 2023
IN CONVERSATION:
ARTIST SERGEI ISUPOV ON IMMIGRATION, EDUCATION, AND THE SURREALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Interview edited by Lauren Levato Coyne and Leslie Ferrin, co-curators of the exhibition âOur America/ Whose America?â
at Ferrin Contemporary, North Adams, Massachusetts
Sergei Isupov graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia with an M.F.A. in Ceramics in 1990. He immigrated to the United States in 1994, and has lived and worked at Project Art in Cummington, Massachusetts since 2006.
How has migration shaped your artistic education?
When I arrived in the U.S. from Estonia in 1994, I was young, newly married to an American artist, Dana Major and we started a studio, Nine Pines Art in Louisville, Kentucky. Selling work became my first American education. My work was highly detailed, figural and immediately appealed to collectors at the ACC [American Craft Council] and Smithsonian Craft Fair. With each series, I added more details and bold narratives, and I received more attention and support; my skills became more accomplished as I mastered the material….
Thanks to JRA CRAFT for this excellent interview with Sergei Isupov and the ongoing interest in Sergeiâs captivating work for these many incredible years that heâs been working. And!, what perfect timing to coincide with the Figuring Space exhibition at The Clay Studio.
Sergei Isupov’s work is on view at The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA, until 2 APRIL 16th 2023:
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