Linda Sikora: DARKENING GROUND

April 22 – June 11, 2023

FERRIN CONTEMPORARY
1315 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams MA

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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

North Adams, MA —

Ferrin Contemporary is pleased to present artist Linda Sikora and her new exhibition DARKENING GROUND, a poetic and conceptual look at forms, vessels, and other ceramic gestures. Sikora uses three distinct visual categories—woodgrain, blackware, and redware—which sometimes participate in narrative frameworks such as in the pieces:  ground II; ground III; repose—works at the core of the Darkening Ground exhibition.  In this, Sikora is thinking about the dark as a generative space and time; a landscape for internal, interpersonal, and cultural constraints and realities to shift and realign.

“Blackware and Redware depart from the glazed polychrome WoodGrain (a lyrical, rich and luxurious ‘faux’ surface on crock like pottery forms) by using systems reduceable to the most basic material processes,” says Sikora. “If the glazed work is alchemical, Redware and Blackware are of an opposing bearing: elemental turned forms surfaced informally with basic tools – ‘finished’ only by the heat and atmosphere of the kiln drawing color from the clay– as fire has drawn these same colors forth from earthen clay through all time.”

ground I, or what the artist calls “a compost of drawn lines” is a wall drawing that brings up ideas around the density of darkness and what gets lost or found in the fecund and fertile heaps. ground II is referred to as “a fairy tale.”

In fairy tales, darkness is a necessary rite of passage to obtain wisdom and move into a new stage of life. The deep forest under a starless dark sky is the transformative darkness of fairy tales. ground III or “a broken box” is a resolution of sorts, necessary and transitory objects that are found after searching grounds I & II.

The audience actions surrounding these grounds are also part of the conceptual thinking about transition from one ground to another, which can be viewed as moving from one stage of initiation or understanding to another or one landscape to another. “The water pot, storage jar, broken box, cut sticks are both synchronous and asynchronous with their embedded actions: holding, pouring, opening, collecting, hiding. Forms in situ and in relation to the body are the genesis of actions: bowing the head, bending down, looking into, reaching, taking hold of, bearing, or passing by entirely,” said Sikora.

Linda Sikora: DARKENING GROUND

AT FERRIN CONTEMPORARY | April 22 – June 11, 2023

Linda Sikora: DARKENING GROUND, installation view, 2023. Photo by John Polak.

PAST PROGRAMMING

Exhibition Opening | Saturday, April 22, 12pm ET

Online Conversation w/ Linda Sikora & Mark Shapiro | Wednesday, May 24, 12pm ET

Closing Reception w/ Linda Sikora | Thursday, June 8, 5pm-7pm

Lunch with Linda Sikora during the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour | Saturday, July 29, 1-2pm ET

Conceptual Works

Ground I, or what Sikora calls “a compost of drawn lines” is a wall drawing that brings up ideas around the density of darkness and what gets lost or found in the fecund and fertile heaps. Ground II is referred to as “a fairy tale.” In fairy tales, darkness is a necessary rite of passage to obtain wisdom and move into a new stage of life. The deep forest under a starless dark sky is the transformative darkness of fairy tales. Ground III or “a broken box” is a resolution of sorts, necessary and transitory objects that are found after searching Grounds I & II.

The audience actions surrounding these Grounds are also part of the conceptual thinking about transition from one ground to another, which can be viewed as moving from one stage of initiation or understanding to another or one landscape to another.

“The water pot, storage jar, broken box, cut sticks are both synchronous and asynchronous with their embedded actions: holding, pouring, opening, collecting, hiding. Forms in situ and in relation to the body are the genesis of actions: bowing the head, bending down, looking into, reaching, taking hold of, bearing, or passing by entirely.” – Linda Sikora

Wood Grain Series

“In the home-space, service, storage, and display are obvious realms for ceramic pottery form to operate. This trio has become a framework for recent inquiries into specific subjects (teapot, kettle, crock, box) and the groupings they generate. I have been using these realms to think more specifically, about what ceramic work in this genre is trying to do. To serve (provide, assist), to store (hold, contain, preserve), to display (present, offer, remind) –are gestures in the world.

To serve, to store, to display are gestures that occur on a small scale: individual, household level. And, they also occur on a large scale: societal, global level. Things and gestures occur in private spaces or highly-visible places. Service, storage and display impact the way use becomes leveraged against (an object’s) appearance and subject to influence how it is valued, it’s relevance or, whether it remains meaningful. Inquiry into these realms also connects to ideas about the household as a space of freedom. Such associations might influence the way we embody or make meaning of complex conditions …like existence or time for example: consider a teapot that is ‘performative’ over a short, finite duration (until the tea is drained), and the storage jar – in which stillness and silence can actively hold for durations longer than a life.” —Linda Sikora, 2020

Blackware & Redware Series

“Blackware and Redware depart from the glazed polychrome work by using systems reduceable to the most basic material processes. If the glazed work is alchemical, Redware and Blackware are of an opposing bearing: elemental turned forms surfaced informally with basic tools – ‘finished’ only by the heat and atmosphere of the kiln drawing color from the clay– as fire has drawn these same colors forth from earthen clay through all time. This series of darkening ware made over the last few years began as a lament – the labor of fabrication, cathartic – the forms still and grounded and basic, literally and figuratively, with surfaces that are rudimentary, obsessive, laborious but casual – behavioral.

The subjects are primary: basin, kettle, jar – wash, drink, hold. As the series unfolded it conjured the mechanized technique of engine turning Western industrial wares (rosso antico and black basaltes.) It came to be that Blackware and Redware stood in relation and opposition to these. It is most productive to consider them as differing beside each other in ‘spacious antagonism’. (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick)

Blackware and Redware basins and hut shaped jars with wide girth and full volumes are grounded in place; kettles with handles or smaller forms remain easy to engage or put into service. Service, storage, and display are platforms for culture and behavior I have identified and associated, with all my work, over several years. To serve (engage, offer), to store (hold, remember) and to display (make visible) are gestures that are scalable. These gestures occur in close proximity at individual, private, household levels and, they occur on large scale societal levels – engaging, offering, remembering is the processes of seeing – and at their foundation. Far from neutral, meaningfully made objects we live with and evolve with, influence how we pay attention to everything; they influence how we reflect ourselves back to ourselves, and ultimately, how we stretch to know a broader world of conditions that are large and abstract – such as time for example: consider a jar where stillness and silence can actively hold for durations longer than a life.” – Linda Sikora, 2023

MORE ON LINDA SIKORA

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Linda Sikora’s studio is anchored in the genre of functional ceramics. Service, storage, and display are platforms for culture and behavior that Sikora explores with her work. She commonly refers to her ceramic forms as gestures due to their nature: to serve is to engage or offer; to store is to hold and remember; to display is to share and invite.

Sikora is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship and has been recognized for excellence in teaching. Her work was acquired by the Smithsonian in 2022 and featured at the Renwick in their 50th-anniversary exhibition “This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World”. She is a renowned ceramics professor at Alfred University where she maintains an active studio practice and lives with her husband and daughter.

To learn more about the artist, watch the PBS Craft in America documentary featuring her work.