PORCELAIN LOVE LETTERS: The Art of Mara Superior

PROGRAMMING

Member Event: Fired and Inspired: A Conversation with Porcelain Artist Mara Superior

Saturday, June 7 | 4pm – 5pm
Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education Auditorium

Shelburne Museum welcomes its Member community to a special evening with acclaimed ceramic artist Mara Superior for an illustrated panel discussion exploring her nearly five-decade career working in porcelain. She will be joined by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Anthony W. And Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Kory Rogers, the Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art at Shelburne Museum.

Together, they will examine the autobiographical nature of Superior’s work, her artistic influences, and the historical precedents that inform her practice. The conversation will also consider the evolving themes in her art—including the significance of home, food, travel, fine and decorative arts, and activism—as well as what lies ahead in the next chapter of her remarkable career.

Open to Shelburne Museum Members.

Registration coming soon!

Not yet a Member? Join HERE for access to this exciting Member event!

Webinar: Artistic Eye – Seeing the World through Mara Superior’s Ceramic Art

PRESS

WAMC INTERVIEW: “Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior”

The exhibition, “Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior” opens at The Shelburne Museum on May 10.

Superior’s porcelain art combines intricate painted imagery and sculptural forms through which she explores themes of history, domesticity, and environmentalism.

Trained as a painter, Superior discovered the beauty and creative possibilities of porcelain in the late 1970s. Since then, she has focused entirely on this bright but delicate material, appreciating both its fragility and its strength.

Superior’s work is inspired by many interests, including art history, patriotism, environmentalism, and everyday life at home. We welcome Mara Superior to the show along with Kory Rogers, the Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art at Shelburne Museum in Vermont.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE

ABOUT MARA SUPERIOR

American, b. 1951, New York, NY
lives and works in Williamsburg, MA

Mara Superior is an American visual artist who works in porcelain. Her ceramic high relief platters and sculptural objects reflect the artist’s passion for art history and the decorative arts, and her painterly motifs range from the pleasures of the domestic to serious political and environmental issues as points of departure to comment on contemporary culture and its relationship to history. Superior has received numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Visual Arts Fellowship, the prestigious Guldaggergård Residency in Denmark, and numerous individual artist grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Superior has exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, (Pomona, CA), Scripps Women’s College, (Claremont, CA), and the Fuller Craft Museum, (Brockton, MA) among many other institutions. Her work can be found in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (Washington, DC), the Museum of Arts and Design, (New York, NY), the Peabody Essex Museum, (Salem, MA), Philadelphia Museum of Art, (Philadelphia, PA) the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (Los Angeles, CA), White House Collection of American Craft, (Little Rock, AK). In 2018, through the generous support of the Kohler Foundation, gifts of art by Mara Superior were made to fifteen museums throughout the USA, increasing the public holdings of Superior’s artworks  and including an in depth collection acquired by the Racine Art Museum, (Racine, WI) and shown in 2020 in Collection Focus: Mara Superior. In 2010 she was interviewed for the oral history program of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, (Washington, DC).

Superior studied at the Pratt Institute and Hartford Art School, completing her BFA in painting from the University of Connecticut followed by a MAT in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

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