ON VIEW 2024
Claytopia
at Guldagergaard
Heilmannsvej 31 A
DK-4230 Skælskør, Denmark
July 10 through August 10, 2024
ARTWORKS & SERIES
ON THE FIRE SCULPTURE & FRAGMENTS OF WAVES SERIES
In 2022, Kadri Pärnamets’ Choreography of Water was exhibited at Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, MA. The solo exhibition cast the gallery in a sea of hand-built porcelain cups, vases, and cloud forms to explore earth’s most precious resource: water. Now in 2024, Kadri Pärnamets has returned to this idea of water through small-scale ceramic wave studies and her newest and largest endeavor to date: a 7+ foot fire sculpture. This fire sculpture was fired via “petal kiln”– a stand-alone, reusable kiln designed to open like flower petals – fabricated by friend and master kiln-maker, Andres Allik. The monumental work was crafted and unveiled in its final form at Guldagergaard’s Summer festival, Claytopia, in July, 2024. Having displayed a fire sculpture made by Kadri’s husband, Sergei Isupov, years prior, the Claytopia team approached Kadri in 2023 to commission one of her own. Normally working in porcelain, slip, and glaze on smaller scales, the fire sculpture differed greatly from Kadri’s past works. The sculpture was built using stoneware clay, which includes higher amounts of grog (raw, crushed materials containing silica and alumina), resulting in a more rough, textured medium. As it fired, the clay shrunk more than 10%, and any glazes applied to the clay body produced darker hues than when applied to porcelain. The changing and precarious nature of these materials added numerous unpredictable factors, which were only disclosed upon removal from the kiln. These factors directly connect to the larger ideas behind Kadri’s past work: testing life’s constant, unpredictable ups and downs and how we move through and with them. As Kadri contemplates this body of work and what it means to her, she considers the physical and figurative flows of energy and matter in her personal life, her creative process, and the greater push and pulls occurring in the world:
FRAGMENTS OF WAVES SERIES
FRAME OF MIND SERIES
SCULPTURES
“Moor”
“Waggle Dance”
TEAPOTS
“Question of Honor | Lucretia (After Lucas Cranach the Elder) Teapot”
“Steam from Tea – Tribute to Alice in Wonderland”
ABOUT
Estonian, b. 1968, Rakvere, Estonia
lives and works in Cummington, MA
Kadri Pärnamets works in porcelain using traditional hand building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form. Her biomorphic, organic forms provide a means to convey her personal interests ranging from fragile, natural environments to female identity. Her surface treatments feature a range of gesture and expression with either abstract shape or narrative figure painting, inspired by painters from the European Renaissance and Impressionist eras, like Lucas Cranach the Elder and Edouard Manet.
Pärnamets’ work has been shown internationally at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (Tallinn, Estonia), at the International Tea Trade Expo (Shanghai, China), and many others. Since 1996, she has participated in symposiums in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland, USA, Norway, and Hungary.
Pärnamets graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia with a BA/MFA in Ceramics. Dividing her time between Estonia and USA, her primary studio is the USA at Project Art in Cummington, MA. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.
ON HER WORK
Pärnamets creates works in porcelain using traditional hand building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form with abstract and representational painting. Pärnamets’ work is characterized by two modalities, abstraction based on natural forms and representation based on reinterpretation of iconic paintings. The central themes of her work are those to which artists have responded over the centuries. Pärnamets’ biomorphic vases and three-dimensional interpretations of classical images focus on humanity’s integral reliance on both nature and art.
DIRECTOR NOTES ON KADRI PÄRNAMETS
Kadri Pärnamets and I met through the social network of the artists the gallery represents, which is often the way I’ve begun relationships that develop long term. This “net” is actually a form of nurturing that connects one artist to another, first through their professional art practice, and over time, growing to become increasingly personal.
We got to know Kadri during the summer she spent at Project Art working in the studio with Sergei Isupov in 2008. Both artists produced independent works, and while working side by side, they also created a collaborative series. Kadri’s biomorphic forms and Sergei’s painted details merged along the lines of the surrealist game, exquisite corpse, when one artist starts and the next one adds, and is something that came naturally to these two artists. Their international lives in Estonia and USA and time working at international symposia and residencies provided time for collaborations, and now with the dual residencies, they work side by side tackling domestic projects in both of their home environments.
During the course of Nature/Nurture, suddenly in quarantine with their daughter, Roosi who was schooling from home, Kadri’s work in the family studio became focused on a series of small works and collaborative home projects at Project Art.
Due to the extended run of Nature/Nurture, we have been given the opportunity to reflect on paths taken, connections made and shared experiences in our now weekly series of FC News & Stories with each issue focusing on an individual artist in the exhibition. The ON NURTURE statements written by each artist acknowledges family, artist mentors, education and, particularly for Kadri, recognition of nature as inspiration and metaphor for her sculptures. Focusing our attention on “small matters”, Kadri’s sculptures of roots and painted details of common insects and pollinators recognize the foundation of our ecosystem and our inter-dependence – something that has become more obvious to us all as we observe the impact of global warming and the spread of the coronavirus.
ON NATURE/NURTURE
My new work is drawn from my roots. Focusing on the little simple things in nature, like bugs and their sounds, these things give us an understanding of time and space. Wherever I hear the sounds of the first fly in the spring or a mosquito buzz in summer I’m reminded of how important it is to keep balance in our surroundings and to appreciate the annual life cycles that begin from most ordinary and common things. Small matters.
FC NEWS & STORIES | NATURE/NURTURE | Kadri Pärnamets | Small Matters and Roots & Pollinators
ON ICONIC INFLUENCES
Kadri Pärnamets presents exquisite paintings of iconic images on three dimensional, voluminous, black and white cloud forms. Focusing on gesture and expression, Pärnamets selects known classics of female beauty by painters from the European Renaissance and Impressionist eras, like Lucas Cranach the Elder and Edouard Manet. Having grown up surrounded by these paintings in museums and books, from childhood to present, she has studied and reflected on the women’s expressions and context. Revisiting them during various periods of her life, and now as a mother and wife, she has chosen mythical figures to reflect on the human condition. Sacrifice, service and devotion are seen through the portraits of Venus and Lucretia by Cranach, the bathers of Ingres, nudes of Manet and religious images of Saint Agnes.
ON HER PROCESS
My process involves collecting senses, feelings, observations and generally, following my intuition. I use this thoughtful, meditative process to guide me towards the abstract forms and associated colors to express these internal, psychological thoughts. The emotional content of my life is translated and expressed through shapes and colors. I use the plastic expressive qualities of clay in forming the shapes. Color is added to the surface through abraded layers of complimentary colors.
FEATURED
Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets in CLAYTOPIA Summer Festival | Guldagergaard, Skælskør, Denmark
2024 | Group Exhibition at Claytopia at Guldagergaard | Skælskør, Denmark
July 10th through August 10th, 2024
Claytopia is Guldagergaard’s initiative geared towards engaging the public, offering a unique space within the beautiful park surrounding Guldagergaard.
CHOREOGRAPHY OF WATER
Solo Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary (North Adams, MA) | 2022
Kadri Pärnamets: THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF WATER featured porcelain sculptures, vases, and cups as a meditation on this universal element.
NATURE/NURTURE
Group Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary (North Adams, MA) | 2020 & 2021
Virtual Conference at NCECA Rivers, Reflections, and Reinvention | 2021
Group exhibition of twelve contemporary female artists invited to explore the influence of gender and its impact on their practice.
“Nature/Nurture” Installation View, Kadri Parnamets, Mara Superior, 2020.
KADRI PÄRNAMETS | NATURE/NURTURE
Virtual Tour of Kadri Pärnamets‘ Moor, Spring Announcers, Noon Dance, Sultry Night, and Waggle Dance in NATURE/NURTURE, the 2020 group exhibition of twelve contemporary female artists invited to explore the influence of gender and its impact on their practice at Ferrin Contemporary on the campus of MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA.
CURRENT + RECENT
NEWS & FEATURED
Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets in CLAYTOPIA Summer Festival | Guldagergaard, Skælskør, Denmark
ARE WE THERE YET? Featured in the Berkshire Eagle
Kadri Pärnamets: Choreography of Water Featured in Ceramics Now
Making History: Recent Acquisitions from the Permanent Collection
Peripheries: EDGES
5 Must-See Ceramics Shows You Can View Online, Artsy, April 29, 2020
Galleries closed due to COVID-19, but Art must go on!, Beautiful Bizarre, March 17, 2020
NATURE/NURTURE: Female ceramists reflect on experiences that shaped them, The Berkshire Eagle, March 13, 2020
NATURE/NURTURE on WAMC, March 11, 2020
Ferrin Contemporary featured in The Rogovoy Report
INQUIRE
Additional works may be available to acquire, but not listed here.
If interested in lists of all works and series: Send us a message
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).
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