Exhibition Walkthrough - Flourish

Kansas City based ceramicist Rain Harris creates elegant sculptures drawing on imagery from 17th century Baroque and Flemish Vanitas and her own research in Jingdezhen, China. Her meticulously hand-formed ceramic flowers are arranged into lush tableaus that speak to themes of opulence, elegance, artificiality, and morbid excess. While her sculptures may appear to be true-to-life representations of flowering plants, Harris approaches her work with a critical and often satirical lens- often commenting on the tenuous line between high and low art and good and bad taste.
Madison based artist Rachelle Miller describes her work as "little colorful microcosms." Fascinated by the natural world, Miller’s work focuses on small, organic patterns and how these “communities” interact with one another. While her pieces may begin-and often remain-strong individually, Miller contends that each singularity is part of a bigger community. Her pieces form a relationship once together, and she takes great joy in seeing the ways they can interact. Miller uses the potter's wheel and hand-building techniques to create her work. She also uses printing, etching, layering, and multiple firing methods to achieve the complex, textured surfaces.
Juliane Shibata is a ceramic artist and educator based in Northfield, MN. Her work is informed by Japanese conceptions of beauty, such as wabi-sabi’s aesthetics of imperfection and impermanence, as well as the Pattern & Decoration movement. Juliane draws viewers to her work through the rhythm of repeated forms that visually energize the space around them. Her most recent outdoor installations aim to redirect our awareness to the constructed environment, the spaces we occupy, and the traces of human presence in and around the architectural structures we encounter.
On-view at Abel Contemporary Gallery March 1 - April 14, 2024