I presented four new pieces in the exhibition Evermore: Pattern & Process. Curated by Marcus Cain at the Epsten Gallery, Overland Park, KS, Evermore was on view from November 16, 2008 through January 25, 2009. The exhibition received an excellent review by Sarah Mote in the Kansas City Star and I was featured in a KCUR FM 89.3 (a Kansas City NPR station) radio interview with Marcus Cain and Laura Spencer, an arts reporter.
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Images
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Statement for Landscape I, II, III, IV
Landscape is a four-part artwork made of glazed ceramic tiles whose tessellating patterns are, for me, reminiscent of multiple sources in the world – honeycombs, turtle shells, diagrams of DNA molecules, and architectural tiled pavements and roofs. The Alhambra Palace in Spain and Hungarian Zsolnay tiles are particularly influential. In Landscape, I am evolving ideas I have been exploring – specifically ornament, decoration, and the representation of natural forms – into new ways of presentation.
The tile formations in Landscape are staged horizontally on round discs at various heights from the gallery floor. Most of my work with tile has been made for the wall; this horizontal presentation creates a relationship to the ground or to a map. The employment of various heights of the individual tiles, and the crevices and cracks in their surface, suggests a further relationship to landscape via topography.
The constant driving element as I produced this work was the shapes of the tiles and the structure created by their tessellation. In flux as I made decisions were the varying heights of the tiles and their surface color and texture. The structure provided by the tiles’ shapes opened a path; the relief, color, and texture provided direction for me to realize the final arrangements for the tiles.
Light reflectivity and transmission, hue, and texture are qualities I look for in the ceramic surface. Some ways I describe these traits include words like shiny, wet, satin, sugar, crystal, matte, transparent, translucent, opaque, fluid, fat, and crawl. I’m interested in the ways these features affect perception of the glaze color, in particular how light and texture affect colors’ responses to each other.
There is a tension I want to find between an abstracted reference to landscape and the ordered and beautiful aspects of ornament in everyday and special objects. The tiles are arranged in medallion shapes with repeated patterns that are symmetrical. My aim is that the decorative aspects appeal to tactile memory and sensory experience, and landscape to a sense of space and environment.
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Podcast from the KCUR interview
To hear the podcast of my radio interview, click here.
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Kansas City Star review
Here is an excerpt from Sarah Mote’s review, Patterns at Play, in the arts section of the Kansas City Star, January 4, 2009:
“But it’s Kansas City’s Cary Esser who grounds the exhibition, literally and conceptually. Occupying the center of the gallery, Esser’s luscious tiled landscapes join the show’s individual works, calling out their symmetry and irregularity, their geometry and their spontaneity, their reach into the future and their anchor to the past. Like a mini-Giant’s Causeway built by the mythic giant Finn McCool, Esser’s hexagonal tiles create a bridge between artists, extending and elegant invitation of pattern, texture, and design.”
