Nancy Mintz, "Untitled (Ruin No. 5)," 2024. Stoneware.
A selection from the artist's statement from Nancy's show "Always Becoming:"
"Change is really scary, and clay is all about change... Clay is always becoming something new. When you're working with fresh clay it's incredibly plastic, something that can be manipulated very easily. Ideas take form —some of them yours. When the clay has decided what it wants to be, it hardens to a solid lump. But that's just the beginning! The clay body takes on a whole new personality in the kiln. Your ideas may not survive... Then comes the glazing, which is an excercise in trust. You do the chemistry, but basically you're just throwing on some milky liquids and hoping for the best. By the time you you finally open up the kiln, you may find somthing so completely changed that you forget what the original idea even was...
"For this body of work, I needed to re-learn many things, to confront how much I didn't know, and how much I still don't know. I went from a very comfortable practice to a place of improvisation, a collaboration with unseen forces. For me, it's a way of looking at fear. Why is it that we are so afraid of changing, of moving forward? And yet, we always have to keep moving forward."
About the Ruins Series: These forms do not refer specifically to current events. Rather, they manifest an archetype that we all carry with us. There is something particularly disturbing about a home rendered unlivable: the doors that lead nowhere, the ceilings open to the sky, offering no shelter. Empty of life, like a skull.
In 1937, fascists conducted a brutal arial bombardment of the village of Guernica, Spain. In response to this unprecedented atrocity, and hoping to catalyze world opinion, Pablo Picasso created his massive cubist masterpiece "Guernica." The artist was saying, this is really happening. Don't look away! But of course, the bombing of civilians has continued unabated ever since. Picasso hoped that we would confront an unimagiable horror, and do the right thing. Today we look into the dark mirror of Guernica, or into our news feeds, and we are horrified to see ourselves. Don't look away!
Nancy Mintz, "Untitled (Ruin No. 5)," 2024. Stoneware.
A selection from the artist's statement from Nancy's show "Always Becoming:"
"Change is really scary, and clay is all about change... Clay is always becoming something new. When you're working with fresh clay it's incredibly plastic, something that can be manipulated very easily. Ideas take form —some of them yours. When the clay has decided what it wants to be, it hardens to a solid lump. But that's just the beginning! The clay body takes on a whole new personality in the kiln. Your ideas may not survive... Then comes the glazing, which is an excercise in trust. You do the chemistry, but basically you're just throwing on some milky liquids and hoping for the best. By the time you you finally open up the kiln, you may find somthing so completely changed that you forget what the original idea even was...
"For this body of work, I needed to re-learn many things, to confront how much I didn't know, and how much I still don't know. I went from a very comfortable practice to a place of improvisation, a collaboration with unseen forces. For me, it's a way of looking at fear. Why is it that we are so afraid of changing, of moving forward? And yet, we always have to keep moving forward."
About the Ruins Series: These forms do not refer specifically to current events. Rather, they manifest an archetype that we all carry with us. There is something particularly disturbing about a home rendered unlivable: the doors that lead nowhere, the ceilings open to the sky, offering no shelter. Empty of life, like a skull.
In 1937, fascists conducted a brutal arial bombardment of the village of Guernica, Spain. In response to this unprecedented atrocity, and hoping to catalyze world opinion, Pablo Picasso created his massive cubist masterpiece "Guernica." The artist was saying, this is really happening. Don't look away! But of course, the bombing of civilians has continued unabated ever since. Picasso hoped that we would confront an unimagiable horror, and do the right thing. Today we look into the dark mirror of Guernica, or into our news feeds, and we are horrified to see ourselves. Don't look away!
