“Very few contemporary potters mine clay close to their homes,” says renowned North Carolina potter Mark Hewitt. “Even fewer of them find slip clays and glaze materials nearby. Michael Hunt and Naomi Dalglish are in this rather exclusive company.” The hyper-local work of these Mitchell County artists is the subject of a room-filling exhibition at the Penland Gallery. Titled “Endless Ground,” the show will run through December 9 with an opening reception on Friday, October 6 from 4:30-6:30 PM.
Hunt and Dalglish collaborate as Bandana Pottery from their studio on Conley Ridge Road, not far from Penland School of Craft. They make their work slowly—handbuilding with clay slabs, carving into solid blocks of clay, or throwing on a kick-wheel—using raw materials they gather in their neighborhood and refine in their home studio. They fire their pots in a large wood-fired kiln. The scale of their work goes from bowls and plates to large vessels inspired by the Korean onggi tradition and multi-part compositions mounted on the wall.
Mark Hewitt described the color palette of their clay as “an earthy rainbow of brown—white brown, cream brown, pink brown, and purple brown.” Many of their pieces are decorated with white kaolin slip, which they use to create marks and patterns that contrast strongly with the dark shades of the clay. All of this work is united by a strong aesthetic of form and surface treatment that is immediately recognizable as their work and their work alone. This exhibition will present the full range of Hunt and Dalgish’s ceramics not simply as a collection of pots, but as an ongoing creative exploration.
Also on view is a smaller exhibition titled “Motion Capture” that presents work by ceramic artist Yael Braha and photo-based artist Bridget Conn. Braha’s functional ceramics are characterized by bold surface designs based on optical illusions, patterns, and tessellations. Conn’s sewn photographic collages are built from images that are made by exposing photo paper to light, resists, and traditional photographic chemistry.
Newly installed outside the gallery are two brightly-colored, billboard-sized murals based on paper collages by artist Anne Lemanski.
The Penland Gallery also includes a sales gallery with work in many media by artists associated with Penland School of Craft and a room dedicated to the school’s history and programs. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM. It’s the first building on your right as you enter the Penland School campus, which is located on Conley Ridge Road just off of Penland Road in Mitchell County, North Carolina. For more information visit penland.org/gallery or call 828-765-6211.
This display of large pots by Michael Hunt and Naomi Dalglish is part of the Penland Gallery exhibition of their work, titled “Endless Ground.”
Penland School of Craft is a national center for craft education dedicated to the creative life. Located in Western North Carolina, Penland offers workshops in books and paper, clay, drawing and painting, glass, iron, metals, printmaking and letterpress, photography, textiles, and wood. The school also provides artists’ residencies, an outreach program, and a gallery and visitors center. Penland is a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution that receives support from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resource. More information at penland.org.
