Word: clays
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Walter Clay Lowdermilk, 85, land and water conservationist; in Berkeley, Calif. As a forestry professor in Nanking, China, in the 1920s, Lowdermilk concluded that the vast wastelands of northern China were a product of careless exploitation of agricultural resources. In a vigorous lifelong crusade to combat what he termed "man-induced erosion," Lowdermilk oversaw numerous U.S. conservation programs over the years and served as consultant to the governments of Mexico, Japan and Yugoslavia. His pet project was the early agricultural development of Israel, where his suggestion that water from the Jordan River be diverted to irrigate the desert...
...pure art are exemplified by the exhibit. Although the pieces are beautiful and sensitively mounted on cork slabs, they are ultimately only exercises in one method of making pottery--the wheel method. The wheel method operates on much the same principle as a lathe. The medium (in this case clay) rotates so that all applied distortions become symmetrical and unified; abstraction becomes constricted. The other methods of pottery include slab construction, in which the potter joins planes of clay to make rectangular or free-form shapes, and coil construction, in which he carefully rolls cords of clay, and coils them...
...exhibit, but the rich glazes and occasional accidental effects save his work from academism. Some of his pots look like archaelogical finds, with rusts and blue-green tarnished colors conveying an appearance of age. He also flirts with technology, photographically silkscreening designs onto platters, and using emulsions directly on clay to produce a startling image of a building within a bowl. He has few pieces in the show, and the impression is one of scattered explorations rather than a steady development of style...
...work is good, and the potters show solid throwing techniques. The techniques can only be appreciated, however, if one has experienced the frustration of collapsing clay. Without the background or technical interest of a craftsman, the pieces are merely decorative...
...express in some sensitive way the common denominators of human experience, the essence of human dignity. Craft remains limited by the physical functions it must serve and the specifications of its media--it is art only when it extends its scope to the universal. The work in "Fire and Clay" comes close to transcending this boundary, and even in its failure is a beautiful and masterly exhibit...