Snapshots in clay
Hannah Niswonger evokes Chinese culture with her own ceramic discoveries
By Graham Shearing
TRIBUNE-REVIEW ART CRITIC
Hannah Niswonger doesn't live in Pittsburgh anymore. She moved to Atlanta
last year, where she is an adjunct professor at Georgia State University's
School of Art. It's quite a loss for Pittsburgh, where in the space of a few
years she was an instructor at the Carnegie Museum of Art's Education Program,
an exhibition co-ordinator at the Brew House on the South Side and a professor
at Carnegie Mellon University.
But the Clay Place on Walnut Street continues to show her work. Her current
exhibition, "Travels through the Middle Kingdom," comes two years
after her first full show in Pittsburgh (also at the Clay Place). In the
intervening period she has contributed to group shows at the Associated Artists
of Pittsburgh Gallery and at Concept Gallery.
The Middle Kingdom, despite its Tolkein-esque sound, is China, the home of
ceramics. Niswonger made a trip there and has come home with a series of
snapshots realized in porcelain and stoneware that are uncannily evocative. At
first glance you feel the artist is simply exploring the nature of landscape.
Two small tiles, "Rice Paddies and Clouds" and "Rain," are
economical distillations of pure landscape, efficiently notational in the manner
of John Constable's preliminary landscape sketches (or, better still, the less
well-known, John Varley).
"Rice Paddies and Clouds," glazed
stoneware.
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Gradually, the landscape becomes identifiably Chinese ("Rice Paddies
1" and "Mongolian Steppe"). Buildings, too: A Buddhist temple
roof at Forshan, and the inevitable factory (Xian). A motorcycle taxi, the sort
of thing the traveling tourist invariably would snap in the absence of a
rickshaw, is also here. And what clearly is Niswonger's forte: animals, cats,
chickens and Water Buffalo. I think only once does she attempt to depict a human
being, "Melon Vendor on the Yangtze River," which is rather less
successfully rendered than her treatment of animals. The stylized movement of
cats and fowl (and monkeys, which you might remember from her last show) are
economically mastered: Human beings are more complex and awkward. I don't know
whether Niswonger used photographs or drawings as aides memoire in bringing
together this series. She is an accomplished draughtswoman, as earlier shows
have revealed.
China is the country of tiles, so Niswonger's trip there must have been
something of a pilgrimage. The Buddhist temple roof, with its glazed tiling,
evokes an entire history of Chinese ceramics from the T'ang onward.
She creates her tiles in the luxury of the studio, somewhat distanced from
the industrial pace of ordinary tile manufacture. She rolls out the thick
stoneware or porcelains and cuts them into shape. The analogy of pastry is a
good one. But she models the flat clay in a number of ways. Most important, she
pushes the wet tiles into forms (I suppose she might use molds) working from the
reverse of the tile. Thus, the cat "jumps" out of the tile. She might
do further surface work, carving the wet ceramic to alter effects, or even
applying new layers of clay.
"Rice Paddies I," glazed
porcelain.
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The tile can be fired many times. The first (high temperature) firing fixes the
ceramic; later ones (lower temperatures) have to do with the glazing, which is
complex and measured. Some ceramists allow chance to be the major agent of
change during firing, and the accidents which take place during the process are
diligently respected for what they are. With Niswonger the case is different.
Her studies at Alfred University (a center for ceramic art) were highly
technical. The effects of firing multiple glazes are fully understood. Thus her
"Chartreuse Cat," one of my personal favorites, is covered with a
crusty, broken glaze that one automatically assumes to be the result of chance,
rather than intention. It is fully intended. That is not to say that Niswonger's
work doesn't have mishaps. Her choice of thick stonewares and porcelains often
gives rise to cracking and fissuring, and any artist is going to experiment. By
using an electric kiln, rather than the wood-fired variety, she can control,
with greater accuracy, the temperatures, shutting the door on chance so far as
she can. Thus, her work can be contrasted with the productions of other
ceramists who celebrate chance.
The illusionistic effects in this exhibition are not easily achieved. It is a
mix of sculpture and painting (albeit in glazes). Color can only be anticipated,
for the firing has the last word. But Niswonger has achieved a kind of
impressive mastery, which is worth the closest attention.
Graham Shearing can be reached at gshearing@tribweb.com. Images and text copyright © 2001 by
The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
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Hannah Niswonger's tile art is on display at
the Clay Place Gallery in Shadyside. Pictured here is "Boats on the
Yangtze," glazed terracotta.
| 'Hannah
Niswonger: Chinese Tile Landscapes' |
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