MARK SHAPIRO: Bottles and Other Muses

In Mark Shapiro's third solo exhibition Bottles and other Muses, Shapiro continues an ongoing exploration of bottle forms with non-narrative, abstract, rhythmic line patterns. Like the artist Sol Lewitt, Shapiro uses the power of line on surface to explore gestural, expressive calligraphic fields of scratched lines that imply music, writing, and history. Unlike Lewitt, his medium is studio ceramics and his color palette is derived from the results of firing with wood fuel. Focusing on the bottle form he stretches the various parts—neck, handles, body—all of which are exaggerated by scale. The larger works range to five feet in height.

Shapiro says that he finds "the verticality of the bottle to be suggestive of both the body and architecture, offering a challenging canvas on which to play with ideas about writing, gesture, pattern and chaos, surface and ground."

Mark Shapiro recently completed a three-year project The Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes, a book of essays and archival materials to accompany her traveling retrospective exhibition. The modernist Karnes (1925– ) made some of the most iconic pottery of the 20^th century and continues to work into her eighties. "What's also fascinating about Karnes," says Shapiro, "is that her life intersects with many of the most important cultural movements of the postwar period. She helped invent studio ceramics as we know it today."

A graduate of Amherst College, Shapiro has lived in Western Massachusetts for the last 25 years. He has trained a half dozen apprentices at his Stonepool Pottery studio, several of whom now make pots in the area. He is a frequent workshop leader, panelist, curator, and writer, and his work is included in many public collections including the Smithsonian Institution, the Racine Art Museum, and the Newark Museum.

In conjunction with 20/21 Modern Style and Studio Craft, a series of exhibitions and programs in The Berkshires August 5-8, two programs take place at Ferrin Gallery. On Thursday, August 5, 7 – 8:00 p.m. a talk by Mark Shapiro will include discussion of how modern style design is referenced, integrated, and incorporated in his current work. On Saturday, August 7, 4 - 5:00 p.m. Sarah Archer, curator of the exhibition at The Barn Gallery at Stonover Farm and director of Greenwich House Pottery, New York will discuss Modern Style and Studio Ceramics from Karen Karnes (1950) to Jonathan Adler (2010). For more details go to artberkshires.com