Billy Howard’s gallery on the northern edge of Pioneer Square is open for its final First Thursday Gallery Walk tonight, 6-8 p.m. (Previous post on his closure here.)
Howard’s last exhibit is Patti Warashina, a pioneering figure in West Coast ceramics, one of a trio who brought Seattle ceramics to national attention in the 1970s. (The others – all from the art faculty at the University of Washington – are the late Howard Kottler and the late Robert Sperry, the latter her husband.)
Kottler had no false moves. Sperry had one great one – cracked, sea-foam surface plates. Warashina is the most erratic – across her long career scoring big and striking out. The nerve and wit of her best work derives from a fundamental simplicity. Her worst is overworked, sporting surface decoration that has little to do with the figure underneath it.
Besides being way too crowded (the gallery’s fault), the current show presents Warashina at her most festively inert.
Patti Warashina
Figure D
2010
whiteware and mixed media
22″ x 18.5″ x 17″
For comparision, consider how Claudia Fitch uses color on a ceramic figure. (There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit/ and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit….via)
TORSO (2), 2006
Ceramic porcelain
13.5 x 7.5 x 6.5 inches, Greg Kucera Gallery
Through June 12.
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