CERAMICS | PROFILE

New York-based artist Arlene Curiouser Shechet is known for her experimental – and award-wining – approach to ceramic sculpture. Michael McTwigan examines why and curiouser she likes to work ‘on the edge’

ith the untimely death of her closest friend more than twenty years ago, Arlene Shechet W became anxious about managing time in her own young life – torn between making art, teaching and raising two children. ‘I was suddenly gripped by the need to pay attention and to be more alive in every aspect of my life,’ she recalls. At the time she discovered that one way to ensure she focused her attention was by choosing wet plaster as her primary medium for art making. As it hardens in minutes, the plaster forced her ‘into this state of awareness that in Buddhist terms would be called meditative consciousness.’ Over time, the forms that emerged from Shechet’s encounters with plaster, she realised, came to resemble a seated Buddha. Opaque, impenetrable, with no features to identify them as individuals, each Buddha seemed timeless, yet encapsulated all time. Shechet embraced these Buddhas as ‘a signifier of my resolve to embrace aliveness … as a reminder to stay awake, in the broadest sense.’ Ever since that time Shechet has been on a quest as an artist – not unlike that of Buddha, who was born Siddhartha Gautama in the 5th century BCE into a royal family. Sheltered from the harsh realities of disease, old age and death, the young Siddhartha experienced a personal crisis when confronted with true suffering. He left his life of privilege, seeking release from the cycle of death and rebirth. After years without success, Siddhartha sat under a Bodhi tree, where he finally attained enlightenment. Though not a Buddhist, Shechet continued to explore principles of Buddhist thought in her studio. Throughout the 1990s she worked wet plaster into the form of those sitting Buddhas, as well as free-standing Buddhist heads mounted atop blocks of concrete. To both she added layers of acrylic paint skins, within and on top of the wet plaster. If the elusive forms of the seated Buddhas and heads are meant to suggest the limitless possibilities of being, the patchwork quality of the painting underscores that point.

STATES OF MATTER, STATES OF BEING Over a career of three decades, Shechet has been compelled to work in fluid media – plaster, handmade paper, glass and clay – because of the nearly magical transition they undergo Green Scheme (detail), glazed from liquid to solid state. ‘It’s the formless becoming form,’ ceramic, steel, 2012–14 she explains, adding: ‘I’m looking to catch a moment in there.’ For her, the decisive moment – when the work she is

Image: Jason Wyche shaping with her hands reveals the time of its making, but

46 Ceramic Review | May/June 2016 Ceramic Review | May/June 2016 47 CERAMICS | PROFILE

THE ROUTE TO NOW

• 1951: born in • 1978: earns MFA from Rhode Island School of Design also appears timeless – comes about in a dialogue with her • 1986–87: awarded National Endowment for material. She wants her art to retain the aliveness of its the Arts Fellowship making. She says that she most enjoys making art at the • 1986, 1993 and 1999: awarded Artist Fellowship Grants very beginning of the process: ‘you start to create this from the New York Foundation for the Arts inanimate object and then it starts talking to you and • 2003: artist-in-residence at Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle bossing you around, and then it rules. You must come to • 2004: awarded John S. Guggenheim Foundation some compromise position and let it live.’ In recent years, Fellowship Award clay has been especially suited to Shechet’s concern with • 2008: established her studio in Woodstock, New York balance and imbalance, control and disorder; the serious • 2010: awarded the Foundation Painters and yet comic nature of life. Shechet admits her sculptures are Sculptors Grant always in a state of near-collapse, but she loves working on • 2011: American Arts and Letters Award the edge. Unlike Buddha, she is not seeking enlightenment • 2012: solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum of to escape the cycle of birth and death, but more to Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas understand the possibilities and perils of life, to understand • 2012–2013: Shechet had a residency at Meissen Porcelain all its dimensions from the emotional to the psychological Manufactory, Germany and philosophical. • 2014: solo exhibition at RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LIVING MOMENT TO MOMENT • 2015: Meissen Recast published – a book on Shechet’s Above and Beyond, glazed Over the past decade, Shechet’s ‘quest’ has turned up RISD exhibition. All at Once, a major 20-year survey ceramic, painted steel, concrete a cluster of creatures who appear to have been lifted of the artist’s work was staged at the Institute of and hardwood, 2015, H92cm; Idle from the deepest ocean. The tentacles of Even and Perhaps Contemporary Art, Boston, with an accompanying Idol, glazed ceramic, wood, 2013, Especially reach out in all directions. Groping to eat monograph H227cm; Upon a Time, glazed plankton passing by? Fending off a threatening predator? • Shechet’s work is in numerous public collections, ceramic, concrete, 2013, H133cm; Its oily black skin, with gold highlights, resembles including the , New York; the Los Green Scheme, glazed ceramic, a primitive form of octopus. The bulbous head of Good Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, steel, 2012–14, H119cm; Ghost, with three snorkel-like appendages, suggests an Minneapolis and the Whitney Museum of American Art, OPPOSITE: Night Vision (detail), ancient life form that failed the test of evolution. These New York glazed ceramic, 2014, H60cm primal creatures may represent the rudimentary stages of human life, when our urges were simple, but all- consuming. Do they represent humankind on the first step of the path toward enlightenment? Earth is populated by all manner of species, delightful to behold. Not satisfied with our natural state, however, we humans have painted, adorned, even sculpted our appearance to make a better impression and to mask our flaws. This, too, Shechet reveals about us in these ‘living’, ‘breathing’ but ungainly creatures. As tirelessly as the octopus seeks its next life-sustaining morsel, humans seek love, intimacy, respect and purpose. Shechet’s brutally honest ‘portraits’ of the human condition are beguiling and ugly, funny and foreboding. To enjoy the fullness of life we must be as attentive to the moment as Shechet is in her studio, when she brings her complicated creatures into being.

Arlene Shechet: Urgent Matter is now showing at the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, USA until 11 April; camstl.org Arlene is the recipient of the 2016 CAA Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work from the College Art Association Convocation (the international leadership organisation in visual arts) Michael McTwigan was co-founder and Editor of American Ceramics (1982–1993)

Ceramic Review | May/June 2016 49 Images: Alan Wiener, Chris Kendall; Jason Wyche; Arlene Shechet’s portrait: Martin Brading Chris Kendall; Jason Wyche; Arlene Shechet’s Images: Alan Wiener,