The Clay Cup VI: Vessel, Icon, Canvas
Monday, October 30, 2023 – Thursday, November 30, 2023
Bingham Gallery at the University of Missouri
The Clay Cup VI: Vessel, Icon, Canvas is a biennial juried exhibition of functional, design-based, and sculptural ceramic cups hosted by the George Caleb Bingham Gallery at the University of Missouri. Sponsored by the student organization, MUCK (Missouri University Clay Klub). This year’s exhibition is juried by ceramic artist and Assistant Professor at Penn State University, Wes Brown. The exhibition features the work of 66 artists from around the US, broadly defines the term “cup”, and has accepted works that consist of at least 50% clay.
About the Juror
Wesley T Brown is a ceramic artist born in California raised in Ohio. Brown completed his schooling around the Midwest receiving an Associates from Sinclair Community College, BFA from Bowling Green State University, and an MFA from Indiana University. While in school Brown studies ceramics with West Virginia University in Jingdezhen China, Daniel Johnston in Seagroves, NC, and Mark Goertzen in Goshen, IN. Since graduating Brown and his wife have lived in 4 different states as he has continued to make work and teach. They currently reside in State College, PA where Brown has accepted an Assistant Professorship at Penn State University-University Park beginning in Fall 2023.
Plates, Platters, and Nothing Else Matters
July 27, 2018 – August 12, 2018
Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences
Quotations along the rims of the plates
1. “Memorials are often accepted uncritically as ‘historical’… as the accurate record of knowledgeable hindsight. This assumption denies the role that memorials can play [in]… current… issues.” –SueAnne Ware
2. “The bigger problem with contextualization, however, is that it assumes that the architecture and opulence of the monument itself are not the problem; that additional words or the right words can remediate the monument’s aesthetic power and message.” –Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders
3. “Our responsibility to… vulnerable historical subjects is to acknowledge and resist the perpetuation of their subjugation and commodification in our own… historical practices.” –Marisa J. Fuentes
About the juror
From the website: We are very pleased to have Roberto Lugo as our juror. Lugo is an American potter, social activist, spoken word poet, and educator. Lugo’s work draws together hip-hop, history and politics into formal ceramics and 2D works. Born in Philadelphia to Puerto Rican parents, Lugo began his career as a graffiti artist before discovering ceramics.
Artist Statement
This set of plates offers a visual interpretation of theoretical works I encounter in my doctoral research in history alongside the printed words of scholars of cultural memory and archival erasure. These plates celebrate the removal of white supremacist monuments as a form of remembrance, not forgetting.
Activists and scholars have resisted the racist control of public space and marginalization of African American memories of the Civil War since the earliest days of Reconstruction. The empty stone platforms invite viewers to critically remember the past in the space that opens when symbols of the white supremacist “Lost Cause” narrative are taken away. However, telling plural histories from the ground up requires new historical and aesthetic practices.
Monuments impose a singular, eternal narrative meant for passive observation. Ordinary household objects can be a commemorative counterpoint to the hegemonic form of the monument, inviting everyday use and horizontal social interaction. History happened in the past, but it is constructed and contested in the present.