I had the great pleasure of attending Richard Notkin's lecture and slide presentation at the Foothills Art Center.   Richard is the juror for the current Colorado Clay exhibit.  One of the great things about having an artist be the juror is getting to see their work.  It adds a great dimension to the jurying process because they are jurying as a member of the community, not the person in a position of authority like a curator or gallery director.

You would think that four inches isn't a lot of room to make a statement.  You would only think that if you haven't seen Richard's work.  He has four inch ceramic pieces that took him 250 hours to complete.  The amount of detail and refinement in his work is astounding.  The other part of working with so much detail in such a small space is the level of patience he must have to attain the desired outcome.

When you spend that much time on detail and working with small scale art there is a level of mastery that he strives for and achieves.  The work shows intention.  As someone who likes to work on bigger pieces it made me think about what could I show the world in a small space that currently takes me a lot of room to say today.  It's all about scale and proportion.  The great thing is that when someone like Richard Notkin feels he can convey his message in four inches and achieves it, that's the piece that drives museums like the Smithsonian or the Metropolitan Museum of Art to have his work in their permanent collections.

Thinking about shrinking...
Greg

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