By Garrison Frost

As the Manhattan Beach Creative Arts Center continues to emerge as a leading exhibition space in the South Bay, the occasional shows sponsored by Arts Manhattan have provided the venue with the kind of lift that only comes from celebrity artists. "Terra Firma" is no exception, bringing a number of big names in ceramics to this municipal art gallery.

The show is billed as the first of one or more parts, which probably explains why so many of the things we would tend to demand of any ceramics overview are absent. The venue just isn't all that big, after all, and breaking the show into smaller parts allows curators Homeira Goldstein and Nick Agid to focus on a few simple ideas at a time. In the case of "Part 1," the simple idea seems to be a strong argument that ceramics is a legitimate sculptural art form. Whether the argument wins on the strength of the pieces included in the show is up to the viewer, but it struck me that some of the pieces wander dangerously into hey-look-what-I-can-do-with-clay territory.

If you know about ceramics, you've certainly heard of Peter Voulkos. His contributions to the show – two untitled ceramic "plates" – are classic bits of understatement by a master who knows how to communicate through the medium. Looking at them, you can practically feel the fire that hardened them. Without touching them, you can sense the texture of the earth from which their clay was drawn. If Salvador Dali worked in clay, he might have conceived something like Sergei Isupov's "Twist," a morph of man, beast, clay and paint. This is a piece that, unlike Voulkos' contribution, screams for notice. The viewer is practically dared to infer that this is not a ceramic piece at all.

Where Isupov and others seem to be making loud challenges to perceptions about the limitations of the medium, Michael Lucero seems to be downright mocking them. His "Lady" looks like a church rummage sale gone amok, combining all the tired forms and glazes into an homage to the medium's disappointment. We see the cast female figure, the boring teapots, the obnoxious bright colors. Raymon Elozua makes this same point with a little more subtlety, stripping what looks like a traditional teapot to its skeleton to the point where there's hardly any clay left.

How one views ceramic sculpture really depends on the extent to which one is willing to embrace the capricious quality of the clay. There are certain things clay can do that are amazing, but there are certainly things that one shouldn't try to do in clay. Artists who try to take clay into areas where it wasn't meant to go run the risk of making some very bad globby things that weigh too much to simply throw away. And, of course, a failed idea looks just as bad in clay as it does in any other medium. It's a credit to "Terra Firma" that work has been included that goes right up to – and in some cases, well past – these lines. For how else could we appreciate Stan Hunter's elegant "Shard Tower," which not only embraces the medium but transcends it beautifully. This is ceramic art at its best.

"Terra Firma: Part 1" runs through March 16 at the Manhattan Beach Creative Arts Center.

(Feb. 17, 2005)

© Copyright 1999-2006 The Aesthetic