It’s easy to overlook the obvious, I don’t know why, but
there it is. In building a career,
relationships are key. Relationships are also easy to overlook. We get our heads buried in the oblivion of
our own minds and the windows to the people around us seem to disappear. Sunday, January 15 in Middelfart, Denmark at
the Grimmerhus Museum the indomitable Nina Hole celebrated 70 years of life. She didn’t do it with a retrospective she did
it with an invitational, "Friends & Firemates". It was a
retrospective of fire and relationships.
Nina still burns as bright as ever and there were over 100 artists
basking in her glow.
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| Nina Hole |
Ceramic circles are small and vast. The evidence was manifested in matchbox size
artworks sheltered in vitrines in a museum built from one woman’s
imagination. At the end of the
exhibition space was work from the artists who gathered in 1990 to participate
in a symposium and create their works of clay.
Together they generated objects, which became proof of the need to
create the space to house them. Together
the works set a series of actions in motion.
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| Richard Notkin |
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| Helle Hove |
Imagination, Effort and Collective Energy.
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| Bob Shay, 1990 |
These are the underpinnings of any successful venture
whatever the field. It’s important to
remind ourselves of the recipe from time to time. Then we can pull ourselves
out of our own minds and get together with our tribe to make magic.
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| Grimmerhus, Museum of International Ceramic Art, Middelfart, Denmark |
Red Lodge Clay Center exists because of a similar spirit. David Hiltner didn’t see a strong reason to
continue on the tried and true path of academia. He asked, “What’s next for the young artists
academia cranks out?” He wanted to make
a place where they would have a little more time to develop. And while he had resources available, making
the shift seem less risky perhaps; it still takes courage to jump the
track.
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| Zion National Park |
My favorite recent story of creative courage and connectivity to family, friends and place though, lies in
Toquerville, Utah on the side of the road in a little bungalow filled with an
amazing family. Russell and Lori Wrankle
decided to make a change in their lives ten years ago. They loved the landscape of Utah--so there
they went. They worked multiple odd jobs
and eked out a living on wages below poverty level. They went into their new community and began
building relationships. They repurposed
their home into a gallery space and the barn out back became a studio for
Russell. The constant flow of traffic to
Zion National Park provided, if not ready clientele, an abundant audience in
their living room/showroom. The yard is
filled with pecans, figs and pomegranates. The air teems with potential.
In the early portion of their adventure the main income from
ceramic sales was in the form of tile work.
Many homes are adorned with Russell’s handiwork and it afforded him the
opportunity to explore an ever-growing query of the human condition and journey
in sculptural objects fraught with the burden.
I really like to think of Russell as a modern day Aesop as animals are
his main vehicle.
But let’s get back to courage for a moment, Russell doesn’t
do all of this alone. His lovely partner
Lori is like a character out of Will Cather’s “O Pioneer”. She is forthright if she is anything and she
is not only a willing participant in their endeavor, she has the gift of sight
with enough sensibility to keep things grounded.
But not too much.
As the Wrankles built their life in Toquerville, Lori gave
birth to their three children and
countless others as a mid-wife. While
the living room was a gallery, the back office was a mid-wifery consulting room. Lori too is invested and tied to the struggle
of life. She is an educator and a
facilitator and a fierce protector. Eventually her path as a mother and a creative
entity led her into the classroom where she volunteered as an art teacher in an
elementary school without an art program.
She performed this role, without pay, for several years because she
believed it was important. Eventually
she found and applied for a grant, which now covers her salary and she has her
own classroom too. Perhaps we are all
too familiar with readymade art, spoon fed to children where skies must blue
and grass must be green and pre-drawn cutouts only to serve as periods of rest
from actual learning rather than reinforcing the lessons of history, biology,
chemistry, math, etc. Perhaps you did
not realize this was the state of much art in the public school system. Of course there are programs lucky enough to
have teachers with a vision and an administration to support them, but it is
far from the norm. Lori takes the work
from her classroom and fills the halls of the school. She engages the entire student body in
projects like a the mural of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painted at monumental
scale in the multi-purpose room.
Everyday the entire school sees the magic and who knows how many people
she quietly inspires with her diligence and commitment.
It is this kind of pioneering courage that fills the Wrankle
household. The creative process is a way
of life for them. In the front door to a
room with rounded corners and a personal collection of art had by trade and
acquisition a visitor is welcomed into a warm living space where Russell’s
works sit next to objects his children have created. The children’s honest and
unconscious efforts are also available in the gallery. From the front room a visitor walks into a
bright yellow kitchen where meals of love and local products are prepared for
each other and a surprising array of visiting artists. Maybe one of the nicest things is that
Russell remains consistently honored when prestigious artists grace his
door. He isn’t yet overwhelmed by his
own prestige and hopefully he will retain that grace as his work finds more
venues. Out of the kitchen, the visitor
walks down a narrow flight of stairs and out the back door to a patio where,
after dinner, a musical offering will be provided to guests by the Wrankle’s
oldest child on a violin that was obtained in a trade for a tortured yellow
hare held against the wall by three wooden stakes. Even though the odds were not in his favor,
the hare had not given up. Now that the
visitor is full of hospitality and surrounded by the local community, let us cross
the back yard to Russell’s studio.
The façade shines with corrugated tin accented by red
framing, inside the remnant barn shows a history and the future of one
maker’s vision. A hammerhead shark is
twisted in a leather hard battle. A
giant hare sits upright on a ledge with newly finished toenails. A goat brain is squeezed between the pinchers
of a giant disembodied crab claw. On
the wall are pictures of these animals and drawings by the children, a map and
images of finished works. A small wood
stove sits on the edge of the room where it offers warmth on cold desert nights
for solo contemplation or feeding
essential fuel to engaging conversations between colleagues and friends. It is in this safe haven, surrounded by an
overwhelming landscape and a protective clan that Russell can delve into the
darker parts of the human struggle, of his struggle and your struggle and mine. Here he finds permission to fragment animals
and create visual allegories that resonate.
In the past year Russell explored the collision between
creatures in the form of a rabbit with crab claws, inspired by Kafka and
perhaps the impotence of the human condition.
The work lived in Red Lodge for many months. It was one of those works that made people
stop in their tracks.
The blessing and the curse of Red Lodge Clay Center Gallery
is the location. The town is not a mecca
for art (not yet anyway) but it is a major thoroughfare to Yellowstone National
Park. Tourists from across the nation,
and sometimes the world, cross our threshold in great numbers during the summer
months. They may not purchase in great
quantities, but they have a chance to peek into a world they would not
consciously choose to visit. We trap
them!
T-shirt shop, T-shirt shop, Pizza Place, Ski Shop, Novelty
Shop, T-Shirt Shop, Ice Cream Parlor and then, BAM!
They walk into an amazing collection of contemporary
ceramics. Sometimes they back out
certain they cannot afford anything or certain their children will break the
most expensive thing. More often than
not though, they walk in and are amazed.
They see a wild variety of cups and bowls, vases and plates and then
they see the Kafka Hare, in a satiny yellow gold lying on his back with his
hindquarters transformed into orange-red crab claws. The hare is distraught and the formal
elements are expertly handled so as not to detract from the predicament. Russell’s palette is always tight, limited to
play a supporting role and give the viewer a visceral connection to the
content. Visceral it is. I’ve witnessed it time and again with his
works. Much like their maker, and true
for anyone daring to put something of themselves out into the world naked and
unprotected, Russell’s creatures do not win everyone over, but they do make
everyone stop. At the end of the day
winning over is not the point, but the varied responses affirm that art is a
lot like tofu in that it takes on whatever properties one brings to the bowl.
Most importantly, Russell’s works have the ability to connect with people. He invites us to risk looking inside ourselves. In order to
pull of a feat of suggested instrospection, a maker has to model the behavior first. Russell does, time and again. His work,
like his life, is a model of creative courage.
His career is not completely at the opposite end of the spectrum from
Nina Hole, but he is really still at the beginning of making connections and
cementing relationships. He shares his
growing experience with his students and friends. He is aggressively pro-active in his
promotions, but the aggressiveness is coddled by humility and grace. What other tales will he unearth in
Toquerville?
Personally, I am excited to see what comes. Learning more and
more of Russell’s history allows me to draw my romantic conclusions and suppose
his stories infuse the work. I am lured in deeper with each tiny evolution of
form and figure. Greedily, I want to
push the fast forward button and amp up the courage to reveal journeys that are
familiar on a global level. How raw can the tension and struggle and fight get
in his renderings? But, better to wait and watch it unfold, retaining an air of
mystery so I can combine my own story with his fables and legends. What will
the network of his lifetime reveal? Who
can tell, but I enjoy contemplating it and I am grateful to have had the
opportunity to sit in the Wrankle home and have my proverbial cup filled. It was an even greater honor to sit in the
quiet of Russell’s creative space alone and marvel at the future tales in the
making.
Russell will be traveling to St. Louis, Missouri shortly for
three workshops coinciding with the exhibit, "Untamed" up at Craft Alliance through February 26. The first workshop will be at Craft Alliance (January 21-22), the other two will be hosted by St. Louis Community College at Meramec (January 23-24, contact Jim Ibur) and Forest Park (January 25-26, contact Matthew Isaacson at 314-644-9352). If you're in the area, get out to meet Russell. Expand your own network! Be courageous!
