‘Photographs as Fossils:’ Experimental Photography on Clay at Gallery 224 | Arts

On March 13, the Harvard Ceramics Program hosted a reception for its ongoing “Experimental Photography on Clay” exhibit in Gallery 224, this system’s public exhibition house. The exhibit, curated by interdisciplinary artist Anne Eder, is the outpouring of a course she has taught on the Ceramics Program since 2021.

Artists, ceramics college students, and guests alike admired the assorted methods Eder and her college students printed images onto clay. A wall close to the doorway displayed Eder’s proof of idea tiles, whose colours ranged from ultramarine to electrical fuschia to mottled beige. The array of tiles, printed with portraits, animals, and flowers, appeared virtually Warhol-esque.

Further into the gallery had been large-scale compositions printed with images of forestscapes and sidewalks, amongst many others. Most of those works are the product of Eder’s college students. Some are formed like plates, others like vases, and one like a pair of fingers. Their colours are simply as vibrant as Eder’s tiles.

Eder, carrying a foster Chihuahua in a bag at her aspect, defined what impressed this undertaking in remarks delivered on the reception.

“I do large organic sculptures that are meant to decompose. What I wanted to do was build an infrastructure that was ceramic and printed on that would then emerge after the other sculpture goes back to the Earth,” Eder mentioned.

The featured artists drew on many sources of inspiration for his or her work. Heather Gardner, one among Eder’s college students with art work on show, was impressed by household historical past.

“The images that I used for this are 1954 negatives from my family when they were in New York. I just thought that they resonated with preserving history in that medium,” Gardner mentioned.

Students experimented with a wide range of photographic strategies. Gardner centered on SolarFast and needs to discover gum bichromate subsequent. Cyanotype, a printing course of which produces photos in deep Prussian blue, was one other common course of.

Eder’s personal work is impressed by mythology and nature. One such work, “Fairytale,” mixed platinum-palladium printing on porcelain with willow branches and bones.

The use of combined media all through the exhibit resonated with Olivia Yao, a ceramicist and photographer from Los Angeles who discovered concerning the exhibit on social media.

“Since the medium of photography and clay is already mixed, bringing in other materials, found materials — there’s some steelwork by Corrine Planche — I think that’s really appreciating what this is,” Yao mentioned.

For Eder and her college students, the reception was a celebration of their shared studying expertise.

“There are many easier ways to get images onto clay than what we’re doing,” Eder mentioned. “But the goal for me, right from the beginning, was to do something that was more integrated into the clay. I really wanted something that would be integrated into the clay body and could be fired with the clay in the kiln.”

It took Eder 10 years to get so far. The printing strategies had been topic to fixed experimentation. Students examined which printing strategies switch to clay and keep after firing. Some developed their very own processes.

“Right now, we’ve been doing a very chemistry-heavy semester of working with salted silver prints and then substituting cobalt,” she mentioned.

Eder’s college students loved this studying course of. Furthermore, the course is open to the general public and held by way of Zoom, permitting artists from everywhere in the world to contribute their data.

“I started taking her class during COVID and have continued to take it,” Gardner mentioned. “It’s really helped me in my practice as an artist.”

Above all, Eder emphasised the intrinsic worth of images.

“[Photographs] are basically first objects to me. A photograph is an object you can stick in your pocket, that you can stick on the refrigerator if you want to, or you can tear up after a breakup,” Eder mentioned. “The power of physical images is something we’re still very attached to, even with digital screen use.”

Yao mirrored Eder’s ideas.

“I think photography is an art form, it’s an art medium,” Yao mentioned. “Combining it with sculptural work is just emphasizing the art form that is photography.”

The “Experimental Photography on Clay” exhibit at Gallery 224 is open to the general public till April 24.