PHIL SIMS  / TEA BOWLS AND WATERCOLORS

Dec 11 - Jan 11, 2010

 Quiet. As in any minimalist exhibition, the works themselves seem to call for quiet. A small white ceramic object, dimpled by the mark of fingers, dappled with glaze. Light hits rust red that deepens almost to black purple. A smooth glazing trails off to a matte, pock-marked gray. The eye follows the circle, glides down the cylinder, sees the way colors darken inside the shadowed interior of a bowl.

Phil Sims, an artist well known for his work as painter in the Radical and Concrete traditions, brings to this exhibition a body of work which distills the distinctions between function and aesthetic, material and form, color and light, intention and chance, elemental and transcendent. With Tea Bowls Sims brings together a collection of his high-fired, wood-fired ceramic sculptures. These pieces are, indeed, shaped clay tea bowls in the Japanese tradition -- larger than a cup, smaller than a soup bowl, they are meant to be held snugly between two hands. This link to the roots of this ceramic tradition are born out in that Sims uses a traditional Anagama (an ancient type of Japanese wood-fired kiln) to make his pieces.

The process by which these pieces are made adds a level of complexity to their seeming quiet, for they are born out of intense physical effort and a raging inferno. Sims chooses unrefined clays filled with gravel, sand, and grit, bordering on impossible to throw on a wheel. He adds to the physical difficulty of his art-making process by limiting himself to creating their basic form in three moves. Rough, textural clay is molded into these fine bowl forms by the deft movement of a highly skilled hand.

The firing process is even more strenuous. The wood-burning kiln is fired to above 2200 degrees Fahrenheit and in the case of Sims' work, which he likes to fire at higher-than-normal temperatures, above 2400 degrees. At these temperatures the blaze inside the kiln melts the wood ash, transforming it into a natural glaze that attaches to the bowls in unique, random, and surprising ways. The whole process takes 5-6 days of 24 hour care, as wood must be added every ten minutes. In the end an artist is lucky to have 10% of his pieces survive the transformation from clay to ceramic. But these pieces will be well worth the effort. As Sims says, "The kiln itself is like a living breathing beast, eating wood, expelling smoke and flame, and carrying in its belly the treasure you are so expectant about. Each kiln is fired with such hope and expectation and a single gem is worth the effort, for in the flame and ash there exists such possibility that even with all the disappointment, and believe me there is much disappointment, you are eager to try again."

These "gems" from out of the fire are elegant, quiet, tea bowls, redolent not only with their origins in the fire but with the echoes of a centuries-old cultural tradition of use in the highly aesthetic Japanese Tea Ceremony. However, Sims' pieces are not created and displayed as functional objects. Taking the Concrete tradition of art to its extension, Sims dislocates and recontextualizes the tea bowls as objects of art, creating a fissure of expectation in the viewer that changes something as humble as a tea bowl into a work of art, changing the way the viewer will see both the ceramic piece before her, and the functional objects of everyday life.

And this state of dislocation is exactly where the viewer is able to see. Preconceptions gone, there is an opportunity for the viewer to really look at these pieces and see them clearly. The rich, material forms of the clay: rippled, smooth, rough, pock-marked. The interplay of surface, light, and color: the transparent glazes, some quite glossy and others matte, the deep earthy tones of the reds, blues, grays, browns. Here in this intimate relationship between viewer and object is the quintessential act of art. The place where contradictions can come together.

Perhaps, at its best, all art brings together the strands of disparate webs of thought and activity into one harmonious, still point of expression. Contradictions are brought into accord, elements are balanced. Sims' tea bowls succeed in just this way: The pocked and bubbled, the twisted and strained, rough and smooth, the fluid and luminous, smooth and radiant are able to reside together, caught in time by the work of a pair of hands.

Untitled, 2009 Watercolor on paper
10 x 9 inches   PS0070