Art and Style, Artists and Makers / 28 Jul 2020

Ceramicist Warner Walcott

Warner Walcott’s vessels, bowls, platters, and lamps are the ceramic equivalent of the little black dress: sophisticated, essential, and timeless. Walcott, who creates under the moniker Magnolia Ceramics as a nod to his Mississippi roots, was creative from an early age, but it took him a while to make a career of art. He started out as a premed student at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University before detouring into event production in the fields of fashion and publishing. In 2008, after ten years representing photographers through his own Los Angeles-based agency, Walcott had an epiphany: “I had spent years helping others realize their creative dreams,” he recalls. “If I didn’t take care of my own creative needs, that ship was going to sail.” Magnolia Ceramics was born in L.A., but two years ago Walcott relocated to Connecticut. These days, he travels between two studios, one in the artsy SoCal town of Ojai, just north of L.A., and the other in Bethel, Connecticut. The self-taught craftsman (he’s a big believer in author Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule) admits he could have embraced a different art form; he took classes in both drawing and painting at Vanderbilt, and only briefly dabbled in ceramics. “But [in 2008], ceramics was what I needed. I know it sounds dramatic,” he concedes, “but ceramics was life-changing. It was therapeutic and brought me clarity. I felt really good for the first time in a long time.” Walcott’s work hints at Danish, English, and Japanese design. Each piece is simple and unadorned with clean, strong lines and a palette heavy on soft neutrals and vibrant blues and greens. The craftsman, who will quickly tell you that he doesn’t take a fine-art approach, describes his ceramics as the result of a cumulation of life experiences. Pieces reflect cities inhabited, places traveled, careers…

Read More

Art and Style, Artists and Makers / 14 Jul 2020

Painter Matthew Chamberlain

Portland painter Matthew Chamberlain layers found objects, paint, and graphite to create works that look like they’ve been around a while.

Art and Style, Artists and Makers / 01 Jun 2020

Sarah Lutz: A Deep Dive

Sarah Lutz has been painting a shape she calls a “morula” (a mass of cells that occurs in the early development of an embryo) for years. It first appeared in her work when she conceived her daughter in the late 1990s—an outgrowth, she says, of poring over pregnancy books. The pregnancy went smoothly, but with her first post-partum exhibition came a career bump. Lutz, who earned a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from American University, was called out by gallery-goers for unknowingly borrowing forms from artist Terry Winters, who had created a Morula series in the early 1980s. She describes it as an “art world kick in the ass,” as well as a learning experience, saying, “It was a lesson in knowing your art history.” Eventually, Lutz made peace with it. “These biomorphic shapes came from my immersion in pregnancy,” she says. “I literally carried these cells.” Those early morulae—solitary forms sitting on a shelf that she likens to self-portraits or still lifes—have morphed from simple reproductive symbols into fantastical underwater imagery. She refers to the shapes as versatile “characters” that take on different functions and personalities. “They can be very physical, sitting down to ground a painting, or more ethereal, as wispy floaty things,” she says. Lutz credits her time in Truro, where she has spent every summer painting since age sixteen, as hugely influential. Although her studio windows look to grassy dunes and blue skies, she’s often perched on her deck staring at Cape Cod Bay, thinking about the way organisms accumulate and separate, and how creatures exist beneath the water and sand. Her ruminations inevitably infiltrate her paintings. “There are things that exist under the sea that you couldn’t make up in your wildest dreams,” she says. Pointing to a spare top portion of a…

Read More