Nothing Definite But Definitely Something, wood-fired stoneware with slip •
In the 2019 fall semester, SMU Division of Art professors Barnaby Fitzgerald (painting) and Brian Molanphy (ceramics) brought their separate courses together for a collaboration to combine painting and ceramics in bas-relief. Form Follows Color focuses on the pedagogical thinking behind the task of making an image with clay, firing it into a bisque and painting it. “Eschewing the popular mainstream discontinuity of two- & three-dimensions,” Molanphy says, “bas-relief & ceramics in general are the happy confluence of dimensions. To cut & to build clay in order to draw reveals a profound sense of line, tone, volume, shape, & color. Ceramics has never forsaken the necessity of decoration, whether it is to put drawings into relief in pots & tiles or whether it is to enrobe volumes with pictures.” The works exhibited in Form Follows Color are a mix of bas-relief pieces as well as paintings, studies, tests and experiments from B.F.A and M.F.A. students, teaching assistants and professors who participated in both classes.
Sofía Bastidas curated the exhibition.
2020, Pollock Gallery, SMU Meadows Division of Art, Dallas, TX