Storytellers: Path to the Known

We are pleased to present this exhibition of Melanie Ferguson’s group of ceramic sculptures called Storytellers: Path to the Known.

Ferguson creates artworks that feel like shrine objects for natural altars, completely contemporary pieces found centuries later tucked behind waterfalls or the fissures in caves and tide pools. The sophistication has metaphysical finessing; they seem covered in spontaneous asemic writing, a quality immediately rendering them comfortable in the skins of their differentness. It is clay wearing the tattoos of timelessness.

Even the less ornate pieces (all called Storytellers) have an animist presence full of deep sky and charged sea-foam, the occult presence of ravens, owls, and crows. There is also obsessiveness to her work in general that is generous and universal rather than solipsistic. We don’t have to understand the words to absorb the language and intentions of these technically immaculate sculptures. We absorb it and understand much of it non-verbally. This is exactly what Melanie Ferguson wants, that we use the subliminal references on the surfaces of these pieces to find familiar gathering points of human consciousness. To this effect she says: To summarize these works, there is a land use planning term, wayfinding, that refers to creating community signs - icons, logos, maps - that lead to a community gathering place.

Melanie Ferguson is coming into her own recognition as a great American ceramist. We feel privileged to be able to showcase this important series of work.