Bill Kremer
Out Side from Within | Ceramic Sculpture by Bill Kremer with Platters Painted by Doug Kinsey
September 17 – December 4, 2011 South Bend Museum of Art
Artist Reception | Friday, October 7, 2011 | 5:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Bill Kremer will speak about his work at 6:15 p.m.
Bill Kremer's artistic activity is ceramic art, representing both ceramic sculpture and traditional pottery. He is known for his innovations using large-scale molds as a means to construct sculptural vessel forms. The gestural vessels made from this process are salt fired in a 30' wood firing kiln located at his home studio in Cassopolis, Michigan.
Artist and colleague Doug Kinsey collaborated with Kremer in the creation of ceramic platters that Kinsey painted before the firing process.
Kremer is the Chair of the Ceramics department at the University of Notre Dame. His work has been shown in more than 150 exhibitions and he has conducted more than thirty workshops and lectures. He is currently represented by the Brunner Gallery, Covington, LA and the Julius Friedman Gallery, Louisville, KY.
Artist's Statement:
My current work in ceramic art can be described as sculptural painted vessels. Plastic clay is the motivating stimulus, allowing shapes to be freely formed and altered. Fluid colored slips, thick paste, and ridged slabs offer a wide spectrum of surface and form. This focus is supported by more than thirty years of experience exploring non-objective mixed media sculpture and traditional pottery, with both directions merging into a large ceramic sculptural vessel format.
The sculptural vessel functions as a vehicle conducive for painting and applied surface, rather than for functional containment. The vessel forms are derived from drawings transposed into castings, a process whereby form defines line and dimensional planar surfaces. Linear gestural brush strokes and a color ground of slip are painted onto the vessel forms using a wet-on-wet / push-pull method. The finished vessels are fired in a large anagama wood firing kiln, which gives a dimensional directional texture and color created by the wood fire flame.
The finished work evokes a feeling of movement and implied compositional change. A harmonic contrast is realized through the juxtaposition between the structural form and the linear painted brush marks. For me, the best work evokes an emotional vitality and reveals new possibilities for greater experience. - Bill Kremer, 2011