By Darla Graff Thompson

Photos by Tomás Wolff and individual artists.

The New Mexico Potters and Clay Artists (NMPCA) annual Celebration of Clay exhibit is being held at the Light Art Space Gallery in downtown Silver City, New Mexico. The show will run from 04 to 27 April 2025. The gallery, owned and operated by Karen Hymer, is a bright open space, large enough to also house two other exhibits that are well worth viewing. The neighborhood is filled with old historic buildings, now hotels, museums, galleries, shops, theaters and restaurants--- a delightful place to stay and explore.

Photo by Tomás Wolff. 

The NMPCA organization has recently celebrated its 50-year anniversary. The group’s annual exhibit answers the question--- “What would happen if you gave a chunk of clay to 50 or so talented and creative clay artists living all across New Mexico?” The answer? A fantastically diverse set of ceramic creations, both functional and sculptural, each unique and captivating and none aspiring to be like any other. For me, that is the highlight of this show--- enjoying the elements of each piece as a projection of each individual artist, but viewing them side-by-side as a collective, witnessing the power and span of New Mexican artists.

Karen Hymer, Susan Mach, Kathleen - at the opening. Photo by Tomás Wolff. 

This year’s theme for the exhibit is “Of Mind and Matter,” and several pieces struck me as being interesting and thoughtful contributions that really merge the mental and material world. Susan Mach’s beautifully-decorated bowl, titled “Burmester’s Bowl,” honors the German mathematician and inventor of French-curve tools used in architecture and design; the swirls of green lines caught my eye from afar and were only more exquisite to examine up close. Susan is from Silver City. Jasper Eyrich-Bingham, also from Silver City, won one of the group awards with his “Veiled Tiger's Eye,” which is an amazingly-engineered pot-inside-a-pot, fused together with glaze--- the outer pot largely perforated to reveal the inner tiger-striped pot, and the two pots so contrasting in color, meticulously crafted and designed. Andrea Pichaida, Santa Fe, presented “Despertar,” a large immaculately-formed seed-pod structure with a matted green hull that houses an emerging cluster of brilliant yellow and orange shoots. Organic by design and entirely inspired by nature, but at the same time exaggerated and other-worldly, Andrea’s entry won the group’s award for best color and glazing.

          

"Burmester's Bowl" by Susan Mach, photo by artist; "Veiled Tiger's Eye" by Jasper Eyrich-Bingham, photo by artist; "Despertar" by Andrea Pichaida, photo by artist.

Several wall-hanging pieces impressed me with their glazed landscapes, all captivating with lots to visually explore. Judy-Nelson-Moore of Santa Fe presents “Study in Clay, Color and Other Matter,” a brilliantly glazed and textured expanse of textures (and clay cloth?) and crystals and topography, refreshingly new and delightful to view up close as well as from the across the room. “In the Beginning, God Created...” is a large plate with an intriguing and teasing design that hints of planets being born and thriving in a sea of extraterrestrial matter; it is the creation of Claude W. Smith III, of Silver City, one of the show's three jurors. John Weber of Corrales has crafted a large and intriguing slab with two- and three-dimensional elements, real and abstract components, hinting at a colorful story of water where he says he purposefully “allows for personal interpretation” by the viewer. And Lin Johnson, Albuquerque, displays her “Primary Subjects (Woogie Boogie),” a wall assembly of a dozen or so playful and impeccably-crafted abstract shapes, lines straight and curved, that are immaculately created and captivating in color and design. One more in this category, out of Albuquerque, I liked Cirrelda Snider-Bryan’s mosaic of tile pieces assembled to portray a barnyard of chickens in “The Pine the Hens Chose.” A fun assembly of fragmented colors and pieces.

    

"Study in Clay, Color, and Other Materials" by Judy Nelson-Moore; "In the Beginning, God Created..." by Claude W. Smith III; "Abstract for Water" by John Weber; "Primary Subjects (Woogie Boogie)" by Lin Johnson; "The Pine the Hens Chose" by Cirrelda Snider-Bryan. All photos by the artists. 

Center piece: "Claw" by Sara D'Alessandro.  Photo by Tomás Wolff. 

Pondering "pronghorn" by Brian Pottorff. Photo by Tomás Wolff. 

 

“light, dark, blood #1” by Robert King; “Aspidiscus Cristatus” by Jo Clay. Photos by the artists. 

Some other exhibit entries struck me as singular and fascinating. Robert King of Galisteo created an elongated structure he called “light, dark, blood #1” that to me looked like an ancient archeological find, distantly bone-like, with bubbled and boiled blood puddled on the upper surface; it was captivating in that it looked biological but unidentifiable, abstract yet reminiscent of something--- I even thought of a strange mushroom with a small hole for emitting spores. I found it intriguing. Brian Pottorff created “pronghorn,” a somewhat-primitive wall-hanging design of the animal’s head, made from wild clay he dug up near his hometown of Deming. In his description of the piece, he tells about the struggle of his creative desire working against a slightly-imperfect and unfriendly clay body, and the piece, stark in a way, feels more meaningful to know of its origins. With a group of several others that included children, I admired “Claw” by Sara D’Alessandro of Cuba. We talked about it and loved it for its largeness and asymmetry of shape (like a twisted horn or as the title suggests, a twisted tusk or claw) and its complex surface of earth-tone colors and textures with holes containing embedded but free- moving beads that begged to be touched and probed with fingertips (only some of us resisted the urge). Jo Clay of El Paso (one of the handful of out-of-state NMPCA members), created a piece entitled “Aspidiscus Cristatus,” a very large disk with a full-world display of underwater coral reef structures and textures with copper-wire plant-life. I later learned that sections of the outer walls were removable for a peek of more detail within, and I wished I could’ve explored all aspects of it. Lastly, I enjoyed hearing the details from Michael Thornton, Albuquerque, about his “Cat’s Eye Vessel” that was glazed using a technique called “naked raku,” where glaze is applied to the piece over the top of kiln wash (a glaze resist). The glaze fuses and cracks during the raku process (as it is removed from the still-heated kiln to an ambient reducing environment) but the glaze won’t actually stick to the pot, allowing diffuse lines of black combustion products to deposit on the bare white clay body. It was a beautiful piece, identifiably raku, but undeniably different. I enjoyed learning about it.

"Cat's Eye Vessel" on the right, with artist Michael Thornton. Photo by Tomás Wolff. 

Bottom line, great exhibit. Very enjoyable part of a wonderful visit to Silver City. The reception was very well attended, even crowded. My husband and I live in Los Alamos where I have been an active member of NMPCA for 15 years. We enjoyed the motivation to spend a few days in a corner of New Mexico that is somewhat off the beaten path, surrounded by seemingly-endless mountains and an astoundingly-vast wilderness with a fascinating history and culture and welcoming group of people.

Darla Graff Thompson, the author, with her piece in the show, "shock and awe." Photo by Tomás Wolff.