Clay Glass Wood Metal Fiber
Selections from The Contemporary Museum's Collection
on view October 29-January 2, 2005

This exhibition presents for the first time a large overview of The Contemporary Museum's collection of contemporary works in clay, glass, wood, metal and fiber. While areas of the museum's holdings, such as ceramics/ceramic sculpture and turned wood, have been the subjects of exhibitions in recent years, this exhibition offers a substantial sampling of works made in all five materials or media, including many recent acquisitions and works which have not been shown recently or previously.

The Contemporary Museum's collection began with a small number of gifts at the time the museum opened in 1988, among them an early crater-glazed earthenware bowl by the famous European immigrant Los Angeles artists Gertrud and Otto Natzler, which will be on view again. Today, sixteen years later, the museum has a very distinguished collection of contemporary ceramics and ceramic sculptures, including five additional Natzler ceramics, as well as a long list of works by major names in the field (Beatrice Wood, Peter Voulkos, Toshiko Takaezu, Robert Turner, Richard Devore, Stephen DeStaebler, Robert Arneson, to name only a few). Among the works which are being shown for the first time at the museum is a mysterious and powerful earthenware sculpture "Monkey with Leg Out" by American artist Daisy Youngblood, who was a recipient in 2003 of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

Many of the works in the exhibition are based on the vessel form or tradition and were acquired with funds given by Sibyl N. Heide. Over a period of nearly ten years, Mrs. Heide's gifts enabled the museum to assemble an outstanding representation of contemporary vessels in a wide range of materials, sometimes unusual ones like Australian artists Tanija and Graham Carr's monumental bowl form of tooled leather or American artist Susan Colquitt's spiky container "Protection I" made of coiled zippers and the top to an aerosol can. Mrs. Heide's funds also helped the museum start collecting in the field of turned wood, and the museum's activity in this area attracted further gifts, among them a significant donation in 1999 of 43 works from Los Angeles collectors Dr. Irving and Mari Lipton. Selections from the Lipton gift will be on view, as well as an extraordinary group of early 1970s turned wood pieces by Bob Stocksdale, an American master in this field, which recently came to the museum from three donors. Today, The Contemporary Museum has one of the finest collections of turned wood objects in American museums. Among the highlights on view will be a group of works by some of the best known Hawaii wood artists-- Derek Bencomo, Robert Hamada, Ron Kent, Michael Lee, and Jack Straka.

Other highlights of the exhibition include American artist Gyongy Laky's unusual fiber bowl form "Desert Edge" made of cut eucalyptus twigs assembled with deck or drywall screws; and two works by prominent Chicago-based fiber artists, Barbara Cooper's wall sculpture "Sonus" made of layered and entwined strips of cherry wood veneer and which seems to levitate in space, and Joan Livingstone's whimsical "Breathing Lessons" in which eight epoxy resin-soaked felt "pods" with narrow mouths or spouts seem to float across the wall, all the while interacting or conversing; and Northwest artist Dale Chihuly's brilliantly colored, ornate "Venetian" glass form, which is a promised gift of Cade and Waileia Roster from the collection of Laila Twigg-Smith.

Clay Glass Wood Metal Fiber celebrates the exceptional creativity and skill of so many artists who have made beautiful works out of simple, natural materials, and it pays tribute to the many donors of works of art and funds for acquisitions who have made it possible for The Contemporary Museum to assemble a remarkable collection which includes works by Lenore Tawney, Robert Sperry, Jay Musler, Helen Shirk, Anthony Bryant, Kiff Slemmons, Rudolf Staffel, Nancy Carman, Jonathan Bonner, Peter Chang, Joseph Seigenthaler, and Ron Fleming, who are also among the artists whose works are on view.

Please note: So that more works can be exhibited, the works in many of the cases in the exhibition will be changed half way through. The first rotation of works ends November 28, and the second rotation goes on view beginning November 30.