Resident artists Chanda Droske and Mike Kern premiered the functional pottery that they produced during their residency at MSU in the Juanita Harvey Art Gallery on Jan. 17.
Kern and Droske said their first residencies have gone well, but the first-show jitters were evident in their body language until the two Wisconsin artists started answering questions about and selling their pottery.
“It took a bit to get comfortable and situated,” Kern said. “Moving anywhere new will make that happen, but I think we’ve really picked up in productivity in the last two months.”
Droske said seeing all of her and Kern’s work set up in the gallery served as a visual payoff after all the hard work that went into creating the pottery for the show.
“It’s great to see all the work displayed like this because usually you unload it from the kiln and it kind of just goes on a shelf,” Droske said. “Once in a while you send stuff to shows or galleries, but most of the time you don’t get to see it in a setting like this.”
The gallery talk was a special occasion as Catherine Prose, associate art professor and former gallery director, passed the on the gallery director torch to Gary Goldberg, professor of art.
“I don’t have huge sweeping changes,” Goldberg said in the gallery talk. “We’re just going to carry on.”
Jim Sernoe, interim dean of fine arts, also participated in a first for the gallery — he fulfilled his duties as the interim dean of the Fain Fine Arts college.
“I don’t know a thing about art as a mass comm. professor,” Sernoe told the crowd of about 35 people, “but they truly brought something for everyone.”
While Droske and Kern’s work remains similar in its function, Droske’s pieces exhibit softer characteristics inspired by nature while Kern’s take a fundamentally different approach to aesthetic inspiration.
“He has a real attraction to designs,” Droske said of Kern. “Originally I was looking at patterns in nature, specifically butterfly wings or floral type patterns. Now the designs are abstracted so I guess that’s where it comes from.”
Kern said his pieces find their inspiration in mathematics and geometry, a diametrical approach to Droske’s nature-inspired work.
“This work is kind of loosely based off graphs as a starting point for the design to come about,” Kern said. “I’ve always had an interest in mathematics because my work is just geometry really. I’m not trying to make graphs, I’m just using that as a starting point.”
Droske said her and Kern take different approaches to design, but the time they spend together in the studio allows the artists to discuss the techniques used in their work.
“We don’t collaborate but we’re pretty much in the studio every day talking about our work and firing the wood kiln together,” Droske said.