art born out of bare necessities, march 2024
This exhibit showcases art that is born out of the few, the lesser, the bare necessities… Rather than relying on a false abundance of multitudes of materials, agents and devices, these artists focus on reduction, simplicity, back to the basics, the non-processed, and untamed. Concept by Simon Keller.
Featured Artists:
Eric Spencer
Benjamin Vogler
Grace LaForge
Reiko Kita
The Cone9 CoLab:
Simon Keller
Bob Diken
John Marron
Guest Artist:
Frank May
Events:
March 2, 12-6 pm – Opening Reception
- Meet the artists
- Demo (Reiko) 1 – 2 pm
- Free form Tea Ceremony (Simon) 2:30 – 4:00 pm (Recommended donation: $10 for active participants, max. 6) REGISTER
March 8, 6-8 pm – Art Performance
Gravity – a mix of art history, demonstration and performance with Frank May
March 9, 12-6 pm – Workshop for Families & Individuals
- Mixed media miniature sculpture with Simon Keller, 3 – 6 pm, 10 participants max., material is provided, no prior experience needed (Fee: $20.00 per person) REGISTER
March 16, 12-6 pm – Artist(s) present
- The Artist Is In, demo of work/techniques (Ben, Eric, Bob) 1 pm – 4 pm
- Free form Tea Ceremony (Simon) 4 pm – 5:30 pm (Recommended donation: $10 for active participants, max. 6) REGISTER
March 23, 10 am-6 pm – Artist(s) present
- Cone9 CoLab – Exploring the Art of Wabi Sabi, 1 pm – 5 pm, interactive performances and talks:
- Thoughts on wabi sabi 1-1:30 pm
- Sumi-e calligraphy (John) 1:30 – 2:30 pm
- Assemblage (Bob) 2:30 – 3:30 pm
- Clay Dance (Simon) 3:30 – 4:30 pm
ERIC SPENCER – Ceramic Sculptures
“All you need is imagination and creativity”
Eric is a lifelong resident of Flemington. He attended PCDI in Princeton, a school that is providing lifelong services to people with autism. He has always been interested in art, paper cutting , painting and clay. Eric works at Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals in Raritan.
BENJAMIN VOGLER – Ceramic Sculptures
“The form of my sculptures often resembles a wave, but rather than depicting the ocean, my aim is to create a sense of flow. Using a limited number of simple materials, like the semi transparent ash glaze, keeps the main focus on the shape of the sculpture.”
Benjamin Vogler is an artist primarily focused on nonrepresentational ceramic sculpture. He graduated from the Ducret School of Art in 2011. Since 2016, he has been working to further develop his skills in Simon Keller’s ceramics open studio.
GRACE LaFORGE – Ceramics
“To me, to make something that wasn’t there before is always life affirming. Using clay is so basic – it’s under our feet yet look what humankind has done with it! I always try to let the clay literally shine through the surface, even as I become more involved with glazes and techniques. My current challenge is to create 99 drinking cups to be given away to people who never owned a vessel that was made by hand.”
Clay is a most forgiving and therapeutic material. For this reason, I found it ideal to use during my time teaching Art to children as well as adults. Since 1998 I taught at Bonnie Brae School in Liberty Corner, NJ, focusing on using clay with Special Education students. While there, I spearheaded annual pottery-making events, involving students and staff in fundraising efforts such as Soup Bowls for Hunger, Pies and Plates for Puerto Rico and Smile Train Tiles. Around 2012, I began to work alongside Simon Keller from whom I acquired a love of using simple materials such as ash glaze, slips and oxides on reclaimed and wild clay. As a very practical person, most of my works are functional: cups, bowls and lidded jars, and some, not so practical, small animals. In retirement, I have continued to teach and am resurrecting an old ceramics studio at the duCret Center of Art in Plainfield. There I continue to foster a lively clay community, which works on larger outdoor clay collaborations, all in the spirit of exploration and fun.
REIKO KITA – Paintings
“What resides within all of our minds and imagination is often more tangible than reality. I aspire to share my imagination through creating my artwork.”
Reiko studied contemporary craft at Konan Zokei H.S. in Osaka and painting at Osaka University of Arts, where she focused on contemporary art, mixed media, installation and performance art.
As a student in 1997, she presented a piece titled “Concrete Elephants on a Warm Day,” which was accompanied by the statement “On a warm day, you can tell they are elephants when you touch the floor with your cheek.” This work involved cutting large mirrors into puddle shapes, and arranging them on the roofs of gray concrete buildings. The reflection of the sky in the mirrors created the illusion of water, transforming them into dark holes at night. This piece earned Reiko the Department Chair’s Award at Osaka University of Arts.
In 1999, Reiko created an installation featuring birds drawn and cut from paper, covering an entire gallery. The fluttering sound of the birds when the windows were opened was a key element in the piece. The viewers were given individual drawings of birds, each with the message, “And then the bird flew away.”
In 2000, at the opening of the Osaka Shinanobashi Gallery, Reiko wore a floral dress, carrying a large bouquet of flowers. She inserted flowers one-by-one into the hair and clothing of attendees, disrupting the formal atmosphere. She later exhibited photos of the flower scattered scene.
In 2001, at Osaka Tsutenkaku, Reiko displayed canvases enclosed in water-filled plastic bags mounted on the walls. The naturally occurring mold was presented as “My Tears.”
In 2003, she distributed arm and headbands with randomly written Chinese characters to each audience member at a festival in Nagano City, creating a piece called “Random Individuality”. These characters were worn on the body of the festival attendees and illuminated in the black lighting of the event.
Since 2012, Reiko has been teaching art to adults and children. These classes include sculpture and painting and focus on the use of various materials and media.
In 2018, Reiko participated in Gestalt with Simon Keller and Ben Vogler at Mgallery in Washington, New Jersey, showcasing her paintings.
Reiko’s artistic journey encompasses a diverse range of media and themes, reflecting her unique perspective and commitment to pushing artistic boundaries.
ROBERT DIKEN – Mixed Media 2D Work
Robert is a self-taught multi-disciplined artist and owner of Basecamp Studio & Gallery, where he creates 2D and 3D work using various mediums, which include clay, watercolor, acrylic, digital, collage and assemblage. He also serves as Board President of Friends of Metuchen Arts, a not-for-profit whose goal is to raise funds and produce more interesting art and culture events in the Borough, and he is an Advisor to the Metuchen Arts Council.
Artist Statement
Robert began creating as a means of dealing with planning and building landscape design on a practical level in his own garden. The colors, textures, light and forms are right there! Nature and landscape provide him with such an abundant opportunity to capture those elements, in his own version, at that moment. He prefers experimentation across subjects and mediums and his work occurs when concentrating on the process, rather than the result. The “problem solving” along the way is both inevitable and challenging but remains the most rewarding consequence of the work. Robert’s curiosity about learning new ways to express himself has expanded toward abstraction, graffiti and Wabi-Sabi influences. Always trying to keep his mind open to new ideas, but not doing so much thinking that it interferes with the inspiration. At the end Robert tries to make art that is a spontaneous surprise.
SIMON KELLER – Mixed-Media Sculptures
“I work with clay, preferably wild clay, and other remarkable objects I find in nature. The less tamed the clay, the more earth-honest is its materiality. Sculpting, painting, dancing, or turning the raw clay on the kick-wheel, intense heat in the kiln will turn it into stoneware. “Let the clay do the work” was the attitude I learned in Japan. A good way to explore gestalt in its infinite manifestations of shape, form, and structure as it is beyond the mere sum of its parts. My work is a journey of alternate takes created in a calculated chaos to intuit the geological metabolism of deep time.“
Simon, son of ceramic artists, grew up in Germany in the castle of Wolfsburg that was home to a vibrant international artist community. He moved to Japan in 1983. Initially just to “check it out” for a year, but got “stuck in the mud”. His tenure with ceramic artists Daiguji Michiko and Tappo Narui of Endojigama in Mashiko lasted seven years. Returning to the studio in the castle, teaching took an increasingly important place. He returned to Japan to work with master potter Hosui Fukuda of Mizuhogama (Kumamoto) for an additional six years in the 1990s. Here, the intuitive less is more way of working with clay came full circle. Born out of this experience was takumi, the art of making, which he has been teaching at the duCret School of Art for the past 10 years and at Mgalleries since 2016. His inclusive experimental performance art Clay Dance merges stillness and motion, clay, slip, pebbles, and sand paintings. Clay Dance has seen over 30 solo and colab sessions since 2013. Simon is co-founder of Cone9Colab, an artist trio that explores aesthetics and transcendental qualities of wabi-sabi. Adding tea to the mix, in 2020 he began hosting yuzen raku, a free form tea ritual that combines visual, functional and culinary art in a meditation. His ceramic expertise has repeatedly served the new materials review board of New York based Material Connexion. Simon has had solo and group shows in Germany, Japan, the US and the UK. He lives with his wife Christy, a teacher of theater, their son Max, an avid student of theater, and cat Milo in Flemington.
JOHN MARRON – 2D Works
John Marron is a zen artist, poet/writer, Family Systems Life Coach, publisher, social justice community art curator/ activist, self care/ DBT/ meditation teacher, Father, pet lover, spoken word performer, & gardener.
Artist Statement
John Marron is a multimedia artist/performer/teacher whose work embraces Wabi Sabi, Dada, pure play, chance, sumi-e gestural abstraction, poured acrylic, structural improv, photography, collage, and detailed commissions to address LGBTQAI+ issues, climate change, school violence prevention, immigration, food insecurity, housing inequity & mind/body/ spirit/zen practices & imagery.
FRANK MAY (Guest Artist) – Performance Art
“Let Gravity be a tool for making”
“Gravity” by Frank May frankmay.net
Fri 3/8 6pm-8pm
a presentation of art history, demonstration, and performance art.
I have been fascinated with the concept of what I call “Negative Making,” and it has become a central theme of my work. I would define Negative Making as a reactive process. Referring to the Issac Newton quote “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” my work belongs to the “reaction” side of the equation. I let work “happen” to me. I find it fascinating being a conduit for ambient sources. I use this methodology in sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, installation, performance, design, video, sound, writing, poetry, digital, and conceptual art. My foundational media, the lens in which I see all other media, is clay. Clay transformed my entire way of thinking about making art. The quote by Lao Tzu, “Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful” echoes in my thought process. The message I take away from this statement is that the direct isn’t as important as the indirect. The direct forms of these sculptures are generated with an indirect process of letting gravity take over inside and outside the studio.
Frank May (frankmay.net) is an artist, gallerist, and educator. He considers all media his province. Frank is a member of artist groups MOVIS and Co11ective. He is the owner and curator of M Galleries (mgalleries.org), a network of art galleries and studios based in Washington, NJ. Frank has a degree in sculpture from Mason Gross School of the Arts-Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ (masongross.rutgers.edu). He is currently on the faculty of The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, NJ (ccabedminster.org) and CreateIT Labs (createitlabs.org).
