John Marris
Material Dialogue

March 5 – 28, 2021
Opening Friday March 5, 2021 6 -10pm

Gallery Hours: weekends 11am – 5pm
weekdays by appointment: gallery@atelierludmila.com

COVID-19 Precautions:
A maximum of 5 guests will be welcome into the gallery at a time
Masks are required

50% of all sales from Material Dialogue will be donated to
YES Shelter for Youth and Families

Online gallery link
Workshops link

Material Dialogue
by John Marris

Working with clay: “I can make this thing, that emerges from my hands, it is a copy of nothing but an expression of my efforts and shows the value of my capacity.”

Material Dialogue is an exhibition exploring our relationship to one of humanities most elemental materials, clay. Working with clay has been part of human history for thousands of years and as Paulus Berensohn notes, we are ‘colloidal bodies, there would be no DNA without clay.’

In this very strange COVID year that has raised questions about our technological and consumer focused world, I found myself looking for an art practice that would be meditative, grounding, and reflect the strong pull I have felt from nature.

Further, I wanted to work on how art making and crafting the objects of our everyday lives could provide a counterpoint to consumerism.

In working with clay, I have found a material that has opened up the conversation about the role of the artist and how art fits into daily living; of how working with clay powerfully draws attention to the idea that in making art we are also making ourselves.

At the heart of this exhibition is a series of pinch-pots, (begging bowls, vessels, containers, cups, shapes and forms), hand-made tiles, and mosaics that come out of a deliberate daily meditative practice of forming and expressing with clay. These objects reflect the natural environment and express a sense of self-making that comes in forming an object. Further, the exhibition reflects this material dialogue in a series of prints made with broken tiles as printing plates.

“It is the pot we are forming, yes. And it is ourselves as well”

John Marris
biography

50% of all sales from Material Dialogue will be donated to the YES Shelter for Youth and Families
gallery link

Workshops: Pinch pot and mosaic making with John Marris
link here