Inspired by the Ordinary: Contemporary Ceramicist Virginia Scotchie comes to TU

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Contemporary ceramic artist Virginia Scotchie melds visual intrigue with personal memory in her most recent works. The artist focuses on personal objects — an old pipe of her father’s, her children’s toys, her mother’s kitchen funnel — that she rends into abstract objets d’art.

Scotchie will present a workshop from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Jan. 31, and a slide lecture at 4:00 p.m., Feb. 1, both in Phillips Hall on The University of Tulsa campus. The lecture will be followed by a reception in the Alexandre Hogue Gallery, also in Phillips Hall, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The exhibit will be displayed through March 2, 2007.

The workshop, lecture, reception and exhibition are free and open to the public. Her visit is under the auspices of the J. Donald Feagin Distinguished Visiting Artists series at TU.

Scotchie, assistant department chair and professor of art at the University of South Carolina, notes: “The worn, crusty surfaces on many of the pieces are created to give a sense of how time acts to make and unmake a form. I so not wish for this work to be named or lableled, rather it is my intention that through the borrowing and reformation of objects, the work might trigger one to look closer and find beauty and intrigue in the humble, ordinary and familiar objects that surround us.”

For more information, please contact the TU School of Art, (918) 631-2739.