Reading 1

In "Shards: Garth Clark on Ceramic Art", Clark borrows some of Claude Levi Strauss’ ideas from The Savage Mind in describing Viola Frey as a “bricoleur”, or someone who “picks up odds and ends pertinent to his time… and makes unique projects out of unknown things.” Clark talks about a “bricoleur” as having a type of creativity that is a direct opposite to a scientific or engineering creativity; he quotes Strauss’ idea that “scientists create events (change the world) by means of structures and the “bricoleur” creates structures by means of events”. With this as his reasoning, Clark is able to divide modern art styles in to those that have a bias for the rational/linear, and those that have a bias for the metaphysical/poetic; the second describing Viola Frey. If, as Strauss said, a bricoleur’s end product is a structure, and a scientists end product is an event than I would think that Frey is not simply a "bricoleur" or simply a scientist; she is somewhere in between. She does create a structure, but from a viewer’s perspective, she also creates an event through our viewing and discussion of her work.


The thing that I found most interesting about Frey is her background in painting and how this background informs her ceramic work and the way she uses color on her work. She said that she uses color to “emphasize the internal stresses of the work”(her message), as well as to create an “exchange” between the stable clay piece and the environment it is in. Clark writes about Frey’s use of color as “making war on the static quality of sculpture”. The sculptures become dynamic as the glazes interact with light and space. She uses color “sculpturaly” to emphasize a mass that is already there.