Tea Immersion at Clay Art Center

    
Tea Immersion
Saturday, March 1 , 1-4pm
Fee: $25 members; $35 non-members

1pm: Join us at Village of Port Chester Fire Dept. South End Fire Station (shares the municipal parking lot with Clay Art Center) for the presentations, then walk together to our Gallery for tea tastings. *Look for the balloons!

*Free for full time college students with valid student ID (at the event). Must RSVP to mail@clayartcenter.org
ADVANCED REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. Please register by February 21 by clicking Add to Order above.

Join us for compelling and informative presentations about the culture of tea, the history of teapots and how teapots fit into contemporary life; with Leslie Ferrin of Ferrin Gallery, Ulysses Dietz, Senior Curator at Newark Museum and Michael Harney, VP of Harney & Sons Master Tea Blenders, followed by a discussion moderated by Judith Schwartz, Ph. D, Professor of Art & Art Professions at NYU.

Then, in our Gallery featuring our National Invitational Exhibition TeaTime, experience and enjoy teas from around the world poured by Harney & Sons brewer Mike Harney, and watch a tea ceremony performed by students in Keiko Ashida's Tea Bowl and Ceremony Class.

Our Panelists:
Ulysses Grant Dietz, Chief Curator; Curator, Decorative Arts Department at The Newark Museum, will do a survey of the teapot both as a functional form and as an artistic challenge in the West over some three centuries, based on examples in the collection of the Newark Museum . From imported Chinese porcelain, designed and made with European consumers in mind, to contemporary studio ceramics which have left function behind and focus on the complex relationship between East and West that the teapot evokes, Ulysses will present a wide range of teapots that will provoke thought and conversation. Just as tea does.
Ulysses Grant Dietz has been the curator of Decorative Arts at The Newark Museum since 1980. He received his BA from Yale and his MA from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program.
The curator of over 100 exhibitions during his tenure, Mr. Dietz is particularly proud of his work on The Newark Museum’s 1885 Ballantine House. In 1997 Mr. Dietz was the project director for The Glitter & The Gold: Fashioning America’s Jewelry, the first-ever exhibition and book on Newark’s once-vast jewelry industry. Mr. Dietz has published numerous articles on decorative arts, as well as books on the Museum’s Studio Pottery, Art Pottery and nineteenth-century furniture collections.

Leslie Ferrin: Author of Teapots Transformed; Exploration of an Object, Leslie Ferrin will present an overview of contemporary ceramic teapots by established and emerging artists who are using the form to reference history, employ new technologies and contextualize within the broader art world.
Leslie Ferrin is founder, owner and director of Ferrin Contemporary. Working with private collectors, institutions and the media for over thirty years, Ferrin Contemporary has been the preferred source for artwork by established and emerging artists and designers whose primary medium is clay. Programs include presentations at fairs; partnerships with commercial galleries; and support for artists at museum venues. Ferrin, along with a team of art professionals, provides services to private collectors and project and career management to artists. Current projects include Ceramic Top 40 | 2013, The Pennington Collection, The Bacchanalistas: Passions + Pleasure in ceramic and glass from the early 19th century to present presented at the New York Ceramics Fair. Other artist projects include Paul Scott: Cumberland Blue(s), American Scenery, Sergei Isupov presented in Body and Soul at Museum of Arts and Design and his upcoming career survey at Racine Art Museum, in Wisconsin.
In addition to the gallery, Ferrin is founder, director and co-ownerof Project Art in Cummington, MA. Established in 2007 and co-owned with sculptor, Sergei Isupov, Project Art offers year round and short term artist residencies and studio rentals in a restored 8000 square foot, 19th century former mill building.

Michael Harney, Vice President and Second Generation Master of Harney & Sons Master Tea Blenders has been the Tea Taster for Harney & Sons Teas the last 25 years. He has made many trips to Asia to source out the best teas. Penguin Press published his book: Harney & Sons Guide to Tea.
Mike will speak about how tea tastes, traditions in various tea lands and how that has influenced tea pots in several countries.Then he will pour teas for us during the post-discussion tea tasting event, and educate us about each tea!

Our Moderator will be Judith Schwartz, Ph.D., Professor, New York University, and Head of Sculpture: Craft Media Area, teaches studio-based courses in ceramic sculpture and supervises interdisciplinary research with masters and doctoral students. Her research emphasis is upon the ceramic arts - from the mid-twentieth century to the present - more specifically upon those artists who employ clay to reflect personal alienations, social and political struggles, popular and material culture - as a form of art activism. She is curator and author of national and international exhibitions and articles on contemporary ceramics. She is author of Confrontational Ceramics, A & C Black, London and University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. The book is a study of the history of the use of clay as a tool for social commentary. More specifically, it represents a global perspective upon those artists who employ caricature, parody, satire, obscenity, erotica and the grotesque - to focus attention upon the inequities of the human condition.