Nancy McNary Smith: April 2023
A Pittsburgh artist, McNary Smith has taught and created ceramic art for fifty years. After decades of teaching in her studio, she now hosts an atelier of eight artists. Her early career emphasized functional works, which she sold nationwide. (Her dinnerware, for example, was selected for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kentuck Knob house in Pennsylvania) For many years now her work has been exclusively sculptural, and her pieces have won awards at museums and other shows. Her work is represented at the Westmoreland Museum of Art, in the Peat Marwick Collection of Contemporary Crafts, and in other collections.
“The implosion of American political discourse, the threats of the plague years, and the guerilla-warfare attacks of old age, all bear on the forms in my two most recent series.
PUNCTURED POTS: clay forms slip-cast in plaster molds, pierced or amended with blown-out bike inner tube rubber and other materials. They are leaky vessels, with minimally protective spikes.
OSTEOPOROSIS: pieces formed from black or white porcelain slip, and from low-fire slip, cast thin as possible and beyond, and fired to the point of partial fluidity. The result is translucent, fragile-looking, full of empty spaces.
Yet, these pieces express exuberance and celebration. What is lost? What gained?”
UPCOMING SHOWS:
Solo show at Hoyt Art Institute in New Castle, PA, November 11 to December 22, 2023
hoytartcenter.org
