Arts & Culture
Carlsten Gallery features professor’s creations
The Pointer
ASCHL336@UWSP.EDU
The Edna Carlsten Gallery of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point will feature Anne-Bridget Gary’s artwork from April 13 through April 26. Gary is a studio ceramicist and professor of art and design at UW-SP.
Gary has worked and traveled in Japan, China and Korea, working with potters in the areas of Yixing in southern China, Kongju City in Korea and central and northern Japan in Tokoname and Fukushima. Her work has been exhibited thoughout the United States and internationally.
She received her Master of Fine Arts degree at The Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and an Associate of Arts degree from Mercer County Community College in Trenton, New Jersey. She has taught at professional art schools and universities including Oregon School of Arts and Crafts in Portland, Oregon and the Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Gary has been teaching at UW-SP for 18 years and now teaches ceramics and a fine arts multi-media course at UW-SP.
The work exhibited at the Carlsten Gallery was created during her second sabbatical. “Faculty members are awarded a sabbatical after seven years of service. In the Department of Art and Design, most faculty members use the year to create a body of work. Often they request an exhibition in the Carlsten Gallery to showcase the work done during the sabbatical year,” said Caren Heft, director at the Carlsten Gallery.
Gary’s work reflects both good and bad experiences in her life. Many of the pieces were inspired by her mother’s struggle with cancer and her own reaction to it.
“It has been a wonderful and very difficult time, for much of the work was inspired (as is the title) by being by my mother’s side for 3 months ‘walking the corridors’ of the hospital and nursing home where she passed away from cancer. I had the honor to be the only one with her at that time,” said Gary.
Gary is close with many of her pieces, especially the long, wood-based tinted raw clay and fiber pieces, remands of cloth and pine needles reminiscent of her youth and her mother’s sewing. The piece she treasures almost more than anything, since she has been a potter for 30 years, is a pile of broken pottery with one perfect half of a pot.
“The theme of the work revolves around the idea of the vulnerability and fragility of the human being, and clay, usually thought of as permanent. I am using it in away to suggest it as non-permanent—that is why most of the work in clay is un-fired,” explained Gary, “My experiences in many countries all over the world, especially in Japan, and the studies of world religions are the underpinnings of these sculptures,” she went on to say.
If you would like to view Anne-Bridget Gary’s work, the Carlsten Gallery is open from 10:00 am - 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. on Thursday evenings and from 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday during the school year. You can also visit her work on her website at www.AnneBridgetGary.30art.com.