The sculptures on exhibit are all composed of multiple, disparate, biomorphic ceramic forms. The forms are variously bulbous, tubular, squirmy and are bound together to achieve the uncanny impression that one is looking at an unidentifiable life form. The pieces have energy and even personalities, vaguely familiar, yet they remain ineffable, too complex to fully comprehend. The imagination of the viewer, in coming upon these pieces, is immediately carried to a personal and emotional narrative that conjures a nature, which permits such entities to exist. Of her process, Rosen writes that, “Sometimes, seemingly disparate things, when joined, can be utterly convincing.”
The exhibit will also feature large works on paper. Executed primarily in a monochromatic palette, the artist depicts, through gestural and expressive handling of her materials, animated, seething masses of her forms, as if through mitosis, they are splitting dividing, replicating and growing into larger entities.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Rosen received her B.F.A in 1978 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She then earned an M.F.A. in 1981 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills Michigan. Since then her work has been featured all over the world, and she has received numerous awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts Craftsman Fellowship, a 1992 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the 2011 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award. Currently, she is a professor at the University of California, Davis where she holds the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair in Ceramic Sculpture.
Annabeth Rosen will give an artist talk and slide presentation about her work in the Humboldt State University Art Department Building, Room 102 at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 5th. For parking information, visit humboldt.edu/parking.
A reception at HSU First Street Gallery will be held Saturday, April 6th, 2013 during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive event. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street Eureka, California. Admission is free. Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead. For more information call 707-443-6363. To learn more, visit humboldt.edu/first.