Kurt Weiser

 

Kurt Weiser: work from light to dark. Fascinated with territory, unregulated space, fascinated with exploration, maps of the old world, so the globes are my feeling of what's around of all the stuff that happens in the particular world, with as little preplanning as possible. The ideas come together in the work, start with one element and work their way out from there [let the lines reveal the lines, the planes, the forms] . There's no fun, no surprises in plans on paper, so the pieces are an exploration rather than just work, maybe 25 gal of slip in one globe, I'm not sure what's going to happen until I get there. Its not china paint I love but imagery, i love making things out of clay but felt something missing, which was imagery, ideas about things. I tried underglaze, black slips, conformist as the rest. It wasn't till i got older that I realized to do what I want, who cares, do what I want, what really interests me, nobody's watching anyway. It's a little unnerving to view the past 30 years. I try not to pay too much attention to it,  having done this for this long a time i don't take myself as seriously as i used to, i just do what i do, Sensuously decorated porcelain, the pots he creates are among the most vivid and decadent of modern ceramics

 AE Reiff sculpts figures in clay developed from traditional ceramic forms of pots, pitchers, bowls, vases. The technique involves joining multiple hand thrown forms together serially.  He brings to these figures a range of understanding of literary characters from his life long study and love of English Literature in which he holds a doctorate.

--I supply the words of the world, politicians, pastors, news broadcasts, films, plays, all business correspondence, every treaty and agreement of any kind,  letters to editors, the words of editors themselves, every correspondence, all the books in the world, all the secrets and revelations boasted of in the deep net, all the speech scripted for all the gifted acting, every aspect of accounts of discovery and space travel, all written by me. Yes I wrote all that stuff, and that doesn't include the other millions. Do I regret it? Wait, there's more.

How mountain and plant wrestle with the human / A Letter to the Tempe Arts Center

 1/27/87 Dear Jan Sheridan

I have enclosed my resume and slides for your advertised landscape exhibition. Since crossing over into art I have had two shows, in Dallas, fifteen free standing stained glass panels at the Stained Glass Studio (Shiprock Center), the second, thirty acrylic paintings at the Zale Library of Bishop College where I was  faculty. The landscapes here are pastels.  A brief statement follows on how the mountain and plant wrestle with the human.

Ordinarily nature takes no recognition but dominion by developments forced recognition in 1) "The White Thistle" carnivorously devouring the human figures, the gigantic bare 2) Mazatzals which invite tourists to perform the time-honored act of kiss my, the more secluded rock towers along the Four Peaks Road in their 3) 'embrace' now humanely reproducing the child of the Golden Age, a large womb of granite birth to 4) "Rockababy" near Mule Spring's threat to nature  implicitly and darkly forbidden, 5) 'Lilly's Rock.' Does all this make us wonder at 6) "The Needle/" of the Superstitions were nature to reflect human culture  with sexual gesture. Yet nature is so balanced and sensuous that even these must seem beautiful and inviting themselves. So nature makes our ugliness beautiful.

The rocks also seem like beasts we fear ourselves may be from the top of Canyon de Chelly where the rock cliff path to the White house lurches 7) "Elephantine" and 8) "Crown King' seems a dark fish swimming in a Pleistocene Sea. 9) "Herb-light' and 10) 'Eyrie' are included for the viewer to personally find what it is that hides beneath the surface.

Sincerely, AE Reiff

Standing Effigies. Preparations for the Resurrection of the Dead.

Sarcophagi Preparations for the resurrection of the Dead. Keepsake Standing effigies, of Andean style, Peruvian, Bolivian statuettes, Andean women, men, children statuettes small enough to stand on a table or shelf. Abstract keepsake funerary urns + statuary depicting characters from everyday life of various social classes, animal figures.

 

Notes toward a raisonné

Lamination arches from form, bowed in the firing, so daylight appears between its cracks, caverns and splits in the firing, The eye tries to understand what it sees when folds and curves make shadow. It constantly plays over it to create familiarity. It is as if he eye recasts the image, which seems to be moving, to understand it. This establishes the statement, it depends on your point of view. Such composition has a range of meaning and association, from more simple but improbable Flowers from Rock to curvilinear figures not quite named, like a woman a flower or abstract. 

The eye tries to make these deconstructions of a vessel look like something it recognizes, stressed and broken attempts to fall and stand at the same time, pots as people go against all odds and heroically oppose, or bow the head, the knee, and excite sympathy. Many of these did fall, implode, collapse in the stretching intended to enhance their lines. 

Why were they pushed to such extremes? Some can't raise their hands because they don't have arms or just stumps for arms in these days. Those who raise hands may not all get them all the way up from the weight or

maybe they are prevented. There are all kinds of postures in hands raised, just like there are all kinds of reasons for raising them. Surrender is implied, and praise. Also sacrifice. Those without hands are the most poignant if we imagine we can see the heads and the bodies, as if the arms and hands were wrapped as if they were armed and militarized security forces get them ambiguous, concealing something under their cloaks. Beating hearts. Some of these may be considered Protest Jars silently witnessing. These ideas, called minimalist and abstract expressionist, arise in conversation like Legends of the Unconscious, not yet written exactly, with many sources of vacancy and presence, vacancy of the design and designer, presence of the flows of the natural. But making and repeating patterns to identify work as recognizable of a certain style is a betrayal of vacancy. Making by erosion, breakage, eruption, gravity, is vacancy. The world is before us, but the pot remains after. Ask what he will do tomorrow if he had success today. The answer is there is no time and what is done is done before, during and after.

To get these kings you have to get the attitude. Here Faisal is undergoing his beauty treatment in pride and power. It is noteworthy the British have so warmed their royals. The word king hardly appears. It's all babies and beauties. Stability you know, masks. Other potentates suffer their pride of manhood. There's nothing behind a Saudi prince. Abdulla, Farouk, Faisal, Farouk lands the fat cats in trouble. Outlaws in bandanas with the top down pull up next him at stoplights, taunt: King Farouk! King Farouk!

zarg