Organized by The Clay Studio in conjunction with Taller Puertorriqueno
Text from article by Robin Rice in Ceramics Monthly 47 no1 52-7 Ja '99
With the help of the San Juan ceramics collective Casa Candina, Philadelphia's Clay Studio and Taller Puertorriqueño teamed up to mount a major exhibition of contemporary work: "Cerámica Puertorriqueña Hoy/Today." Following its debut in Philadelphia, this celebration of a resilient and distinctive culture traveled to Baltimore for exhibition at the Alcazar Gallery of the Baltimore School for the Arts.
Curators Jimmy Clark of the Clay Studio and Doris Nogueira-Rogers of the Taller Puertorriqueño selected work by 22 ceramists. By including four stateside residents of Puerto Rican ancestry and five other artists born outside the island, they also acknowledged the complexity of Puerto Rican art and its sometimes problematic relationship to the United States.
While the show opened in the centenary year of the United States' annexation of the island, it is not a celebration of this event, which the curators describe in the catalog as "questionable." A plebiscite to determine the island's future political relationship to the United States is a serious topic of debate in Puerto Rico; however, by accident or design, most of the work in "Cerámica Puertorriqueña" is apolitical. The show simply offers an opportunity to examine the contemporary manifestations of a tradition that has risen from near extinction.
SOME INFLUENCES
The cultural history of the island is simultaneously rich and tragically obscure. Looking at the variety and technical virtuosity in this show, it's hard to believe that an important ceramic heritage had been virtually destroyed. Ongoing underwater archaeological excavations in Cuba are telling us more about the Taínos, pre-Columbian inhabitants of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. The Taínos came to Boriquén, as they called Puerto Rico, from South America in the 15th century, joining earlier groups who made sophisticated red and white pottery. The Taínos welcomed Columbus to the islands, only to be utterly destroyed in less than two generations. Not until the middle of this century was an attempt made to revive the production of traditional crafts, including ceramics.
The eclectic mix of works in the exhibition fuses the contributions of three distinct groups. Pre-Columbian production included that of archaic peoples who made crude functional pottery, the subsequent Saladoide or Igneri inhabitants who apparently introduced agriculture and highly developed pottery around the first century of the Common Era, and the Taínos.
A second important element is the colonial Spanish, who introduced Christianity and the potter's wheel. Religion is an important theme in Puerto Rican art, but the potter's wheel plays a relatively minor role in this exhibition. There are notable exceptions. Self-taught artist Bernardo Hogan combines and reassembles simple thrown geometrics in "Vasija Cono I, II and III (Cone and Base I, II and III)" in ways that can be viewed as both abstract and vaguely anthropomorphic. Manuel A. Pagán, a vocal proponent of functional pottery, makes fancifully deconstructed teapots, notable for their exaggerated handles with fat vinelike curls, extended trunk-shaped spouts and lids shrunk to the dimensions of tiny stoppers.
Beginning in 1513, African peoples came to the island as slaves, adding a third important ingredient to Puerto Rican art. Though unable to bring objects, the Africans retained the memory of design traditions, which continue to enrich local practice. An intriguing example is African mask-making, which led to the production of indigenous masks like the horned El Vijigante, a Moorish devil popular in festivals of Spanish origin.
A fourth obvious influence is perhaps the most important today: ceramics as a world art form. This is not "folk" art. Although the traditions and conventions of Puerto Rican craft are often adapted, the aesthetic and technical vocabulary of these works is international. For example, though the El Vijigante mask and other festival masks are typically made from coconut shells, gourds, wood or papier-mâché, the characteristic spiky, many-horned structure seems to be echoed in some of the works in this exhibition. Rafael del Olmo's "Vasijas Movil (Mobile Vessels)" are supported on attenuated intertwining hornlike cones. And Miami-based Carlos A. Alves' "Toro con Rosas (Bull with Roses)" is a wall-mounted plaque that resembles a mask, especially with its human--not bovine--eyes. It's assembled from recycled ceramic toilet parts and other appropriated elements.
VESSEL FORMS
Clearly, all the work in the show proposes more than functionality. Aileen Castañeda's serene "Cono con Esfera (Cone with Sphere)" series refines a vessel form. Each eggshell-thin cone rests on a cushion-shaped wooden base incised with graceful wavelike bands.
Another artist residing in the United States, Mario Quilles produces raku-fired vessels constructed from folded and lapped sheets of clay, emphasizing its graceful ductile qualities. Some bowls with cracked bottoms are "mended" with wire stitches.
THE HUMAN FIGURE
Among the figural works were Susana Espinosa's strange oxide-colored stoneware animals with tragic human faces, Adriana Mangual's "Cabeza (Head)," and Ada Pilar Cruz's pair of "Bebés Divinos (Divine Babies)." The gentle freestanding figures were displayed against a dark red backdrop with a white dress silhouette painted on it. Their rounded wood-fired bodies seem to have just emerged from the ovens of creation, though they are pierced, fetishlike, with nails.
Cubism and surrealism converge in Adriana Mangual's handbuilt head, in which the features--eyes, mouth, cheeks and chin--are so many tiny drawers containing who-knows-what elements of personality.
Lorraine de Castro makes life-size but disturbingly incomplete human figures. The tortured and sinister "Sculpture I" stands on one leg. He has one hand, no arms and wears nothing but a beaklike cone mask over his face. A cluster of threatening hornlike cones at the base of the figure fill the space where its missing foot should rest.
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL THEMES
The most obviously Puerto Rican work in the show is Carlos Alves' "Bandera Boriqua (Puerto Rican Flag)," a wall-mounted Puerto Rican flag flaunting images of consumer goods from fruit and turtles to shoes and trucks. Shiny, eye-catching red, white and blue glazes suggest tourist pleasures, not the more ancient heritage of the land.
This is evoked by the powerful work of architect Jaime Suárez. His huge wall-mounted "Disco IV" in rough red earthenware with a vertical rectangular opening in the center is composed of many tiles, and scored with arcing lines. The raw surface, typical of much Puerto Rican claywork, is marked, maplike with occasional raised squares and rectangles. This evocation of a mysterious heroic past is flanked in formal symmetry by two dense atavistic vessels on pedestals.
The vicissitudes of industrialized society are portrayed in Franklin Rodriguez Graulau's mixed-media fountain "Mira como beben los peces en el rio (See how the fish drink in the river)." In this commentary on water pollution, a real red-painted faucet continuously pours water into a sink painted with fish-scale patterns. Bug-eyed ceramic fish, also painted in lurid, almost toxic, colors, are mounted above and around the structure, while the base is decorated with broken industrial tiles stamped "Authoridad des Aqueductos Puerto Rico Agua."
The porcelain-slipped and oxide-stained surfaces of Toni Hambleton's "Ruina I, II & III (Ruin I, II & III)" add to a ghostly presence, suggesting the remnants of a long-dead past.
But, luckily for us, the past lives on in today's Puerto Rican ceramic art, the variety and sophistication of which is well represented in "Cerámica Puertorriqueña Hoy/Today."
