In conjunction with the end of the North Carolina Potters Conference in Asheboro, NC, we hope you’ll join us for an Open House and slide presentation, entitled “Michelle Erickson: Distilled”, by Virginia-based artist Michelle Erickson at the North Carolina Pottery Center from 1:00-4:00 pm on Sunday, March 4th!

Michelle is internationally recognized for her mastery of colonial-era ceramic techniques and using those techniques to create pieces that explore 21st-century social, political, and environmental themes. Her pieces are in the collections of major museums, including Colonial Williamsburg, the Seattle Art Museum, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent, England.

Using historic ceramic techniques, Michelle creates works of art that make statements about our contemporary world. As she puts it, “I make objects of the past from an imagined future in the present.” Michelle’s work draws parallels through time, such as the 18th-century Staffordshire pottery industry and global design giant Nike, Wedgwood’s abolitionist ceramics and contemporary child slavery, the colonial discovery and obsession with fossils as prescient to our perilous addiction to fossil fuels.

Michelle’s presentation, “Michelle Erickson: Distilled,” (from 2:00-3:00 pm) is part of the programming associated with the Pottery Center’s landmark exhibition, The Last Drop: Intoxicating Pottery, Past and Present, currently on view through April 7, 2018. Michelle’s solo section of the exhibition, titled “Michelle Erickson: Distilled,” features 11 of Erickson’s pieces and, through photos and videos, showcases her use of lost ceramic techniques.

“In the Pale Moonlight,” another section of the The Last Drop exhibition, focuses on alcohol-related ceramics of 19th and early 20th century North Carolina. The Last Drop is a collaboration with the Chipstone Foundation, a Milwaukee-based foundation devoted to promoting the study of American material culture and the decorative arts.

More About The Last Drop: Intoxicating Pottery, Past and Present:

For thousands of years, potters have fashioned clay vessels for the ritual consumption of fermented and distilled beverages. These vessels not only reflect the technological and stylistic concerns of their time and place, but also a wide variety of cultural celebrations as well as proscriptions related to the making, distribution, ceremonial usage, and consumption of alcoholic drinks.

For The Last Drop, the Pottery Center invited fifteen leading contemporary potters, both local and nationally recognized, to create new ceramic work that was inspired by 17th or 18th-century drinking vessels from the Chipstone Foundation’s exemplary collection. The fifteen artists reinterpreted their assigned piece, creating a new one that reflected both the maker’s artistic style, along with their ideas and attitudes concerning alcohol.
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While most of our Clay Talks! are potlucks, this particular event is not. Light refreshments will be available courtesy of the Pottery Center starting at 1:30 pm.

This presentation is free and open to the public. Location: North Carolina Pottery Center, 233 East Avenue, Seagrove, 27341.