Andrea Gill, John Gill, Tony Marsh
October 17, 2020 – January 9, 2021
About The Exhibition
Harvey Preston Gallery is pleased to present a three-person exhibition featuring works by ceramic artists Andrea Gill, John Gill, and Tony Marsh. This exhibition focuses on the ways in which each artist forefronts color as a means of either cloaking or defining physical form. The platform of the ‘vessel’ functions as an anchor, inviting communion while also tempting the viewer with layers of pure compositional pleasure.
Andrea Gill’s intricately constructed sculptures embrace shape, color, and pattern to define elegant silhouettes. The matte texture and palette combined with smooth, hand-built curvatures suggest layers of fabric, meant to adorn the body or the home. Her work requires careful control in the building phase and multiple firings. Andrea strives to “connect the emotional, visceral and retinal with a moment of peace, perhaps even joy.”
While John Gill’s work is rooted in the realm of function, the object expands beyond its immediate form. Angular projections glide seamlessly into fields saturated in abutting hues, all in the service of creating bold structures that simultaneously reference the medium’s enduring history, as well as, the histories of sculpture, design and painting. There is a playful exuberance in the work that uses color and shape to redirect the eye in unexpected ways.
As an operating mode, Tony Marsh’s process employs “artistic decision-making that favors chance and the unknowable outcome”. His is a method allowing leeway for the ‘magic’ of the kiln to guide each piece resulting in an appearance of aged, yet timeless tangibility. A notable dichotomy of the work is that it comes across as soft and pliable, to the eye, yet each vessel is hardened due to the many firings, layers of glaze and the nature of fired clay. There is a push-pull balance to the work—the tug of the solid against a certain kind of weightlessness, the natural juxtaposed with the manmade, and the sensitive sustained by physicality.
Exhibition Images
Available Works
View ANDREA GILL
View JOHN GILL
View TONY MARSH
Press
About The Artists
ANDREA GILL
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1948, Gill studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, Painting), Kansas City Art Institute and Alfred University (MFA, Ceramic Art). She grew up in Ramsey, New Jersey and Bethesda, Maryland.
Andrea Gill is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tiffany Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. In 2012 Gill received the Voulkos Fellowship Award from the Archie Bray Foundation.
Gill’s work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute and other public and private collections.
Some of her awards include being elected as a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2012, and in 2019 she received the Distinguished Educator Award from the Renwick Alliance. She is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva, Switzerland.
Over the years, Gill has exhibited her work in many galleries in solo exhibits and group shows, in New York, Scottsdale, AZ, Philadelphia and Aspen, CO and other cities.
Since 1984, Andrea Gill has been a Professor of Ceramic Art at Alfred University’s School of Art and Design, New York State College of Ceramics. She retired in 2017 as Professor Emerita. She lives in the Village of Alfred and serves on the Village Board of Trustees.
“My work investigates a visually complex experience that can act as a focus for contemplation and meditation: the object as mediator between seeing and feeling. The goal is to connect the emotional, visceral and retinal with a moment of peace, perhaps even joy.”
JOHN GILL
John Gill is a ceramic artist and educator. His work has been shown at the L.A.County Museum of Art; Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York City; Harvey Meadows Gallery, Aspen; Kraushaar Gallery, New York City; Revolution Gallery, Detroit, Michigan; and Hadler Rodriquez Gallery in New York. Gill’s work is held in the permanent collections of numerous art museums including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Newark Museum, New Jersey and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
He is a Professor of Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. A member of the Council of the International Academy of Ceramics, he has travelled and lectured throughout the US, Canada and China. He is currently working closely with international artists in an effort to revitalize Chinese ceramic art.
TONY MARSH
Tony Marsh earned his BFA in Ceramic Art at California State University Long Beach in 1978. After graduating, he spent 3 years in Mashiko, Japan at the workshop of Living National Treasure, Tatsuzo Shimaoka. He completed his MFA at Alfred University in 1988.
Marsh has taught, lectured and exhibited extensively throughout the US, Asia and Europe. He currently teaches in the Ceramic Arts Program at California State University Long Beach where he was the Program Chair for over 20 years. He is also the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at CSULB.
In 2018 Marsh was awarded a United States Artist Fellowship. His work is included in many private and permanent collections around the world such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mad Museum of Art in NY, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Everson Museum, Syracuse, Oakland Museum of Art, Gardiner Museum of Art, Toronto, Museum of Fine Arts Houston.