Work by South African natives highlights an international pottery symposium

LAKEVILLE — Two drastically different styles of South African pottery will be featured in an exhibit entitled “Clay: The Art of Earth and Fire” at The Hotchkiss School’s Tremaine Gallery through June 12. The first style is a traditional Zulu technique of pottery, which is handmade and pit fired. The creations are traditional “beer pots,” which are often used in spiritual ceremonies. The second is an entirely modern approach that incorporates the color and culture of the Zulu people, created by the Ardmore school of artists. These pieces are intricately designed, featuring complex sculptures of animals and colorful and delicate painting. The exhibit was put together by Judith Crouch, who is the wife of Head of School Malcolm McKenzie; and Hotchkiss art teacher Delores Coan. McKenzie and Crouch are from South Africa.Crouch’s college professor, Juliet Armstrong, was the link between the Lakeville boarding school and the potters of South Africa. Armstrong is professor of ceramics at the Center for Visual Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.Coan travels around the world in search of indigenous potters, and made her first trip to South Africa in March 2009. On that trip she met with Armstrong and together they took an excursion to a remote location “in the bush” to meet the potters there. “It was far out and exciting,” Coan said. “Women started coming out of this open vast land, one by one, all with pots in their hands and on their heads. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.” After their journey into the bush, she went to the school of Ardmore Ceramics, where she met Fée Halsted, its founder. Plans for this exhibit began to take shape in August 2010, when Coan revisited South Africa and toured many villages to find potters and their work. The pots from Ardmore were shipped to a gallery in New York City and then trucked up to Hotchkiss. The fruits of Coan’s and Crouch’s hard work is on display at the Tremaine Gallery, which is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.The show kicks off with a gallery talk on Thursday, May 5, at 7 p.m. A highlight of the exhibition will be an international symposium on pottery on Saturday, May 14, and Sunday, May 15. There will be lectures, demonstrations and a firing of pots on Sunday. All events are free and open to the public. Visitors will get a chance to meet and speak with many of the artists.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less