Art lovers often view a work and wonder how the artist managed to achieve his intended result. This show at DeBlois Gallery, Newport, offered some insight into the processes utilized by three prominent artists. The show, entitled "Pattern and Process", featured the work of Thomas Ladd, Yvonne Leonard and Erika Sabel.

Studio potter and ceramic sculptor Thomas Ladd has worked professionally with clay for the past thirty-five years, has exhibited widely and has won many awards for his work. For this show, Ladd displayed his hand-thrown and altered utilitarian ceramic vessels. In discussing his work, Ladd states, "Stoneware encapsulates the hand and heart of the potter. Exploring the parameters of material, process, surface, form and space is an endless learning challenge. Complete dedication and a strong technical foundation are necessary to produce works of significance."

Yvonne Leonard combines her extensive background in printmaking with both drawing and painting to create the work that she exhibited. She utilizes multiple copper or zinc plates and complex etching and printing processes which culminate in her printing on a variety of materials, including found text.

Brooklyn artist Erika Sabel utilizes paint and line to fill the canvas with complex visual layers. She exhibited both paintings and drawings in the show. As the artist explains, "For me, line embodies decisiveness, control and confidence - whether it is blunt or forgiving - it contains the same power. Painting is freedom and trust, a sense of spontaneity and risk. Marriage between two different techniques - painting and drawing - are inversely proportional in my work. I cannot stop drawing, but I really want to paint." 

Thomas Ladd: Artist's Statement . . .

I am attracted to the intimate human scale of fired clay objects and how they integrate into people's lives.  Weathered rock becomes clay, which can be hand formed and transformed in unlimited ways.  The potter's kiln turns clay back into rock.  Stoneware encapsulates the hand and heart of the potter.  Exploring the parameters of material, process, surface, form, and space is an endless learning challenge.  Complete dedication and a strong technical foundation are necessary to produce works of significance.  Subjecting my work to the smoky orange white heat of the kiln is a life reinforcing experience. 

Serenity

Wood Fired Stoneware

Thomas Ladd

. . . and Bio

Thomas Ladd, a studio potter and ceramic sculptor from Peace Dale, Rhode Island, has worked professionally with clay for the past thirty-five years.  He runs his own Studio/Gallery, Thomas Ladd Pottery, at 352 High Street, Peace Dale.  His current work consists mainly of hand thrown and altered utilitarian vessels in soda vapor glazed and wood fired ash glazed stoneware, low fire soda and pit fired earthenware, and raku.  He also produces hand built sculptural work, architectural commissions, and larger scale ceramic sculptures designed for an outdoor environment. 

In 2011 he won third prize in the annual “Earthworks” a juried show of New England clay work at the Helme House Gallery in Kingston, R.I.  His work has featured in Rhode Island Monthly magazine, and been in Ceramics Monthly magazine.  In 2001 Yankee Magazine’s Travel Guide to New England, choose his shop, as an editor’s pick of must see shops.

In October of 2004, as a featured artist, he built on site, wood-fired, and soda glazed his sculptural fiber “Gloworm VI” kiln for the annual Raku Rhody-O in downtown Providence.  In 2009 he designed and organized the building and firing of the Solstice Fire Sculpture in the Peace Dale Art Park in Peace Dale, RI.

Dance

Soda Glazed Stoneware

Thomas Ladd

1971 first pottery class, at the pottery co-op of the South County Art Association.

1976 graduated from Skidmore College with a B.S. in Art, with college and departmental honors.

1976 started a pottery studio in Wakefield, built a drain oil fired kiln and began producing utilitarian and sculptural pottery.

1980 started production salt glazing in hard brick downdraft kiln

1984 switched to soda glazing in soft brick updraft kiln

2004 began wood firing workshops in his fiber Gloworm kiln

1978 – 2011 teaching beginning through advanced pottery classes, workshops, and demos.

1974 – 2011 has attended over fifty-one workshops with master potters and ceramic artists.

Pushing Boundaries

Wood Fired Stoneware

Thomas Ladd

Yvonne Leonard: Artist's Statement and Bio

Leonard’s studio concentration is in printmaking, particularly intaglio processes, together with drawing and painting. Her work arises from two primary interests-the natural world as it exists amidst the accumulated residue of human activities, and how narrative develops in response to the places we inhabit and the spaces we construct. Subject matter ranges from anatomy, biology, and organic matter, to mechanical detritus, found text, and the assorted effluvium of material culture.

You Sweet - The Red Truck

Intaglio Printmaking - Etching and Gravure

Yvonne Leonard

The Box Fish

Intaglio Printmaking - Etching and Gravure

Yvonne Leonard

From 1998 to 2002, Leonard served as founder and director of the printmaking program at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA where she taught a variety of courses in print media. In late 2002, upon completion of a teaching assignment to develop an off-campus program at the Lacoste School of Art, Provence, France, she relocated her studio, Oyster Street Press, to the south coast of Massachusetts.

On Sartre

Intaglio Printmaking - Etching and Gravure

Yvonne Leonard

Leonard has exhibited her work at a variety of venues including solo and group exhibitions at- The International Print Center, NYC; Anchor Graphics, Chicago, IL; Flatbed Press, Austin, TX; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin, TX; Diverse Works, Houston, TX; Frogman's Press, South Dakota, Boston Printmakers; Society of American Graphic Artists, NYC; Piccolo Spoleto, Charleston SC, and multiple university settings among others.

In addition to conducting printmaking workshops at Penland School, Flatbed Press, and the University of South Dakota, Leonard has taught in many capacities at a variety of institutions. These include the Community College of Rhode Island: Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Savannah College of Art and Design;  and St. Edward's University, Austin, TX.

Erika Sabel: Artist's Statement

New places and novelty spaces are my primary tools that motivate and stimulate my being. Organic and mechanical motifs layer congruously over otherworldly landscapes, which tend to be a source of stability amongst the chaos. The process of creating artwork is a rewarding yet trying voyage. It starts with something familiar but distant, comfortable yet lonely. Whether it’s a place, pattern or memory, a recurring motif of isolation and compartmentalization appears in my work. Complex visual layers of paint and line illustrate abstract feeling and concrete emotion. For me, line embodies decisiveness, control, and confidence- whether it is blunt or forgiving- it contains the same power. Painting is freedom and trust, a sense of spontaneity and risk. Marriage between two different tools- painting and drawing- are inversely proportional in my work. I cannot stop drawing, but I really want to paint.

Double Boat

Erika Sabel

Born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1984, I completed my BA in studio art at Skidmore College in 2007, and currently residing in New York City. Since graduating I have bounced around the country and explored various regions of the world. I am currently residing in a live/work loft apartment in Brooklyn.

Sea Boat

Erika Sabel

White Boat

Erika Sabel