Liminal Objects
September 6-29, 2019
Rockford Gallery Contemporary Ceramics
Physical, emotional, and spiritual thresholds can either smother or stimulate our progression. We are navigating this material world with a brain that intensely fluctuates its perceptions around the stable center of our consciousness. Humans must be more often recognized for our accomplishments in successfully calibrating this passage. Liminal Objects are celebrations and markers of these personal and collective achievements.
Solo Show at Rockford Gallery Contemporary Ceramics
2019
Instruments of Consciousness
August 2- September 1, 2019
Rockford Gallery Contemporary Ceramics
Instruments of Consciousness is a multi-media installation featuring ceramics, photography, and video. The pieces in this show are tools to help us navigate our physical world with reduced resistance. These instruments will assist our ability to close the gaps of nowness, simultaneously stimulating a saturated awareness.
These simple cups have one small hole in the rim. They are training devices for being present and in the now. If you hold the piece in the wrong direction, the liquid will spill. If we exercise our mind in this way, we may become more acutely tuned into our surroundings and its inherent beauties. The hole also activates a formal entry point, creating a conduit between the inside volume with the outside realm.
Unfired and self-hardening clay on panel. These pieces were hung wet just before the opening. Cracks formed, the color changed, and the underling rhythm of both the varying clay thickness and the textured pattern began to unveil. By the end of the show, the clay had turned from soft and malleable to stone hard.
Unfired Porcelain Urns: Fill and release into nature. Entropy will take them and their contents back into the earth.
I Found Mino No Kuni
July 5-28, 2019
Rockford Gallery Contemporary Ceramics
Boulder Creek, California
Meticulously organic, Mino No Kuni’s astonishing ceramic surfaces draw upon the Shino glaze birthed in the 1500’s in the Mino province of Japan. Limitless variables can alter the Shino glaze both in color and texture, and is at best moderately controllable. By finding Mino No Kuni, Rocky found spirit in the beauty of acceptance. Transmitting this acceptance into the building process, a connection between surface and form was registered.
Still Life: Celadon Pearl
Clay, Auto Paint, 23k Gold Leaf
15" x 28" x 10"
2013
Shangri-La
Two-piece vase set. Tallest vase 27".
Clay, Auto Paint, 23k Gold Leaf
2015
Still Life: Chorus Line
Clay, Auto Paint, 23k Gold Leaf
15" x 18" x 11" (grouping)
2013
Still Life: Swans
14.5" x 24" x 10"
Clay, Smoke, Auto Paint, 23k Gold Leaf
2014
Still Life: Swans
Detail
Pearl & Marbled Onyx: 25 Piece Vase Family
Ceramic, Smoke, 23-K Gold Leaf
2011
Pearl & Marbled Onyx: 25 Piece Vase Family
(Detail)
Pearl & Marbled Onyx: 25 Piece Vase Family
(Detail)
13 Piece Vase Family
Ceramic, Ferric Chloride, 23-K Gold Leaf
2010
13 Piece Vase Family
(Detail)
13 Piece Vase Family
(Detail)
Montana: 9 Piece Vase Family
Ceramic, Smoke, Salt, 23-K Gold Leaf
2010
10 Piece Vase Family
Ceramic, Smoke, Salt, 23-K Gold Leaf
2010
21 Piece Vase Family
Ceramic, Smoke, Salt, 23-K Gold Leaf
2009
21 Piece Vase Family
Detail
Afghanistan tribal and prayer rugs are the two identifiable icons within this piece. I have drilled over 100,000 holes, which allows light to penetrate and describe the forms within the paper. While one walks around the piece, the light will shift according to the position of the viewer as each of the holes are drilled at varying angles and depths. Inside the prayer rug mosque, a war rug excerpt demonstrates a damaged helicopter and AK-47. Higher in the composition, slightly above the mosque is a 3-inch blood circle highlighting a group of interconnecting drilled holes.
Prayer for Al-Qaeda 2009
Paper, Light (Drilled Holes), Artist’s Blood
62”x37”
My baskets are an endangered memory. They are made with beans that burn out during the initial firing, which leaves a negative space of the particular material in the clay. This symbolizes the history of the basket and what it once contained. Imbued in the work is an anthropological reflection on how we are loosing the ability to harvest and gather materials due to the corporate numbing of consumerism. These baskets are extremely lightweight, made of 40% paper and porcelain. As a result, they are not utilitarian, nor are they practical in scale or material.
Is It Necessary?
Mixed Media Installation & Performance
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
2014
ROCKY LEWYCKY USES PERFORMATIVE MARK-MAKING TO QUESTION FACTORY FARMING PRACTICES
Every day, a man enters the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History with a Swiss Army backpack. He enters the museum's largest gallery. He selects a ceramic animal from perfectly-aligned rows of hundreds on wood pallets. He places the animal on a gold-leafed pedestal.
Then he smashes it.
In a provocative new installation, Is It Necessary?, at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, sculptor Rocky Lewycky questions the brutality and uniformity of factory farming in the United States. Is It Necessary? blends sculpture, repetition, and ritual performance--all signatures of Lewycky's work--in a startling, political presentation. The result is a powerful installation that reflects Lewycky's evolving voice as an artist and social activist.
Rocky Lewycky is a sculptor, teacher, and social activist whose work is engaged in deconstructing social barriers has the validity and strength to elicit insights into a more cohesive humanity. Celebrated for his exquisite ceramic work and use of repetitive forms, Lewycky's projects have increasingly shifted to focus on social consciousness and audience participation. His work frequently invites viewers to become participants in a communal process. As Lewycky writes: “My artwork is continuously shedding its skin, morphing through new mediums that convey ideas of time and transformation. Process is often a key entry point into my artistic expression, as demonstrated by mark-making and repetition of form.”
The installation Is It Necessary? is featured at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in a group show presenting the four recipients of the 2012-2013 Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship, a juried fellowship presented bi-annually to superlative artists working and living in Santa Cruz County. Lewycky is one of the youngest artists to win the fellowship, which honors mid- and late-career artists who have made significant contributions to contemporary art.
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History Executive Director Nina Simon described Is It Necessary? this way: "Is It Necessary? distills emotional, political, and spiritual activism into a powerful aesthetic statement. Lewycky's careful attention to form and process creates a result that is both shocking and delicate. While the installation is overtly political, the performance of the smashing of the animals feels deeply personal. It imagines a transformation of our relationship with animals from uniform brutality to something holy and humane."
Is It Necessary? is on display at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History through Sunday, February 23, 2014. On that date, Rocky Lewycky will be "liberating" ceramic animals that have not been smashed as gifts to individuals who make donations to the Humane Farming Association.
Eastern State Penitentiary
Philadelphia, PA
April 3rd, 2010
It is a unique opportunity to make work for a space that so heavily breathes on its own. The Eastern State Penitentiary held prisoners for over 140 years and emanates possibilities for conceptual stimulation. The penitentiary's embryonic interior offers a heightened visceral experience, which I intended to transmit through my performance and installation.
When social hierarchies surrender to a deconstructed commodity, we capture a glimpse into a more utopian society. On April 3rd, 2010, nine hundred and eighty (980) urns lined Cellblock Ten at the Eastern State Penitentiary. All of the art pieces were to be given away to the public on this day. In form, the urns echo the interior space of the prison cells. All the pieces were gilded with 23-karat gold leaf on the backside, as well as an individual numbering system on the front from 1 through 980. This represented the number of individual cells in the penitentiary. Participants were escorted through the cellblock with an ESP guide. Each participant then selected an urn whereby the guide escorted him/her outside to release the piece to its recipient. Within this audience-interactive art performance, I hoped to create a transformative experience for both the participant and the space in which the event occurred.
Since the Eastern State Penitentiary held prisoners who took the lives and possessions of others, I wanted to reverse this history and destructive energy through the act of giving.
is a series of active installations by Rocky Lewycky. All within Santa Cruz County, these installations will feature ceramic water vessels that will complement and challenge the space in which they are presented. Each vessel will be given away to the public after the installation.
What is the water vessel?
My water vessels are containers to hold drinking water. Its clay composition references our reliance and connection to the Earth’s resources. Water represents our inter-relationship with each other and the life-blood of our planet, as well as the most abundant compound of the human body. All of the vessels are gilded with 23-karat gold on the bottom of each piece, which symbolizes water as a commodity. How fitting for the current corporate climate that the most omni-present entity of our physical make-up happens to be one of the world's most demanded commodities.
With this project, I am interested in breaking down barriers of social separateness, while cultivating momentum toward our greater collective consciousness. This movement away from the former me-oriented mindset can propel us into an “Us”-sustainable mentality of freely giving without expectations of returns. By empathizing outwardly--beyond individual gains, this new way of thinking and relating with one another will advance humanity toward a shift in the awareness of “Us”.
Photos of GAP installation by Alex Vo
The New Us Project # 2
Water Vessels # 58-137
Porcelain, 23-K Gold Leaf, Wood, Beeswax
Installed in front of Gap, Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Alex Vo
The New Us Project # 2
Water Vessels # 58-137
Porcelain, 23-K Gold Leaf, Wood, Beeswax
Installed in front of Gap, Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Alex Vo
The New Us Project # 2
Water Vessels # 58-137
Porcelain, 23-K Gold Leaf, Wood, Beeswax
Installed in front of Gap, Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Alex Vo
Heaven (From Left to Right) "Non-Resistance, Non-Judgment, Non-Attachment"
19"x30"x3" (Floor Piece)
Hydrastone, 23-K Gold Leaf
HELL/HEAVEN
A group show curated by Dave Solomon/BANG
Heaven
(Detail)
Hell
"Oil Wells in Gold Bullion"
5"x12"x5"
Hydrastone, 23-K Gold Leaf
Underground Gallery of Contemporary Art Santa Fe, New Mexico
2008
My aspirations in The Long Now installation are for the transformation in awareness of present time. We have so many markers of time which subtlety shift and redirect our understanding of placement. These markers are getting closer and closer together as we progress into the information age, and unfortunately as a whole, our ability to hold attention is weakening. This art installation aims at reconditioning our attention and awareness of time into a more developed muscle, which then could be used for the unimaginable.
From back to front
One Minute
Lead, Paper 2008
Front
Books #1-7
Paper, Blood, Bee’s Wax, Aluminum 2007-
One Minute
Lead, Paper
2008
This piece is an investigation of the enormous amount of information that one processes within a minute of time. I believe that due to our interconnectivity, we process much more information than we can imagine. I also wish to explore the idea of one minute as interconnected with our entire life. With this we could experience major shifts within the “short” period of one minute. One Minute was executed with thousands of straight pencil lines on a fifteen-foot long sheet of paper. Visually this piece might get compared to a large UPC code.
One Minute
(Detail)
Lead, Paper
2008
One Minute
(Detail)
Lead, Paper
2008
One Minute
(Detail)
Lead, Paper
2008
The giant slab of clay with its upchurned spires is fresh and shiny at the time of the opening reception but will dry and begin to transform in… Santa Fe Reporter - March 19, 2008
Books #1-7
Paper, Blood, Bee’s Wax, Aluminum 2007-
#1 (-1.0 at 60 Seconds) 3”x4”x4”
#2 (-.8125 at 60 Seconds) 3”x4 3/16”x4”
#3 (-.625 at 60 Seconds) 3”x4 3/8”x4”
#4 (-.5 at 60 Seconds) 3”x4 9/16”x4”
#5 (-.25 at 60 Seconds) 3”x4 ¾”x4”
#6 (-.0625 at 60 Seconds) 3”x4 15/16”x4”
#7 (+.125 at 60 Seconds) 3”x5 1/8”x4”
Robert Nichols Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico 2007
With Rocky Lewycky, Natsuko West, Zoe Bird
From Left to Right:
Time Bowls: Refill When Water Evaporates, 78 Pounds, Crucibles for Edward Muybridge, Urns, Epitaphs For Birth And Death
Epitaphs For Birth And Death
Rearrange when someone you love is born or dies.
Crucibles for Edward Muybridge
These works are about capturing process in motion. These crucibles are fired in a high fire kiln to 2350 degrees F. With weak areas and support areas built into the pieces the clay is allowed to move freely within the kiln and solidify as it cools.
78 Pounds
The total weight of this storage jar is 78 pounds, including the sand inside. This is the average life expectancy of a white male living in the US. Remove 10 pounds of sand every year. When the jar becomes empty, break and put back together with epoxy and gold leaf between the cracks. The piece is then completed.
From Left to Right:
On Growth and Form: 33 Piece Vase Family, 78 Pounds, Crucibles for Edward Muybridge, Tea Bowls for Unicorns (From the Conceptual Tea Bowl Series)
Tea Bowls for Unicorns (From the Conceptual Tea Bowl Series)
This series illuminates the process of drinking tea. Rather than experiencing the utilitarian nature of tea and it's container, these pieces push the experience of process directly to the mind for consumption of thought itself. One hand clapping.
Time Bowls: Refill When Water Evaporates
Fill the bowls up with water and let evaporate. With the cycling and changing climate conditions the water within these bowls will vary in evaporation time. The bowls are designed to help further our understanding of time within the capacity of weather conditions.
Urns
Each urn was made from unfired porcelain. Put ashes in urn and release into body of water. Clay will dissolve while ashes dissipate.
Stills form the performance, I Am Already Dead: Vessels For Time.