On View: January 11, 2020–April 19, 2020
Pomona, Calif.— Since 2016, the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) has partnered with the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College to produce exhibitions of works by guest curators of the Scripps College Ceramic Annual. In January of 2020, San Diego State University Professor Emerita Joanne Hayakawa will curate Duality and Context at the Ceramic Annual. Opening a week earlier at AMOCA, Hayakawa’s exhibition, A Wing and a Prayer II, premieres the newest work in her A Wing and a Prayer series. In addition to this large sculptural work, created especially for this exhibition, a series of Hayakawa’s two-dimensional works will also be exhibited. The opening reception, including a talk by the artist, will take place at AMOCA on January 11, 2020 from 6-9 PM.
Hayakawa explores diametrically opposed pairs in her work. For example, vulnerability is paired with strength, extraordinary is presented alongside mundane, and self-indulgent technology is contrasted with the human condition. Body parts — hearts, brains, spines — are juxtaposed with their botanical counterparts — roses and their thorn encrusted branches and cacti and their rows of spines. Hayakawa’s work uses these pairs to disrupt the viewer’s frame of reference, and to subvert cultural contexts. In this weakened state, the viewer’s own subjectivity becomes accessible, and Hayakawa uses this access to push the viewer toward empathy.
Joanne Hayakawa holds a BFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MFA from the University of Washington. Her work can be found in the collections of Scripps College, Claremont, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, and Utah State University.
The 76th Scripps Ceramic Annual at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery is the longest running ceramic annual in the country. This year, in the exhibition titled Duality and Context, Hayakawa gathers artists whose work engages with and offers a variety of perspectives on the environment through the lens of duality. “Duality,” she writes, “provides a natural tension with questions, definitions and position(s). We can understand duality to mean opposites, …diversity that is generalized or confrontational or not, parallel paths that have not recognized each other…. I have chosen artists with diverse approaches to literal and figurative environmental perspectives who seem to be wending their way forward through their choices. Ultimately, they are defining or redefining their vision through exploration of two (or more) sides.
The 76th Scripps Ceramic Annual keynote lecture will be given by Garth Johnson, curator of ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, on January 25 at 4 PM in the Scripps College Humanities Auditorium. The exhibition opening reception, with live music and light refreshments, will follow at the Gallery from 7-9 PM.
The 76th Scripps Ceramic Annual will include works by: Wesley Anderegg, Richard Burkett, Rebecca Hutchinson, Jeff Irwin, Kate MacDowell, Crystal Morey, James Tisdale, Ted Vogel, Patti Warashina, Stan Welsh, and Mary Cale A. Wilson. More information about the “Duality and Context” may be found on the Scripps College website
Education programs are made possible in part by the Ruth and Joseph C. Reed Foundation for the Arts.
The exhibition will be featured on the Museum’s website, as well on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hashtag #joannehayakawa.
