Rocky Mountain College’s Ryniker-Morrison Gallery is overflowing with new works from the Red Lodge Clay Center as part of the annual exhibition with their artists-in-residence, including Lukas Easton, Bill Jones, Teresa Larrabee, and Christopher Watt.
All of the artists showing works began their residencies in the fall of 2021.
Easton’s work challenges what popular culture has deemed mundane by transcending the predictable and presenting illuminative truth. Like all great art, Easton’s pieces cause us to reflect on what we find valuable and how that influences our moral outlook on life. He achieves this through several mediums ranging all the way from video to ceramics. The focus of his art revolves around critical thinking in regard to human behavior, promoting personal responsibility as well as sympathy shown through material depictions of decay, growth, as well as geology.
Jones’s work is representative of the process rather than the outcome which is paradoxically the finished product. Each of his pieces are a rendition of idealized form in his mind though it is flawed through the rapidity by which it is created, presented in series in order to echo this idea of process.
Larabee’s pieces are born from the creative collateral of anxiety. Obsessive and emotional, her figurative sculptures encapsulate self-ambiguity through confronting what society has accepted or rather what it has labeled prohibitive. Larabee introduces her originality through various materials and processes all of which culminate to emphasize her use of symbolism and narrative in her work.
Watt, specializing in atmospheric-firing processes of salt glazing and wood-firing, most of which is locally sourced, creates ceramic works unmistakably unique and irreplaceable. Through his emphasis on materiality and aesthetic effect, Watt is able to foster contemplation of society and its accepted practices.
This article scratches the surface of what one might experience at the Ryniker-Morrison Gallery considering our present exhibit. The exhibit will be on display through Feb. 28 with a reception occurring Feb. 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. Stop in to experience and support Rocky’s art community! The artists would love to have you!