Preview
Image Date
10-24-2019
Event Date
October 24, 2019, 4:15pm
Description
Katherine L. Ross is interested in clay’s physical presence in the natural world, its role in economies, politics and culture throughout history and its obsolescence in contemporary culture. She will be showing two installations at The Peeler Art Center that address very different aspects of these interests. Porcelain intrigues her more than any other type of clay because of its history. Porcelain is a status symbol valued for purity and strength. It is elegant and expensive but also used at the dinner table of families across the globe. “The Tzetzegov Erasures” is an installation developed from research on propaganda porcelain produced at the Lomonosov (formerly the State) Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg, Russia and research at the KGB archives in St. Petersburg. This was the scene of a dramatic transition from the production of Imperial Czarist porcelain to porcelain used as an element of systematic revolutionary propaganda and the discovery of a personal family connection to this history. Related to this interest in art used for propaganda and agitprop, she is interested in the Stalinist-era commissioning of artists to re-cast revolutionary history. Rodchenko was one artist of many enlisted to falsify photographs and documents. Government directives commanded all citizens to alter their personal archives to eliminate any references to persons who had been exiled or executed. This installation examines her family history. It is the revelation of an erased family member. Influences for this body of work include Carl Andre’s 1960’s poetry and his strategies of isolation, removal, and fragmentation to examine war and cultural eradication. Re-examining specific historical records draw parallels to current political conflicts. The second installation, “The Unseen and Misremembered” is a poetic examination of what we know, see and remember of the physical world around us. Much of the natural world is concealed or obscured from us. We think we know. Katherine explained, “I think I know clay. I walk over the clay under my house and the clay under all of Chicago every day but it is unseen. I stripped away all of the vegetation in the field by my barn and exposed the clay surface I have never seen. I strapped a video camera under the belly of my mule and rode her all over that field. With every step the clay flew into the air. I replanted the field and don’t see the clay anymore.” Clay/soil borings are pipes driven 30 to 40 feet into the clay ground. Pipes filled with clay to be tested before a skyscraper is built on top of it. We never see the exposed clay in Chicago. Encyclopedias were written to record and explain everything. Hundreds of years ago scientists travelled the earth in search of the unknown and unseen. One returned to France, hired an artist to draw the animals from his description for the encyclopedia he was writing. Misremembered or inaccurately explained, the artist drew the mule.” Both installations are a search for ultimately understanding the unknown.
Recommended Citation
Ross, Katherine L., "Katherine L. Ross Artist Lecture" (2019). Past Events. 78, Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/peeler_event/78
Medium
Tzetzegov Erasures (installation detail) 2015 24 x 16 x 4 inches porcelain, polymer clay, antique frame