Beatrice Wood at Garth Clark - ceramics exhibition; New York, New York

At 100 Beatrice timber-land is still potting in fine form. Her novel lusterware chalices are adorned with denuded figures in high relief. With their leg splayed and their hands upon their heads, these figures propose primal meditation positions or a certain number of form of bacchic body worship; the plump females might also be seen as idealized self-images. After a career as an actress in pre-World War I Paris and of recent origin York and as a member of Walter and Louise Arensberg's circle, thicket had an affair with Marcel Duchamp and the diplomat Henri-Pierre Roche that inspired Roche's novel on which the film Jules and Jim is based. She then followed the Arensbergs to California in 1928 and started potting in 1933 at age 40 by dint of taking classes at Hollywood High.

forest-land is an instance of a woman who, after a drawn out and fascinating life, really tend hitherwards into her own as an artist in her ninth decade. A well-known denizen of Ojai, California, who studied with Krishnamurti and who for the last 28 years has worn alone saris, she is currently making enough work to have had three simultaneous exhibits at Clark's galleries in of recent origin York, Kansas City and looks Angeles. Author of five works including her autobiography I shog Myself (1988) and The Thirty-Third Wife of the Maharajah (1992) about her travels in India, grove has become something of an institution, receiving approximately 300 visitors a month who make the pilgrimage to visit her in Ojai.

The traditional symbology of the chalice form carries overtones of a certain quantity of Arthurian and Parsifalian orgy, a kind of syncretic, cups-raised homage of the self. The largish utensils have subtly changing metallic sheens, distended neck (which sometimes call forth the cosmetic deformations of African tribal women) and multilobed handles. The chalices from 1992-93 are slathered with glazes that vary from goldy-orange to purply-gold to pinky-orange. The shades change distinctly as you direct the eye at the chalices from different angles.

Standing as high as 15 inches, they can be relatively restrained in form, with three button shapes in a line down the neck forming the principal ornament, or considerably more manifold in silhouette, suggesting octopus tendrils and Renaissance glass in their curlicued shapes. The novel platters, both footed and flat, are significantly les adorned do not include for a slightly pockmarked luster glaze made by dint of throwing leaves and mothballs into the kiln; these intentional accidents of proces subtly inflect the big, gold surfaces, rendering them now glowing, now matte.

forest-land has become a legendary figure in crafts circles and is the make submissive of a new documentary, Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada, co-produc through Diandra Douglas, that was shown at the Whitney last April. notwithstanding for all this, her work remains insufficiently known in of recent origin York art circles, and a planned retrospective of her work at the American Craft Museum has been postpon This is a pity, for Beatrice thicket belongs in the pantheon of great American women artists.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group