Jefferson County Historical Society Lectures Jefferson Museum of Art History June 7

PORT TOWNSEND — Normally, when a potter sits at a cycle to plow and create, the focus is on keeping the work together in one smooth slice.

However, for Port Townsend potter Anne Hirondelle, 76, her style is to turn pieces, cutting them apart and reassemble them into other cohesive pieces of art.

Hirondelle'south art is now the focus of the new showroom "Not Done Nonetheless" at the Jefferson Museum of Art & History, 540 H2o St.

The showroom officially opened Friday, replacing the Drew Elicker exhibit, and allows the public to view on the main show floor Hirondelle's newer work, combining pottery techniques to make three-dimensional sculptures and layering tracing newspaper for iii-dimensional like drawings.

In the basement nigh the erstwhile jail, other older pieces by Hirondelle are on display from when she was practicing more than traditional multi-office glazed white stoneware pieces through turning and using a tool called an "extruder" to class handles and spouts.

Hirondelle is honored to take her art in the exhibit at the museum.

"It's fabulous … information technology'southward actually quite humbling," Hirondelle said. "Having been living and working here for 42 years, it'southward an accolade.

"It just feels correct that I can share this work with the community."

Hirondelle has been practicing her art in Port Townsend for the concluding 42 years and she was first noticed nationally later Ceramics Monthly mag published a feature on her in 1986, she said.

"Once the article came out, I was invited to galleries all around the nation," Hirondelle said.

Hirondelle was raised on a subcontract in Salem, Ore. before earning a bachelor'due south degree in English language at the University of Puget Sound and a master's caste in counseling at Stanford University, then attending the University of Washington'southward School of Law for a year before discovering her passion for ceramics.

She attended a one-year ceramics program at the Mill of Visual Arts in Seattle from 1973 to 1974 and and then later on received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington, Hirondelle said.

Members of the Jefferson County Historical Guild admire the "Not Done Yet" exhibit of artwork by Anne Hirondelle at the showroom's preview nighttime Thursday at the Jefferson Museum of Art & History. (Zach Jablonski/Peninsula Daily News)

For more xx years, she focused on the glazed stoneware vessels, taking inspiration from traditional functional pots and making them into architectural and organic sculptural forms, Hirondelle said.

In the early 2000s, she started moving away from the glazed pieces, and started to aggrandize into painting the pieces or leaving them as white clay.

Many of her pieces have a circular shape incorporated into the sculpture, as homage to her kickoff of turning more traditional vessels, Hirondelle said.

She no longer glazes her pieces and they are more sculptures than modeled afterwards working vessels, she said.

The combination of bike turning, another technique called "coiling" (laying strips of clay to build upwards), paint/no-color, the extruder and rearranged parts are what defines a lot of her work now, Hirondelle said.

The time it takes her to make each piece is not the of import focus for Hirondelle, she said.

"Its not how long a piece takes," Hirondelle said. "Its more than the process of learning, training and growing."

Hirondelle was feeling slightly anxious but excited before the official opening of the exhibit.

"I feel like the opening of the show is like opening 1 of my glaze burn down kilns," Hirondelle said. "I accept to be accepting of how things happen. If things don't become right, to pick upwardly and start again.

"I feel like firing is a metaphor for life."

The championship of the showroom "Not Washed Withal" references her drive to go on working on new projects and growing as an artist.

"I merely beloved to work," Hirondelle said. "Working helps me make sense of my life."

Port Townsend artist and potter Anne Hirondelle stands next to her "Portraits," pieces that combine stoneware and other natural materials such as lichen and horsehair. The pieces are on display at the Jefferson Museum of Art & History and are part of Hirondelle's "Not Done All the same" exhibit. (Zach Jablonski/Peninsula Daily News)

The exhibit was curated by Ann Welch, a long-fourth dimension friend and a fan of Hirondelle'due south work.

"When selecting the pieces for this testify I wanted to include the work that she is most known for as well as serial that have non been as widely shown," said Welch.

"Anne is e'er working. She has ane of the about disciplined studio practices that you'll always detect," Welch continued.

"She takes an idea and works it until she has explored all of its possibilities. Her work is fearless. She takes on new forms and ideas without regard to their commercial appeal."

I work that is among Welch's favorites and one of Hirondelle's more unique works is a collection named "the Portraits," which combine stoneware bowls and other materials such equally lichen and horse hair and is one of the few sculptures she'southward fabricated that doesn't solely use dirt.

"I see a span between her before more earthy pieces and the newer work," Welch said. "Using natural materials and institute objects feels transitional and on the path to the purely clay and painted pieces."

The exhibit will be on display until June 22, and the public will have a hazard to run across with her at an creative person talk on March 26 from v p.grand. to 6:thirty p.m. and also from 5:xxx p.m. to 8 p.m. during the First Sabbatum Art Walk on Apr four for a volume reading of "Straight Art" at the Jefferson Museum of Fine art and History.

More information and photos of Hirondelle'due south work can be found at annehirondelle.com.

________

Jefferson County reporter Zach Jablonski can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 5, or at [electronic mail protected].

Anne Hirondelle's older pieces are on brandish in the basement of the Jefferson Museum of Art & History most the quondam jail. All the pieces are glazed stoneware and were made from multiple separate pieces combined into one. (Zach Jablonski/Peninsula Daily News)

doughertygreasse.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/entertainment/potter-exhibited-at-jefferson-museum-of-art-history/