September – December 2017
A three-dimensional exhibition that features whimsical hand-built ceramic sculptures by Japanese artist Kensuke Yamada and exquisite glass creations by Danville native Stephen Rolfe Powell, and highlights new collaborative pieces created by the artists specifically for this show.
Fire is considered a metaphysical constant of the world. Its tale in our history is as long as the trails of smoke it exudes. Its impact on our figurative and literal landscape radiating into the past, present, and future.
In Greek Mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, but was punished for the gift. The mythical Phoenix is used to signify rebirth, consumed by fire every five hundred years yet rising from the ashes anew. In the practice of alchemy, the elemental weapon of fire is considered to be the wand – and in our case it is the carving tool and the blowpipe. Yet all instruments are used to yield power over their surroundings. At its most elemental, fire is a bonding of the weak and the strong to create an ignition point and finally—a flame.
Each work by each artist has journeyed far. From humble granular beginnings of air, earth, sand, and water to broken tubes of color, mounds of clay, sketches on paper, and drops of paint, they have experienced an odyssey of formation and discovery, manipulated by the hands of two masters and the commonality of two-thousand degrees of heat that binds both the glass and the ceramics.