Traffic Patterns
Kathy Erteman
October 22 – November 19, 2009
The Jane Hartsook Gallery is pleased to present an installation by Kathy Erteman comprised of large scale wall pieces, vessels, and works on paper inspired by views of urban life from her New York City studio. Erteman invites the viewer to visit worlds colored by volcanic rock, unpolished lapis, cracked earth, wet river rocks, worn leather and snow. Erteman has perfected a world of profoundly sensual ceramic glazes to create modular wall-sized installations, the largest measuring 12 feet by 5 feet.
“I am an urban voyeur viewing and recording from above and afar.”
Erteman has continuously subverted expectation throughout her distinguished, three-decade career as a studio ceramic artist. In “Traffic Patterns” Erteman draws on a unexpected and complimentary range of influences: mid-century architecture and decorative arts, abstract expressionism, the minimal grid, European Modernism and the suffused light of her native Southern California. An entire new range of abstracted images display themselves and then recombine in both her paintings on ceramic tablets and in monoprints on Mulberry paper. Texture, color and atmosphere are distilled into luscious ceramic blocks reminiscent of architecture and agriculture. The resulting arrangements offer a dynamic and unexpected story.
Kathy Erteman received her BFA from California State University Long Beach, completed additional studies with Adrian Saxe at UCLA, and interned with Judy Chicago on the Dinner Party after graduation.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in private and public collections including Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian Institute, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts and SC Johnson Collection. She is widely published in design books and periodicals that include The New York Times, American Craft, and Ceramics Monthly.
A full time studio artist and part time teacher, Kathy has taught at Parsons School of Design and been a guest lecturer at The Brooklyn Museum, SUNY New Paltz, Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem and currently teaches at Greenwich House Pottery. She is the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship and EBAY artist technology grant.
Erteman was recently awarded a Professional Fellows Cultural Exchange Fulbright in partnership with Aid to Artisans to work with Tibetan potters in Yunnan, China.
Kathy Erteman was born and raised in Southern California. She began making ceramics in a Los Angeles studio as a teenager. After briefly pursuing academics at UCLA, she returned to the studio and shortly thereafter pursued her art degree. Erteman
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