John Balistreri: By and Large

JOHN BALISTRERI: B Y A N D L A R G E

John Balistreri in his studio with work in progress. Courtesy of artist.

JOHN BALISTRERI:BY AND LARGEMay 2 - August 12, 2014

Belger Crane Yard Gallery2011 Tracy Avenue,

Kansas City, Missouri

John Balistreri loading sculptures into gas kiln. Courtesy of artist.

My first studio encounter with artist John Balistreri was within an industrial com-plex of buildings in Omaha, Nebraska, that had become “command central” for international artist Jun Kaneko around the time of the new millennium. Sherry Leedy, artist and Director of Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, and I were visiting Jun’s studio on the occasion of a visit by another international artist, Peter Voulkos, who was utilizing one of Jun’s studio spaces to create a new series of his acclaimed stacks.

Walking into that space, one sensed the presence of living history and an unbro-ken chain of artistic mentorship, fellow-ship, and friendship. Three generations of artists worked collaboratively, side-by-side as Terry Allen’s Truckload of Art blared on the stereo. Kaneko moved qui-etly between his three-dimensional dango sculptures and two-dimensional wall slabs, brush in hand, applying glaze with deliberate strokes. Voulkos danced and shuffled around the perimeter of a growing tower of clay, pushing and pull-ing at its thick walls as if testing its struc-tural integrity. Suspended in mid-air, Bal-istreri hung from an industrial, mecha-nized ceiling hoist as it carried him across the room, before lowering him gently into the mouth of the giant stack. This clay sleeve concealed his frame completely, its interior large enough to accommodate the span of his shoulders.

Once inside, he worked quickly to smooth together a series of slab rings he had helped Voulkos build earlier to a height above seven feet. As he jostled within the interior, Voulkos pressed inward, breaking through the wall to reveal glimpses of Balistreri’s perspiring face. They shared a know-ing laugh at their collision of efforts to construct and deconstruct the same form.

It is this moment that I briefly recall upon entering By and Large, the new solo exhibition of monumental-scale ceramic sculptures, paintings and works on paper by John Balistreri pre-miering at the Belger Crane Yard Gal-lery. This gallery is at the center of the new Belger Crane Yard Studios, a four-building complex that recently opened in Kansas City, Missouri. It cur-rently houses Red Star Studios and Crane Yard Clay supply, a metal work-shop, studio spaces for independent ceramic artists, and The Lawrence Lithography Workshop. Perched on a ledge above the main railway through town, this complex of industrial brick buildings is a dream realized by Dick Belger, President of Belger Cartage Service, Inc, and Evelyn Craft Belger, Chief Financial Officer of Belger and Executive Director of Belger Arts Center. Belger Arts Center is located within Belger Cartage headquarters in the nearby Crossroads Arts District of Kansas City.

John Balistreri

John Balistreri’s works in progress. Photo courtesy of artist.

The gallery feels transformed into a hall for giants as the scale of Balistreri’s totemic forms gesture outward to com-fortably occupy six-thousand-square feet of exhibition space. Standing as a five-foot sentinel near the entrance of the exhibition is Ogallala Hindsight, a 2014 stoneware sculpture that would have once seemed large within Balistreri’s oeuvre. Its formal presence here serves as a visual hinge, a point of departure from Balistreri’s earlier works in which the artist passionately pursued an ancient wood-firing process to create a series of “Geocubic” abstractions. These golem-like monoliths simultane-ously pay homage to the origins of pot-tery while merging figure and landscape, signifying humankind’s complex and fragile relationship with nature. Refer-encing the world’s largest underground aquifer beneath the Great Plains, now in danger of drying up, Balistreri’s Ogallala continues this narrative with an arid form that appears built by ancient Pueblo architects warning of a Machine-Age myth of endless water.

Balistreri’s sculptures predating By and Large, with their references to frag-mented planes, ships, and architecture, seem to dismantle the Military Industrial Complex in order to examine its mythol-ogy.

In Balistreri’s By and Large, however, we begin to see forms that appear genera-tive, as if engaged in a process of addi-tive and organic growth. Within their individual elements one may still see an imbedded history of Balistreri’s form language with shapes that echo a wing, boat, or gears, yet each is now employed within an interconnected and interde-pendent structural system. The surface design of these sculptures is also unified by a sectional patterning that is ripe with organic and life-giving color — an optical camouflage that turns them into “dazzle ships” that slow our view to a careful scan.

These new works are an evocation of artistic invention inspired by a range of formal influences, while they also invoke reverence for the artist’s relationship with Jun Kaneko, who provided access to his large-scale kilns for the creation of these sculptures. Beginning with the nautical reference in the exhibition’s title, which translates from the early days of sailing to mean an ability to adjust a vessel’s rigging to sail both into (by) and with (large) the wind, the maker implies a similar effort in his creation of this work. Representing more than two years of production, access to special-ized equipment and staff, and harness-ing significant resources, Balistreri’s exhibition encompasses some of his reoccurring themes while also moving into new territory.

Ogallala Hindsight, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 63” x 30“ x 21”. Courtesy of artist.

Installation view of By and Large at Belger Crane Yard Gallery. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Pilot, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 134” x 62“ x 24”. Courtesy of artist.

Beyond a literal translation of the exhibition’s title, and further evidence of Balistreri’s aeronautical and oceanic ref-erences in work titles such as At Sea, Pilot, and Float, other art-historical influ-ences are recognized or inferred. Within sculptures such as Five by Five, El Cora-zon, Crane, and Leather Connector, one recalls a similar biomorphic abstraction in the forms of Modernism’s mature sculptors such as Jacques Lipchitz or Jean (Hans) Arp. Something distinctly Mid-Century also pervades the artist’s selection of two-dimensional patterns and colors. His designs and illustrative palette resonate with artists such as painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet, installation artist, writer and performer Yayoi Kusama, and even some 1960’s Psychedelia as evidenced in Sunfish 68. Further references may be drawn between sculptures such as Crane, Reef, and Eighty Four, and the idealized robotic style of a 20th Century Star Trek, not to mention a 1980’s Post-Modern Pop bend similar to Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, or the designs of the Italian Memphis Group.

Diverse stylistic references abound in Balistreri’s two-dimensional paintings and works on paper as well. In the con-text of this exhibition they provide more than a foil for the artist’s sculptures and are possessive of a parallel energy all their own.

In paintings such as Resistance/Insistence, Weather Machine, and Sail or Swim, one may see a network of broken lines and passages of blended and mottled color, while Balistreri’s Transmitter triptych possesses a more graphic form lan-guage that echoes the brain-coral pat-terning picked up in the artist’s sculpture Reef. As with Jun Kaneko and Peter Voulkos before him, Balistreri mines a hybrid realm between drawing, painting, and sculpture in which each is in con-tinual dialogue with the other. Mean-while the imprint of the artist remains intact throughout the translation.

One may return to the symbolism, indig-enous cultural references, and structure of a totem to perhaps best describe Balistreri’s artistic journey. Throughout his life’s work, Balistreri has included his-torical art and cultural references in his personal visions, while remaining humble in his homage to those who have come before him. He remains the workman, constructing his identity brick-by-brick, stack-by-stack, while helping others to achieve greatness. In Balistreri’s totem, he may set aside the loftiest places for those winged ances-tors who have taken flight through their achievements. It is Balistreri, however, who stands firmly as the totem’s base, holding members of his tribe aloft so that we may best see their colorful splendor. In so doing, he too becomes illuminated.

- Marcus Cain

At Sea, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 47” x 35“ x 12”. Courtesy of artist.

Float, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 56” x 34”. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

El Corazon, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 70” x 31” x 13”. Courtesy of artist.

Weather Machine, 2014, acrylic on paper, 47” x 34” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

North Wind, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 119” x 52” x 30”. Courtesy of artist.

Sail or Swim, 2014, acrylic on paper, 47” x 34” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Five By Five, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 79” x 24” x 24”. Courtesy of artist.

Installation view of By and Large. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Leather Connector, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 80” x 37” x 32”. Courtesy of artist.

Glide, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 80” x 48”. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Sun�sh 68, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze,134” x 62” x 24”. Courtesy of artist.

Untitled #9, 2014, acrylic on paper, 35.5” x 27” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Signal, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 79” x 48” x 22”. Courtesy of artist.


Sky, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 113” x 50” x 22”. Courtesy of artist.

Sympatico, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 56” x 34”. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Re�ector, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 80” x 48”. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Blue Note, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 45” x 20” x 13”. Courtesy of artist.

Crane, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 109” x 47” x 39”. Courtesy of artist.


Reef, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 124” x 55” x 31”. Courtesy of artist.

Resistance/Insistence, 2014, acrylic on paper, 47” x 34” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.


Transmitter Z, 2014, acrylic on paper, 56” x 34” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Transmitter X, 2014, acrylic on paper, 56” x 34” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Transmitter Y, 2014, acrylic on paper, 56” x 34” framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Eighty Four, 2014, stoneware, colored slip, glaze, 104” x 54“ x 21”. Courtesy of artist.


John Balistreri in his studio with completed work. Courtesy of artist.

Born in 1962, American artist John Balistreri serves as Professor of Art at Bowling Green State University, Bowl-ing Green, Ohio, where he leads that institution’s Ceramics Program. Balistreri received his Master of Fine Arts from Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri, and an Associate of Business from Colorado Mountain College, Leadville, Colorado. During his profes-sorship, Balistreri has been awarded two U.S. patents for the development of innovative methods in three-dimensional printing with ceramics, and he has received numerous professional grants and funding for investi-gative technology and research in his �eld of interest. Balistreri’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, and his work has been written about extensively in several books and publications. Balistreri’s work is also represented in such public collections as the Shiwan Treasure Pottery Museum, China, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio, Foshan Ancient Nanfeng Kiln Museum, China, the American Ceramic Museum, Pomona, Califor-nia, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri, the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City Missouri, and the American Ceramic Society, Columbus, Ohio. (www.johnbalistreriartist.com)

Portrait of John Balistreri with completed works. Courtesy of artist.

BBelger Arts Center

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Transmitter X (detail), 2014, acrylic on paper, 56" x 34" framed. Courtesy of Belger Crane Yard Gallery.


Documents

John Balistreri: By and Large