It was a Dream and a Vision, and now a Reality!

Jesse White and I are at the opening reception of "Clay Monoprints:  Dreams, Visions, and Alternate Realities - An Exhibit of Works by Susan Richards".  Jesse is the Director of Arts and Spirituality at Pendle Hill, A Quaker Study, Retreat, and Conference Center in Wallingford, PA. 

  
It takes a very special place to even have an Arts and Spirituality Program!   I am grateful that Jesse asked me to exhibit my clay monoprints. 

She is a great curator.  I enjoyed working with her to hang the show in The Tree Rooms Gallery, and appreciated how she thought about creating coherence between walls as well as within them.  I love the result!

These two are so perfect together on their own wall:

  
All but one of the others hang unframed:

They are printed on an industrial substrate called Reemay, which is heavy and fabric-like enough that they can hang on their own like Chinese scrolls, and don't really need to be under glass. 

I also included a dried and fired clay slab that had been used for printing, together with the last print that had been pulled from it when it was in use:

This is what the slab looked like, as it was drying out and cracking, before it was fired:

Since the pigments we add to slip (a very thinned form of clay) in order to paint with clay are water-based and not intended to be fired, as are e.g. glazes, the slab fired monochromatically, almost like a photographic negative of its final print.   Hopefully being able to look at the slab up close together with its last print helps people conceptualize how the prints are made.

There is a reason the gallery is called The Tree Rooms Gallery.  The windows look out on the beautiful Pendle Hill grounds.

The reception was very well attended.  It was great to see old friends and to make new ones.  Here I am greeting John Meyer, the Communications and Outreach Coordinator, who designed the wonderful flyer:

Susan Turkel and Mark Hillegonds looking at the clay slab:

My brother-in-law David taking a photo of a mixed-media clay monoprint - a clay monoprint with added ceramic pieces and seed pods.

John Benigno, from my DEEP SIX group was there with his wife Chris, as was Melvin Chappell, another DEEP SIXer.

Sue Long, from our Women With A View artists group:

I guess I talked with my hands, during my artist's talk:

I had tools in the blue tote bag to help illustrate how clay monoprints are made.  The bag was made from my print Unexpected Doorway at https://pixels.com/profiles/susan-richards.html/:

Making clay monoprints has been an unexpected doorway for me, as has this exhibit.  I know that making clay monoprints will be part of my art practice as long as I am able.  I am grateful to Mitch Lyons for so patiently developing clay monoprinting and for teaching and sharing it so generously.