Ceramic art balloons into massive undertaking

BALTIMORE -- During the next few months, it will be nearly impossible to view art in Baltimore without seeing works in clay. That's the goal of the Tour de Clay, a celebration of ceramic artwork that has ballooned into what organizers say is the largest-ever visual arts program in the United States.\nThe numbers are staggering: 122 exhibit spaces, 160 shows, 878 artists. The pottery on display ranges from functional to whimsical, renowned to obscure, mainstream to avant-garde.\n"You know what Mae West said too much of a good thing is wonderful," said Deborah Bedwell, executive director of the nonprofit art center Baltimore Clayworks, who was largely responsible for putting the Tour together.\nThe exhibits opened Feb. 19, with a reception at Baltimore Clayworks, and run through April 3. They will reach their zenith from March 16-19, during the annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts.\nThe Tour de Clay emerged from extensive lobbying by Bedwell and her colleagues for Baltimore Clayworks to host the NCECA conference, which is typically held by universities. Once she landed the conference, she discovered that nearly every component of the city's cultural community wanted to be involved in one way or another.\n"We began to talk to them, and it was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to be a part," Bedwell said. "Every college is participating. Every university is participating. Every museum is participating. All the art centers are participating."\nAfter Bedwell and the tour's organizing committee began sifting through between 300 and 400 proposed exhibitions, the mammoth scope of the event became apparent. As a result, of course, it's impossible to see all the exhibitions, but the Tour de Clay is providing materials on its Web site and elsewhere to help people sort through the shows and pick out the ones they might like.\n"It's like a smorgasbord," Bedwell said. "You're not going to be able to have a bowl of everything on it, but you'll enjoy the meal."\nBaltimore Clayworks, headquartered in two historical buildings in the artsy enclave of Mount Washington, is hosting three exhibitions. The first includes nine works by Richard De Vore, one of the most renowned ceramic artists working today. De Vore creates elegant, egg-shaped pieces that are deceptively simple at first glance but reveal great nuance and complexity upon closer inspection.\n"If you look at it from afar, you think, well, it's some kind of decorative vessel," said Leigh Taylor Mickelson, exhibitions director at Baltimore Clayworks. "But if you get up close to it, you see that it references the body and flesh. So what he's really doing is pairing two of the oldest forms since the beginning of time -- earth and flesh."\nNot all the work is so serious, or artistically complex. Baltimore Clayworks is also hosting a touring show called the International Cone Box Exhibition, with colorful, whimsical pieces small enough to fit inside a box of "pyrometric cones" that potters use to gauge the heat of their kilns. The boxes are 3 inches wide, 3 inches high and 6 inches long.\nAmong the items are a scrumptious pair of green asparagus stalks and a pink perfume bottle with the head of a kangaroo. The cone box show is "immensely popular," Bedwell said, and many of the pieces on the display have already sold.\nAnother exhibit spotlights the family of glazes called Shino, which originated in Japan and can lead to delightful variations in color and texture. Several pieces have a mottled appearance; black spots appear on the pottery as a result of a process called carbon trapping, when soda ash reacts with the carbon in a kiln's atmosphere.\nIn his studio space and workshop across the street from the Baltimore Clayworks gallery, artist in residence Matthew Hyleck, who has a piece on display in the Shino exhibition, was working one recent morning on other pieces to show and he hopes to sell during the Tour de Clay. It's a tremendous opportunity to showcase his work, said Hyleck, who makes functional stoneware and porcelain.\n"I'm trying to make as much work as I possibly can. I'm in six different venues throughout the area. ... Right now I'm about as stressed as I get," the soft-spoken artist said.\nHyleck prefers to work with Shino glazes, he said, because it "really has a lot of visual depth. There's an extraordinary amount of texture. You can find areas where you just kind of lose yourself"