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Joan Bontempo Joan Bontempo has been a ceramic artist for more than 25 years, creating both traditional functional works and expressive, abstract sculpture. She received her BFA in ceramics from Notre Dame, and her MFA from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Joan and her husband, J.P. Lynn, a photographer and woodworker, recently moved to rural Washington County, and opened B.L.Ink arts, their studios and gallery space located at 215 W. Main St., in Sharpsburg, MD. She presently is a full-time instructor at Hagerstown Community College, where she teaches ceramics and Art History. Her work includes stoneware pottery, Raku technique and mixed-media sculpture which combines clay with painted canvases, metals and found objects. She has shown in galleries, museums and universities in regional and national exhibits since 1977. Selected exhibitions, lectures and workshops include:
Marin-Price Galleries, Chevy Chase, MD; Washington County Arts Council Gallery, Hagerstown MD; Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD; New Art Forms Exposition, Navy Pier, Chicago IL; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit MI; as well as other exhibits in Indiana. California, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Louisiana.
Artist statement:
Standing at the worktable, with the vision of the next piece in my head, my hands on wet clay, is the moment.
I long ago chose to work with clay precisely because it responds to the way I think. To the way I see.
Visions inspired by contrasts, unorthodox use of a traditional material, the immediacy of clay.
The ultimate structured permanence of a soft, pliable unformed substance.
Inspirations of private thought, spiritual place, memories, fantasies.
Work comes to me first in quiet thought, turning the vision over and over in my head, then immediate action bringing the work alive, yet letting it dictate how it is finished.
My figures and the wall-hung or free-standing ?places? that are created for them are meant to invite interpretations. The 'figures" are actually absent - it is a shell that is seen. The work that is "surrounding" or pedestals are dilapidated or frenzied, not protective or ceremonial. Both figures and abstractions are in transition between endurance and destruction.
Functional work seems to spring from the simple enjoyment of creating work always in a series, and is inspired by traditional forms. But the traditional forms are pinched, pulled, stretched and marked, making them asymmetrical and unorthodox, and each one in the series unique.
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