CROCKERY

Exhibited @ www.gallerythe.org
March 24 through May 2005
Work by: 
Susan Hamburger, Rachel Youen and Daphne Cummings

Three Brooklyn painters in Crockery use dishes to make art. Working 
in divergent ways, they underscore arts non-utilitarian function by 
mining the formal or conceptual in their subject. In doing so, they 
communicate that deep unspeakable connection.

Susan Hamburger's dinnerware sets are decorated with delicately 
hand wrought scenes of historic Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She puts 
an ironic twist on the collectible souvenir. Hamburger  exhibits 
her paintings and installations extensively in Brooklyn and beyond. 
An installation of her plates was seen in Cuchifrito's 2004 "Market 
Value."

In Rachel Youen's still life, the dinner table is a site for an 
ontological centerpiece. She  manipulates a signature palette of 
tertiary colors to methodically rebuild her compositions on canvas. 
She exalts the everyday,  calling into question notions of the valued 
and precious. Youens has been featured in shows at The Painting Center 
and 55 Mercer. She teaches at Pratt and Parsons and is a respected 
critic.

Daphne Cummings exhibits her painterly color sense in poetic 
installations of Pyrex that subsequently become photo opportunities. 
The plain bowls become animated in their  juxtapositions. Her large, 
color-field abstract paintings were recently seen at N3 Project Space 
in Williamsburg.

The Crockery artists take decor to obsession, creating visual feasts. 
In the process, the quotidian becomes the special.