PETER LENZO Ceramic Heads Now @ if ART Gallery

Columbia, S.C., Peter Lenzo's ceramic heads are now available at if ART Gallery. The gallery already carried Lenzo's 1990s mixed-media altar pieces but now also represents Lenzo for the his ceramic work, for which the artist has developed a big reputation and large following in the past decade. The heads developed from Lenzo's early fascination   with Southern face jugs. To read about Lenzo's path to creating ceramic heads, 
CLICK HERE.

For an artist's statement about the work, CLICK HERE.

Oak Park #4, Brain Damage Recovery
(A Little) Xoxox, 2011
Stoneware, nichrome, glazes, wire, porcelain slip
and found objects, 7 1/2 x 5 x 4 1/2 in., $500
For Additional Views CLICK HERE

Oak Park #2, Reborn With Legs (3), 2011
Stoneware, nichrome, glazes, wire, porcelain slip
and found objects, 8 1/2 x 5 x 4 in., $500
For Additional Views CLICK HERE

Why Can't We Be Friends?, 2010
Stoneware, nichrome wire, porcelain slip and
found objects
27 x 12 x 9 in., $5,000
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, Maybe, 2011, 9 x 9 x 9 in.,

stoneware, nichrome, wire, porcelain,

 glazes, found object, $800
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, Pain Inside Here, 2011,

stoneware, nichrome, wire, porcelain,

 glazes, found object, 

11 x 9 x 8 in., $750
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, Try To Remember, 2011,

stoneware, nichrome, wire, porcelain,

 glazes, found object, 

12 x 8.5 x 7 in., $700
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, Wish I Knew I Was, 2011,

stoneware, nichrome, wire, porcelain,

 glazes, found object, 

14 x 7 x 7.5 in., $1,000
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, "Untitled", 2010, 
stoneware, nichrome, wire, porcelain,

 glazes, found object, 

24.5 x 18 x 12 in., $5,000 

Peter Lenzo and Michel Bayne, Untitled,

2007, stoneware, nichrome, wire,

porcelain, glazes, found object, 

13 x 11.5 x 9 in., $1,000 
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, Tribute To Michael Jackson,

2011, stoneware,

porcelain, glazes, found object, 

12.5 x 8.5 x 8 in., $900 
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, Suicide II,

2011, stoneware, nichrome, wire,

porcelain, glazes, found object, 

15 x 11 x 15 in., $1,900 
For additional views CLICK HERE

Peter Lenzo, "Untitled", 2010,
stoneware, nichrome, wire, porcelain,

 glazes, found object, 

24.5 x 18 x 12 in. (alternate view), 

$5,000 

Peter Lenzo, This Is About Asking For 

Hell, 2010, stoneware, nichrome,
wire, porcelain, glazes, found object,

16 x 10 x 8 in., $1,200
For additional views CLICK HERE

PETER LENZO: Artist's Statement About Ceramic Heads/Face Jugs

           The impetus for my ceramic sculptures came from traditional Southern face jugs. I had switched to working in clay exclusively in the 1990s. I had been making sculptural assemblages but had to stop because I couldn’t use a table saw any longer as I increasingly suffered from seizures, which are the result of brain damage sustained in a bicycle accident in my youth. Table saws and seizures don’t mix.

            I always had been intrigued by face jugs, especially those made by Southern slaves. At my middle school, we tried to develop teaching materials that appealed to our African-American students, and so I decided to have them make face jugs. I had never made any, so I first created several myself. The first ones I didn’t quite like, and so I made some more. Each batch got better, but more importantly, when I finished a batch, I couldn’t wait to make the next one. It just seemed to be in my bones. It felt like I had made them before – that I was catching up where I had left off. I wanted to let everything go in my current life and go back to a previous one that I had discovered. I once was lost and now was found.

            From the jugs I came to the current, more elaborate sculptures. It started when my then 4-year-old son Joe started to stick pottery chards, which I used for teeth, in one of my jugs. All over: nose, eyes, lips. He went wild. Then he started to stick other objects in them, like a ceramic snake. I began to help him and gradually really liked the results. My style was very different, and I had much more respect for the face, but to this day, Joe claims that he made me famous.

if ARTwalk: Salon I & II: December 11- 24, 2008

For exhibition installation images, click here.

THE SALON I & II

Dec. 11 – 24, 2008

an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations:

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady Street

&

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln Street

Reception and ifART Walk: Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 – 10 p.m.

at and between both locations

Opening Hours:

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.

& by appointment

Open Christmas Eve until 7 p.m.

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its December 2008 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents The Salon I & II, an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations: if ART Gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. On Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m., if ART will hold opening receptions at both locations. The ifART Walk will be on Lady and Lincoln Streets, between both locations, which are around the corner from each other.

The exhibitions will present art by if ART Gallery artists, installed salon-style at both Gallery 80808 and if ART. Artists in the exhibitions include two new additions to if ART Gallery, Columbia ceramic artist Renee Rouillier and the prominent African-American collage and mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, an 81-year-old expatriate who has lived in the Netherlands since the early 1960s.

Other artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Aaron Baldwin, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Stephen Chesley, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, Jerry Harris, Bill Jackson, Sjaak Korsten, Peter Lenzo, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Matt Overend, Anna Redwine, Paul Reed, Edward Rice, Silvia Rudolf, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, Mike Williams, David Yaghjian, Paul Yanko and Don Zurlo.

Essay: Peter Lenzo

The Pink Chair, early 1990s

Wood, buttons, cast porcelain

25 x 16 1/4 x 16 in

$1,400

PETER LENZO

By Wim Roefs

2005

Peter Lenzo’s work of the 1990s was in part about dichotomies, both conceptually and aesthetically. In his Virgin Mary Gun Altar series, he combined symbols of Christianity and violence. In his Bed Pan Altar series, the bedpans first attracted Lenzo because of their beautiful shapes, which belied the revulsion the objects trigger with many. By combining the bedpans with altar constructions, Lenzo juxtaposed something sacred with a device designed to facilitate basic bodily functions, although the combination came about for aesthetical, not conceptual reasons. “I thought they looked beautiful together,” Lenzo says. “I liked the soft, succulent, curving lines of the bedpan contained by the rigid, perfect geometric lines of the altar pointing toward God.”

Lenzo began making portable altars after seeing them in European churches and a museum. The main impetus for the work was not, he says, a need to make a statement but his desire to make art that is aesthetically beautiful. “I think that in all art, no matter what message you try to convey, you need to satisfy the aesthetic element first. And if you are building something, you also need to satisfy all aspects of craftsmanship first.” 

He combined religious symbolism with guns in part because of his visceral, negative response to guns when he was younger, a response matched only at times by a – positive – religious experience. Lenzo also saw Christianity and violence, from domestic violence to war, as icons for American society, regardless of whether they go hand in hand. Reading his art as social and political criticism would surpass his intent, Lenzo says, even if it would lead to conclusions about society that ring true to him. “I am not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings or disgust people or make fun of religion. I’d rather have people look at the works as beautiful.”

Lenzo stopped making the altar pieces in the late 1990s. The increased frequency of epileptic seizures brought on by a 1981 traffic accident and the numbing effect of his medication made cutting small pieces of wood on a table saw too dangerous. Lenzo returned to ceramics, creating face jugs and full-body figurative sculptures. 

Wim Roefs

Biography: Peter Lenzo

Peter Lenzo (second from the left) and another South 

Carolina clay artist, Michel Bayne (second from the right)

Baseball Urinal Altar, ca. 1993

Found wood, baseball gloves, baseball cards, slip-cast and handmade porcelain

38 x 22 x 9 ¼ in

$1,400

Peter Lenzo (b. 1955) is a New York City native living in Columbia, S.C. He holds an MFA from Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., and is the founder of Southern Pottery Workcenter and Gallery in Columbia, though no longer the owner. Lenzo was selected for the 1995 and 1998 S.C. Triennials as well as for Tresholds, a traveling 2004 exhibition of Southeastern art dealing with religion and spirituality. His work is in several museums, including the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Lenzo’s solo shows include those at the Spartanburg (S.C.) Museum of Art, the European Ceramic Work Center in Den Bosch, The Netherlands, and the prestigious Ferrin Gallery in Lenox, Mass.

Article on Bedpan Altars: Columbia Record

Bedpan Altar, c. 1995

Found wood, enameled steel, varnish

20 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 5 1/4 in

$750

The Columbia Record

December 11, 2005

Artist Peter Lenzo's 1990s series of Bedpan Altars are on view at Gallery 80808, Vista Studios, at 808 Lady Street in the Vista district of Columbia. The artworks are part of a group show called "Construction Crew". The show presents works of art that have strong constructional or architectural qualities. In addition to Lenzo, who is from Columbia, the exhibition includes work by Edward Rice of North Augusta, S.C.; Kim Keats of Okatie, S.C., near Beaufort; and Klaus Hartmann of Kaiserslautern, Germany. The exhibition is on view through December 21. Opening hours are Sunday, 1:00 – 5:00 p.m.; Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.; and weekdays, 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. For more information, please call the show's curator, Wim Roefs, at (803) 238-2351.

Lenzo's Bedpan Altars are the topic of an article by The State's art critic Jeffrey Day in the newspaper's Sunday Life & Arts section of December 11, page E2. Day discusses the minor controversy that has sprung up around Lenzo's altar pieces. In the artworks, Lenzo placed bedpans of enameled steel or antique porcelain in altar-like structures. After The State showed a photograph of one of the Bedpan Altars on Sunday, December 4, some readers were offended by the combination of the sacred with bedpans, which mostly are used by ill or injured, bed-ridden people unable to take themselves to the bathroom. Agitated readers presumably assumed that artist Lenzo's aim was to be critical of religion, especially Christianity. One reader wrote to The State that Lenzo's art is "sacrilegious garbage."

In the exhibition, Lenzo also shows two versions of his "Virgin Mary Gun Altar." Those are wooden boxes containing plastic and ceramic guns and statues of the Virgin Mary. 

In the catalogue to the exhibition, Lenzo says of the Bedpan Altars: "I thought they looked beautiful together. I liked the soft, succulent, curving lines of the bedpan contained by the rigid, perfect geometric lines of the altar pointing toward God." Lenzo said he began making portable altars after seeing them in European churches and a museum. The main impetus for the work was not, he says, a need to make a statement but his desire to make art that is aesthetically beautiful. “I think that in all art, no matter what message you try to convey, you need to satisfy the aesthetic element first. And if you are building something, you also need to satisfy all aspects of craftsmanship first.” 

Reading his art as social and political criticism would surpass his intent, Lenzo said, even if it would lead to conclusions about society that ring true to him. “I am not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings or disgust people or make fun of religion. I’d rather have people look at the works as beautiful.” If people look for meaning in the work, Lenzo told curator Roefs, he'd prefer them to look at the bedpans as devices of care, used by nurses and other caregivers to facilitate the natural, God-given bodily functions of patients. Roefs wrote the catalogue essay and posted this item on TheColumbiaRecord.com.

Lenzo told art writer Day: "The reaction (of those finding his work offensive) makes me sad a little bit. I felt my motives were always respectful. I have always had a deep and abiding respect for God."

The Inventory: February 15-26, 2008

Bedpan Altar, c. 1995

Found wood, enameled steel, varnish

18 1/2 x 10 3/4 x 6 1/2 in

$750

if ART

presents at

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

THE INVENTORY:

A Group Show of if ART artists

Feb. 15 – 26, 2008

Artists’ Reception: Friday, Feb. 15, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 238-2351 – wroefs@sc.rr.com

For its February exhibition, if ART presents The Inventory, a group exhibition of artists from if ART Gallery. The show will consist of many new works by if ART artists as well as older pieces from the gallery’s inventory.

Included in the show will be work by Columbia artists Jeff Donovan, Mary Gilkerson, Marcelo Novo, Anna Redwine and David Yaghjian. Other South Carolina artists include Carl Blair, Jeri Burdick, Phil Garrett, Bill Jackson, Peter Lenzo, Dorothy Netherland, Matt Overend, Edward Rice, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, H. Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Katie Walker and Paul Yanko. Furthermore, the show will present work by former South Carolina residents Tonya Gregg, Eric Miller and Andy Moon. Also included are California collage artist Jerry Harris, Dutch painter Kees Salentijn and German artists Roland Albert, Klaus Hartmann and Silvia Rudolf.