Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:38:49 -0500
From: Forrest Greenslade <>
Subject: Big Easy
Mark Hewitt’s Big-Hearted Pots at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans
On view January 13, 2011- April 10, 2011
Mark Hewitt: Big-Hearted Pots will be on view at the Ogden Museum of the Southern Art in New Orleans, La., January 13 – April 10, 2011. Eighteen of his signature “big pots†(several of them five feet tall and three feet wide), will form Hewitt’s first major exhibition outside his home state of North Carolina.
“Regional pottery traditions are rare; they are like wild flowers that only grow in certain special soils and microclimates,†writes Hewitt. Well-known for his advocacy of North Carolina pottery, Hewitt co-curated the critically acclaimed exhibition, The Potter’s Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina, with Nancy Sweezy, at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2005. Hewitt used the occasion to examine the poetic attributes of 19th-century North Carolina utilitarian pottery, looking at them
through a lens provided by Japanese aesthetes and connoisseurs, and developing a language of appreciation that adds to our understanding of this great American roots tradition.
Last year the British-born potter, who has lived and worked in Pittsboro, North Carolina, for 27 years, was invited to install 12 big pots on the lawn outside Duke University’s Nasher Museum, in a show entitled, Falling Into Place. Writing in the exhibition catalogue, Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, talked about the labors involved in making pots, and about Hewitt’s role in the resurgence of the South’s pottery tradition, “Every day there is work,
hard work; there is local clay to handle, local wood for firing. At the center, with his colleagues from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, stands this tall, handsome man from England, Mark Hewitt – in place, at home – productively, inspirationally at work, a great American master.â€
In the catalogue to the Ogden’s current exhibition, Christopher Benfey, Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, writes, “The vision of North Carolina pottery that Hewitt conveys in his writing and in his work is audacious and compelling. He talks the talk and walks the walk; in doing so, he has bent inherited tradition into potent new shapes. His big-hearted pots are on a truly heroic scale—heroic in conception and execution. They place him in the company of the great folk potters who have preceded and inspired him.â€
Presenting these massive contemporary manifestations of the old tradition in New Orleans seems appropriate, says Hewitt, “This show is my big-hearted gift to a big-hearted city.â€
For a photo, visit: http://chathamartists.blogspot.com/2011/01/hewitt-pottery-featured-in-big-easy.html
*ABOUT THE OGDEN MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN ART/NEW ORLEANS
*The Ogden Museum of Southern Art/University of New Orleans is home to the largest and most comprehensive collection of Southern art in the world, and includes the Center for Southern Craft and Design. Here you will find the story of the South—the old as well as the new, as told through its art, music and education programs. The museum includes Stephen Goldring Hall, which opened in 2003, and two buildings under construction and renovation: the Clementine Hunter Education Wing and the Patrick F. Taylor Library, designed by American 19^th -century architect, Henry Hobson Richardson. Among the many artists represented in the museum’s collection are Benny Andrews, William Dunlap, Ida Kohlmeyer, Will Henry Stevens, Kendall Shaw and George Ohr.
*/Museum hours/*/ are 10 am-5 pm Wednesday through Monday and 6 pm-8 pm Thursday evenings for Ogden After Hours. /
*/Admission:/** *$10 Adults; 
$8 Seniors (65 and over) and Students (with current i.d.); 
$5 Children 5 to 17; Free Children under 5 and Museum members. 
Free except for special events (i.e. Ogden After Hours – $5): University of New Orleans Students, Faculty, Staff (with current i.d.). Thursdays are free to Louisiana residents, courtesy of the Helis Foundation. /Please note other special event prices (such as Ogden After Hours) may vary.
For more information, call 504.539.9600, or go to/ *www.ogdenmuseum.org.*
—
Forrest C. Greenslade. PhD, DTM
Artist, Writer, Speaker
Past President, Chatham Artists Guild
919-545-9743
http://www.forrestgreenslade.com
http://chathamartists.blogspot.com/