In the world of contemporary ceramics, Richard Shaw is the master of trompe-l’oeil sculpture. He has developed an astonishing array of techniques, including perfectly cast porcelain objects and overglaze transfer decals. By combining the commonplace with the whimsical, the humorous with the mundane, Shaw captures the poetic and the surreal with the sensibility of a comedian.
Shaw is one of the most respected and collected artists in contemporary ceramics. He came out of the San Francisco Bay Area art scene in the late 1960’s and he continues to add to his skills and appropriate from mass culture. He has developed a vocabulary of found objects that form intimate still life sculptures, complex figures, and personally referential assemblages. He brings life to the detritus of the studio, as a cartoonist animates the page.
Susan Press is celebrated for her charming and whimsical sculptures, which blend clay, mixed media, and found objects into illustrative works that tell engaging, often humorous stories. Since the early 1970s, clay has been her primary medium, a passion she refined during her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she focused on lithographic printmaking and hand-built ceramics under the mentorship of Richard Graf and Richard Shaw.
Press constructs a wide range of human figures, from free-standing forms to hanging puppets and walled-boxed compositions. Each piece is designed to capture a spectrum of human expressions and emotions. By incorporating carefully chosen vintage photos and found materials, she encourages viewers to imagine the relationships between the figures and the elements surrounding them, often evoking delight, curiosity, and humor. Her work is consistently described as illustrative, reflecting her love of storytelling through form, texture, and narrative detail.
