Michael Gustavson "Eclipse 12" Glazed Ceramic, Abstract Crescent Sculpture in Yellow and Teal, Carmel California Art, Original 9 X 18 Inches, 2025

Details

Description

In this abstract glazed ceramic sculpture by California artist Michael Gustavson, a sail-shaped form leans on a pale green-gray base, … Read more In this abstract glazed ceramic sculpture by California artist Michael Gustavson, a sail-shaped form leans on a pale green-gray base, its straight back edge covered in a rough, blue-gray glaze that looks like weathered slate. The front curves outward in sunny yellow, orange and teal, with a red half-moon near the bottom and a white crackle field on the right edge. A green disc and a darker disc sit like small suns within the colored planes. Gustavson's glazes range from glossy to rough and cratered within a single piece, which gives the surface real touch appeal. From the side the form is thin and sharp, from the front it opens up into a bright, painterly shape, so the sculpture rewards a slow walk around it.

The yellow and teal lift a neutral room, and the slate back keeps the piece grounded beside gray stone, concrete or dark wood. It fits a console, a deep window ledge or a bookshelf, and its slim depth suits tight spaces. Place it where the light comes from one side so the glossy glazes catch it and the crater textures show.

Glazed ceramic, 9 x 18 x 6 in (22.9 x 45.7 x 15.2 cm).

Gustavson approaches clay as a painter-sculptor, using glaze as his paint. Surfaces are built from layers of glaze, texture and color, with crackle, controlled drips and thin drawn lines, then fired to a rich, glossy finish. His firing approach grew out of raku during more than four decades of practice. His vessels are wheel-thrown and stretched by hand, and the same painterly method extends to towers, benches and tall columns.

Michael Gustavson is a ceramic artist based in Murphys, California, who has worked in clay for more than four decades. He earned his MFA from San Jose State University in 1980 and describes himself as a painter-sculptor, treating each form as a three-dimensional canvas and glaze as his paint. His work is held in private and public collections worldwide, including IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Seagate, Cranbrook Museum and Eastman Kodak.

Building on the traditional Japanese process of raku, he developed his own firing approach, leaving large pieces in the kiln and introducing pine needles at lower temperatures to create reduction. The method allows larger scale and unusually vivid color. His wheel-thrown, hand-stretched vessels suggest the figure in motion, his wall reliefs use fragmented slabs and negative space, and recent outdoor sculptures and benches carry his surfaces into tectonic forms, with nods to Miró, Kandinsky, Mondrian and Pollock. See less