Michael Gustavson "Beautiful Dream Vessel" Glazed Ceramic, Abstract Painterly Vessel in Indigo Blue, Bay Area California Art, Statement Artwork, 2024

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Description

This rounded vessel swells outward, then pinches at the lip into two small peaks above a narrow foot. Over a … Read more This rounded vessel swells outward, then pinches at the lip into two small peaks above a narrow foot. Over a warm, sandy ground, a great indigo leaf with a yellow wing and a blue-green oval spreads across the front, with a small red dot and a green dot like seeds. White lines and splatters run across the lower body like trails of wind. Gustavson cites Miró and Kandinsky, and the floating shapes and thin drawn lines recall both. The wheel-thrown form has been stretched by hand into a figure-like profile, and the changing views as you turn it include a back in red, teal and sage.

The soft gold ground and deep blue make this vessel a good fit for a console, a coffee table or a mantel. Pair it with cream sofas, walnut, brass and linen, or set it against blue-gray walls. In a bright entry or on a plinth in a living room, it offers a single large painterly gesture.

Glazed ceramic, 23 x 26 x 21 in (58.4 x 66.0 x 53.3 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