Michael Gustavson "Summertime" Glazed Ceramic, Monumental Abstract Column Sculpture in Turquoise, Carmel California Art, 22 X 87 Inches, 2025

Details

Description

In this raku-fired ceramic totem sculpture by California artist Michael Gustavson, a tall, narrow slab tapers upward from a round … Read more In this raku-fired ceramic totem sculpture by California artist Michael Gustavson, a tall, narrow slab tapers upward from a round stone base, its upper edge cut with a scooped crescent that glows orange inside. The turquoise body is covered in navy, yellow, scarlet and white shapes, with a large yellow half-circle near the middle and a dark navy panel above, all outlined with fine lines. Faint horizontal grooves ripple across the surface like water or grain. Gustavson's recent large works are bold, tectonic forms that carry painterly color at architectural scale, and this one is more than seven feet tall. Seams show where the form is built in sections. The turquoise changes from sky to sea color as the light shifts.

At over seven feet, it belongs in a double-height entry, a stairwell, a large living room or a garden room, where it can stand on its own. The turquoise and yellow suit white walls, pale stone and light oak, and also look rich against deep blue or green plaster. A bare wall behind it, and clear floor space around it, lets its tall silhouette read.

Glazed ceramic, 22 x 87 x 14 in (55.9 x 221.0 x 35.6 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