Michael Gustavson "FanTail" Glazed Ceramic, Large Abstract Two-Part Bench Sculpture in Orange, Carmel California Art, 52 X 21.5 Inches, 2023

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Two wide, plump forms sit side by side, each with a flared, fan-shaped top lip that rolls forward like a … Read more Two wide, plump forms sit side by side, each with a flared, fan-shaped top lip that rolls forward like a tail. Overlapping fans and leaves in orange, scarlet, teal, navy and green cover the surface, with small white dots and a patch of black-and-white crackle at the corner of one piece. The glaze is smooth and glossy, and the shapes sweep from the top over the face in curving bands. Gustavson works as a painter in clay, and here the color moves around the form without regard to edges, as a painting might on a rounded canvas. The two parts stand a short distance apart.

Two forms like these work as a bench, a pair of low seats or a console in an entry, a living room, a sunroom or a covered patio. The orange and teal brighten white and gray rooms, and pair with navy, walnut, cream upholstery and natural stone. Set side by side beneath a window or along a wall, they act as both seating and sculpture.

Glazed ceramic, 52 x 21.5 x 15 in (132.1 x 54.6 x 38.1 cm), two-part.

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