ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 5, 1996 TAG: 9611050111
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
TEAPOTS that don't hold tea. Bowls that will never see French onion dip.
Somewhere in the history of American craft-making, the glue between form and function must have melted.
The results, evident in a state-of-the-art collection of American crafts at the Art Museum of Western Virginia, can be sleek, surreal, silly - or all of the above.
Not to mention lovely.
The 72 works in the visiting collection come from the White House, which sought to assemble a collection of the best in modern craft-making to adorn America's first mansion.
"We sought out key pieces from an outstanding group of craft artists at different stages in their careers, chosen for the excellence of their vision and technique," said Michael Monroe, a former curator at the National Museum of American Art, and curator of the White House collection. "It was important to the Clintons that the works signal the range of what is being achieved by American craftspeople today."
This is craft-making in the '90s: Original, impractical, beautiful. The collection dates from 1993 - designated by President George Bush in 1992 as "The Year of the Craft."
Included are such well-known names in the field of crafts as Seattle glass sculptor Dale Chihuly, and Beatrice Wood - who turned 100 in 1993.
Wood, who was ill when crafts were first solicited for the collection, later contributed a ceramic chalice.
All the works here were donated to the White House by the makers themselves or their patrons. That is no small thing, given that some of them would no doubt sell on the open market for thousands of dollars.
Joanne Kuebler, director of the Roanoke museum, said the crafts show one direction the museum would like to go in its collecting. "All of them are working now," she said of the artisans. "That's the wonderful thing."
Museum officials believe the White House exhibit is a natural follow-up to the exhibit of art from New Hampshire's Currier Gallery, which closed last month.
That exhibit included some early New England-made furniture and 19th century Tiffany glass in addition to painting and sculpture - giving museumgoers some historical context for the contemporary crafts.
"There's a nice connection between some of the work we saw and what's happening today," said Mark Scala, the museum's chief curator.
So what's here?
Words are inadequate. Better by far to see for yourself - or explore the collection at its Internet site.
Suffice it to say these are not your standard clay pots and hand-me down quilts. Not with names like "Megaworld," "Ritual Display" and "Blue Orchid Implied Movement."
The last is three tall glass sculptures that suggest candle holders, all streaked with blue and curving together at their tops like cuddling swans (should the first family ever be tempted to stick candles in them, however, they can forget it. The tops have not been hollowed out).
There are fantasy teapots, zany vases (one with purple birds perched on its sides), a few traditional - if gorgeous - vases and jars, and lots and lots of bowls, or hints of bowls. "A large number are either vessels or they suggest vessels," Scala said of the works.
Hillary Clinton's own favorite is a Dale Chihuly bowl nearly two feet high, its wide rim scalloped like a shell's. Composed mostly of blue tinted glass, at bottom the bowl has a whole crayon box's worth of jumbled color fragments.
The title: "Cerulean Blue Macchia With Chartreuse Lip Wrap."
"I usually keep it upstairs in our private quarters, because I love seeing it every day," Clinton said of the bowl in a television interview on CBS. Clinton also spoke of the way sunlight highlights the bowl's colors - and of the echo it makes when you talk into it. The first lady even poked her head into the bowl and demonstrated. (Museumgoers here will have to take her word for it, as the bowl is under glass.)
Glass is clearly popular among modern day artisans, accounting for nearly a quarter of the works in the exhibit. Works abound, too, in ceramic, wood and metal. At least one, an elegant bowl by California's Randy Stromsoe, is made of silver. Stromsoe, Clinton said, fashioned the bowl with 100,000 hammer strokes. (She did not say who did the counting.)
Most of the White House works strive to charm - and do. Another bowl, this one by Oklahoma's Ronald Fleming, is made of a single burl, or knot, of redwood, hand-carved into dozens of delicate overlapping leaves.
A woozy-looking mahogany and bronze clock, meanwhile, by New York's Wendell Castle, recalls the limp timepieces of Surrealist painter Salvador Dali.
Other works don't even pretend to be functional. There is an 8-inch glass cube that has something that resembles a computer chip inside - and, by another craftsman, a 10-inch globe with a mass of different colors and textures inside that bring to mind a coral reef.
What are they for? In such works the line between craft and art seems to vanish.
According to Scala, American crafts emphasized the practical side less and less after the Industrial Revolution. Once machine-made items began to flood the market, some artisans worried less about making the best pot, bowl or broom - and more about making one that was simply, refreshingly different.
Scala said the Arts and Crafts movement in England, which tried to restore some creativity and originality to crafts in the machine age, was influential in the evolution of American crafts as well.
"We've moved away from the concept that craft has to have a utilitarian reason for being," he said.
But when is a bowl not a bowl? At what point do works like these cease to be crafts at all, and become instead art for art's sake?
"I think it's a fascinating question. I don't know the answer myself," Scala said.
One thing is clear: Call it what you want, nothing in this collection will ever break in the dishwasher.
"These objects are so beautiful I can't imagine using any of them," Scala said.
The White House Collection of American Crafts was displayed first at the White House, and then at the National Institute of American Art in Washington. The collection currently is on a nine city tour. It will eventually become part of the Clinton Presidential Library.
As it did for the Currier exhibit, the Roanoke museum has scheduled a series of lectures to complement the exhibit. Glass sculptor Jon Kuhn will talk Nov. 14; ceramicist Michael Herrill on Dec. 5 and quilt maker Ellen Kochansky on Jan. 10. Monroe, the White House collection's official curator, spoke at the exhibit's opening last week.
The exhibit and lectures are free, although donations are encouraged.
nThe White House Collection of American Crafts is on exhibit at the Art Museum of Western Virginia, Center in the Square, through Jan. 12. Admission is free. A virtual tour of the exhibit is available on the Internet at http://www.nmaa.si.edu/WHC/AmericanCrafts.
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Dante Marioni's "Yellow Pair," which are blown glass,by CNBare among the White House Collection of American Crafts objects on
display at the Art Museum of Western Virginia. 2. "Imago Bag" by
Littleton & Vogel. 3. "Centerpiece Bowl on Three-Legged Stand" by
Randy J. Stromsoe is made from sterling silver, pewter
and gold leaf. 4. "New beginnings" by Ronald F. Fleming. 5.
"Crimson/Green Blue" by Sonja Blomdahl. color.