American Masters, a landmark invitational exhibition highlighting sixteen of the country's most established and talented studio potters is showing at MudFire Gallery May 10, 2008 through June 21, 2008.
American Masters features fine craft by American potters whose work has shaped the landscape of contemporary ceramics.
May 10-June 21
Reception Saturday, May 10, from 5-9 pm.
Mark Shapiro has made wood fired functional pots in Western Massachusetts for the past twenty years. He is a frequent workshop leader and panelist. His interests include early American stoneware as a source of inspiration for contemporary potters, apprenticeship, and criticism and documentation of the field. His work is shown by the Ferrin and Lacoste Galleries in Massachusetts and is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Racine Art Museum, the Mint Museum (NC), the International Museum of Ceramics at Alfred, NY, and the Currier Museum (NH).
"The town is sacked. Silver and gold, even bronze, are beaten into crude billets to be hauled off and melted. Houses burned; prisoners taken, or not. And in the wreckage: bones, stones, and pot-shards.
Clay's low material intrinsic value and fragility, ironically, make it endure as one of the most compelling records of the human touch on the earth. The bottom of the ovoid jug is marked by the potter's two-hundred-year-old fingerprints, just as the earth's strata are uniquely marked in clay fragments by all the peoples who struggled here to endure.
Where will my pots end up? In the landfills with the lawnmowers and TVs and silicon chips-the giant middens of our insatiable desires? No matter. I am glad just to leave a record of my own touch in this most receptive fragile and enduring material." - Mark Shapiro
Education
1978 B.A. Anthropology, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
1987, 89 Penland School, workshop studio assistant, with Michael Simon
and Mary Roehm , Penland, NC
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2001 "Mark Shapiro" Lacoste Gallery, Concord MA
1996 "Mark Shapiro" Ferrin Gallery, Northampton MA
"Mark Shapiro: Wood-fired Pottery" WDO Gallery, Charlotte NC
1995 "Mark Shapiro: Wood-fired Tableware" Restaurant Tokyo, New York NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2005-06
"Table Manners: International Contemporary Tableware", curated by Emmanuel
Cooper, Crafts Council, London, England
2005
"Fill It To The Rim", John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
SOFA Chicago, Ferrin Gallery, Chicago, IL
Group Show in Honor of Karen Karnes Eightieth Year, Ferrin Gallery, Lenox,
MA
2004
"Creations in Clay: Contemporary New England Ceramics", The Currier
Museum of Art,Manchester, NH
"Salutations: New Space, New Art", Ferrin Gallery, Lenox, MA
2003
"Great Pots! Contemporary Ceramics from Function to Fantasy",
Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ
2002
Recent Work in Woodfired Stoneware, Ferrin Gallery, Lenox, MA
2001
"USA Clay" Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum, Washington, DC
"Made with Pride" American Craft Museum, New York, NY
2000
"Beyond the Body: Architectural Ceramics" Lacoste Gallery, Concord, MA (curator)
"Clay / Wood / Fire / Salt" Folk Art Center, Asheville, NC
"The Poetics of Austerity" WDO Gallery, Charlotte, NC
"Pots for Daily Life," Show of Hands Gallery, Denver, CO
"SOFA Chicago" Ferrin Gallery, "Teapots Transformed," Chicago, IL
"Twenty Stokers" Blue Heron Gallery, Deer Isle, ME
"Woodfire 2000" Lill Street Gallery, Chicago, IL
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