CRUEL SEASON
Title of Work in Exhibit
Water: Immersion
Ceramic wall hanging, collaboration with ten others
COLLABORATORS
Bill Metcalf
Deena Barnett
Diana Farrell
Brenda Burgess
Tayor Kliman
Mandy Beverly-Jackson
Abbey Schwarz
Gayle Swanson
Julie Wellings
Melanie Hirdler
MYRA TOTH
Raised in the Chicago area, Myra Toth studied at The Art Institute of Chicago during her high school years. She attended Mills College (B.A.) and San Francisco State University (M.A. in Ceramics) and has studied with Antonio Prieto, Robert Arneson, Peter Vandenberge and Ruth Duckworth, among others. Myra has taught art and ceramics for grades 6-12 and at the university level in Chicago as well as ceramics and design at Santa Rosa Junior College. She has been teaching ceramics at Ventura College since 1976.
Myra has participated in editing three ceramics texts. Her artwork has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Art and Antiques, and in the Taiwanese publication of Contemporary Ceramics. Her sculptures have been exhibited nationally in shows and in galleries in the San Francisco/Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles and southern California. She was a founding member of ARC, the first women's gallery in Chicago in 1973. Myra's work is in many private collections.
Of particular interest to Myra is the investigation of the infinite possibilities of form, clays, glazes and techniques that are available for the personal expression of the ceramic artist. Her enthusiasm for the medium is expressed in her teaching as well as in her artwork.
Myra Toth
Water falls, where Earth and Water converge, interact and influence all form, motion and energy.
Diana Farrell
Rising from the ocean floor, Anacapa Island often hides in the fog off the Ventura coast. In silent tribute to the ancient Chunash culture, it shelters the abundant wildlife living on and around its beautiful rocky shores.
Brenda Burgess
I am the ocean.
Tayor Kliman
...the beach, where the sea merges with the land...
Mandy Beverly-Jackson
Having been raised in Australia, my tile imagery is influenced by the ancient aborigines’ mythology and their intimate connection to the Earth, Sky and Water.
Abbey Schwarz
Between: defined as a space dividing, yet it is a joining of spaces. My egret-estuary tile, between two other unique tiles, also joins them as
a part of the mural continuum. Water from molecules in the sky, to clouds and rain, creating rivers, estuaries and oceans - and back to the sky. The estuary is a special place yet dependent upon and part of the continuum. We are each special unto ourselves, yet dependent upon and part of the continuum of life.
Gayle Swanson
The flowing Water of Life...water being the basis of all life, from which my symbols of “parent and child” and “Tree of Life” are brought forth.
Julie Wellings
Mother Raven spreads her wings summoning the rain from heaven To gently fall upon the land
to pond and flow and grow all life.
Melanie Hirdler
My tile and the river running through it represent the essential nature of water’s movement in the cycle of life on our planet; the continuous transition of our water from earth to sky and back to earth again. It
is said one can never view the same river twice. The female figure is a metaphor for the regenerative nature of the cycle so fundamental to our
existence.