50 Bowls, 50 States, 50 Woodfires, includes 50 porcelain bowls made by artist Elaine Olafson Henry. Each thrown bowl was made using the same amount of clay from the same clay block, the same building and shaping process, and the same glaze. Curious about the effects of firing circumstances in different environments, Henry sent a bowl to a ceramist in each of the 50 states to be woodfired. The resulting bowls are products of the types of wood and variety of kilns used (Anagama, Arch, Bourry Box, Noborigama, Tube, and Train), the length of firing, and temperature reached. Henry explains “…like the human story [where] we all start out as a blank slate…it’s what happens to the bowl in its lifetime that changes it. Each bowl tells a story of what it went through.” The bowls will be presented with technical details, including names of wood firing team members, providing insights into each collaboration and the various nuances acquired during the firing process.

An Enduring Legacy is a comprehensive survey of the career of Peter Callas, an internationally renowned artist, and master of the Anagama kiln wood-firing process. Callas considers the Anagama kiln, “the centerpiece for experimentation that records the passage of time.” The exhibition showcases Callas’ experimentation and innovation over 30 years of creative production and includes expressionist ceramic sculptures, abstracted container forms, intimate tea bowls, and works on paper. A film about the artist will also be on view.

Born in New Jersey in 1951, Peter Callas graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. Callas traveled to Japan in the 1970s, visiting ancient kiln sites and exploring wood-fired glazing techniques. While there, he also helped build a traditional Anagama wood kiln. His visit to Japan inspired him to build the first Anagama kiln used in North America in 1976, an early career accomplishment. Numerous accomplishments followed throughout his 50-year career. Callas worked with Peter Voulkos in the 1980s and 90s, producing some of the most important ceramics of the twentieth century. Callas has exhibited extensively in Museums around the world including at the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art (Japan), The Powerhouse Museum (Australia), and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. His work can be found in over 30 international collections, including the Gotoh Art Museum (Japan), the International Museum of Ceramic Art (Hungary), and the Minneapolis Museum of Art. He’s also the recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2018 and 2021) and the Windgate Foundation (2018).

Peter Callas: An Enduring Legacy is organized by the American Museum of Ceramic Art. An accompanying catalog, funded in part by a Windgate Foundation grant, includes essays by Jo Lauria, Glenn Adamson, and an artist biography by Glen Brown.

Holiday events and gift-giving are just around the corner! To add a bit of sparkle to the season, I would like to invite you to a holiday celebration at my Kansas City Crossroads Sculptural Jewelry studio on Friday, 12.2.22. My showroom will be open from 6:00 to 10:00 pm for those wanting to shop for gifts.

Each Painting is an invitation to join my journey. Deep down, there’s a boiling sea of ideas and emotions that generates constantly and need to be released and funneled into a medium that brings me peace of mind and calm- That’s what oil painting does to me!

The energy and drive can be felt through the boldness of colors, the intensity of the brushstrokes along with the heaviness of the palette knife layers and the emotions through the softness of the backgrounds and mysteriousness of the color composition.

No two days are alike so does my art! All of my paintings leave some of the background exposed showing where it begins on the wood panel and let rise to the surface a modern simplistic beauty through the layers.

A balancing act between choosing how much to reveal versus how much to hide creating the “perfect imperfect”.

The paintings are meant to evoke emotions and leave enough room for the new owner to complete their own story. I’m a generator of ideas, a generator of smiles through my art and there’s nothing that makes me happier than sharing it with you! — Genevieve Hamel

Artist Statement

My process is meditative. I find myself losing track of the world while adding strokes, like keeping time or taking a tally of moments lost. I’ve intentionally stripped away everything representational. Painting is a place for me to escape reality and face only the problems that are confined within the edge of the canvas. While I apply strokes of paint to a surface, the focus is on the formal elements of the piece as a whole. Though I seemingly keep it simple, responding to what’s there, still synapse sparks, thoughts race, and emotions run high. Ultimately, the truth is that I can’t escape. I don’t want to use color just to fill a canvas. Rather, I intend for the strokes of paint to occupy the frame like people gathered in a room at a party. Sometimes dancing, sometimes fighting, and on occasion recalling fond memories they’ve shared.

There’s something about the colors crashing into each other on the canvas as I push paint and scrape pigments over one another. Painting conjures memories, like a familiar smell. Maybe it’s the site of particular combinations of color, the shape or texture of a stroke that sends me hurling back to a childhood daydream or a day spent with an old lover that I’ve almost forgotten.

I wanted to make balanced fields of color with movement like static on the screen of an old tube TV. Over time they’ve become reflections of my life’s loves, losses, triumphs, and traumas. They carry baggage without claim to reality. It’s something I don’t understand, that I don’t know how to define. It’s why I paint.

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Artist Bio

Artist Jacob Schildtknecht began his artistic ventures with a high school teacher who encouraged him to further explore his interest in painting. After a summer program at the Kansas City Art Institute at 16, Jacob found it inspiring to be around like-minded individuals striving for similar goals to his own and compounded his goals to later attend the university. During his first year, through design, life drawing, and color theory, he always leaned toward painting as a primary focus. With a fascination for sculpture, his intentions in painting ended up adding many dimensional and sculptural elements. One particular professor, Jim Woodfill, was a particular influence on Jacob’s approach; questioning the reasoning and purpose behind using paint as a medium and how the materials used defined his intentions and purposes in his work.

After graduating, Jacob went on and created his first solo studio in the Crossroads area. To help sustain his material costs, he started working in the restaurant and bar industry and developed relationships with regulars around the city. During this time, he began to substitute teaching which led to a full-time position as a general art educator to middle school-aged students in Arkansas. During his five years of teaching, the knowledge that he was imparting to the students, in turn, influenced his own work, principles, and elements of design. With renewed inspiration, he decided to leave the teaching position and focus on creation full-time, which brought him back to Kansas City in 2014.

With a change in surroundings, Jacob immersed himself back in with the artists he had worked beside in the past. A friend saw a piece he had been working on, inquired about its value, and that interaction proved to be a pivotal point in artistry becoming a career. The same friend connected Jacob with a restaurant to show his work. Since then, the relationships he had created while working in the service industry opened doors with opportunities to show his work.