A film by Lucy Phenix
Thursday, Oct. 25 at 7:00 pm
Fine Arts Theatre, 36 Biltmore Ave., downtown Asheville.
Admission: $12 / $9 BMCM+AC members/students w/ID
Advance tickets available at BMCM+AC
The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center is pleased to present a sneak preview of From the Inside: The Work of Karen Karnes, a new documentary film about influential studio potter and former Black Mountain College teacher Karen Karnes at the Fine Arts Theatre on Oct. 25th at 7:00 pm. Award-winning filmmaker Lucy Phenix will be in attendance and will answer questions from the audience following the film.
From the Inside explores the poetry, rhythm and mystery of the creative process, reflecting the life of a master clay artist who has worked with unbroken focus for over 60 years. This is an intimate portrait of an artist whose strength, grace and astonishing newness is evident in the remarkable evolution of her body of functional and sculptural work. The film captures the involvement of Karen Karnes at Black Mountain College in the beginning of the crafts movement in the early 50's up to the present as she continues to work in her Vermont studio.
Karnes has influenced generations of potters and is widely recognized as a ceramic educator, although not in an institutional sense. Through her role as curator of clay shows around the country she has brilliantly brought potters to the public and helped to make ceramic artists accessible to their audience.]]–>
The daughter of two immigrant garment workers from Russia and Poland, Karen Karnes began life in a cooperative housing project in the Bronx. She studied at Brooklyn College in the Art Department under Serge Chermayoff, an architect, who taught his students in a Bauhaus-inspired fashion. Karnes didn’t lay hands on clay until after she married David Weinrib; he brought home “a great lump of clay” for her to play with on the deck of the couple’s home. Though she didn’t arrive as a potter through the usual academic channels, Karnes soon became an independent force in the realm of studio pottery.
In addition to being a Potter in Residence at Black Mountain College, Karnes also taught at the Penland School of Crafts and at Haystack. She was an integral part of the Stony Point, N.Y. artist community, where she lived and worked for 25 years. Karnes was also a working member of the Craft Guild of the Southern Highlands, beginning with her time at Penland.
In one of the film’s most astonishing sequences, the day after the fire that destroyed her house and studio in l998, Karen, surrounded by the charred remains of her life, opens
the kiln door to see shelves full of shining pots intact. She says, “Oh, they are just as I had hoped they would be.”
This film screening is presented in conjunction with the exhibition BREAKING NEW GROUND: The Studio Potter + Black Mountain College at BMCM+AC. The show gathers together work by potters who taught or studied at Black Mountain College including celebrated 20th century ceramicists Peter Voulkos, Karen Karnes, Shoji Hamada, Marguerite Wildenhain, Robert Turner and Bernard Leach. The show runs from Sept. 21 to Jan. 19, 2008. Gallery hours are 12-4 Wed-Sat and by appointment.
Call 828-350-8484 for information and advance tickets (cash, check, credit card accepted).
Note: The Fine Arts Theatre accepts cash only and does not sell advance tickets.
