Instructor's ceramics featured
ART
Mic Stowell, a Central Lakes College art instructor, has installed 15 of his latest sculptures in the CLC Gallery on the Brainerd campus. The exhibit can be viewed through Feb. 15.
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"Adjust For Normal" displays hand-built pottery, a longtime passion for the award-winning artist. All of the work is made of earthenware clay, the color is underglaze and the surface is a clear glaze.
If you go
What: "Adjust for Normal," pottery by Mic Stowell
When: During school hours through Feb. 15
Where: Central Lakes College Gallery, Brainerd
"I like pottery because a ceramic surface seems to me to have greater transformative effect than other means of creating an image," Stowell said in his artist's statement for the exhibit. "What I might find dull as a watercolor can be hypnotic when rendered in clay, underglaze and glaze."
The pieces were created in 2006, most during the summer as Stowell was able to devote the attention outside of his instructional time at the college. The most recent works were completed over the semester break.
The clay piece "Don't Sleep" is among Mic Stowell's work now on display in the Central Lakes College Gallery.
"When I make something, I don't have much of a plan (or) an objective, and frequently not even a sketch or an outline," Stowell said. "I work in series, meaning that in some way, each new piece is somehow built upon the one before it."
Stowell explores the realm of surprise and awakenings. He may scrap a work as it progresses, but not often.
"I think last year with this series I only had one that didn't turn out," he said. "Failure might lead to finding something new and unexpected, which is more important than knowing in advance where I will wind up."
Stowell said he tries to move on to the next thing he doesn't know once he has mastered a method or technique.
Mic Stowell is an art instructor at CLC.
Stowell was recently awarded for artistic excellence at a Minnesota Community College faculty exhibit in Rochester. He was commended by the awards juror, Stewart Turnquist, program coordinator for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
"As long as artists like Mic Stowell keep putting art shows up, people are going to be irresistibly drawn and continue to look and puzzle and converse and generally share viewpoints," Turnquist said.