The OHIO CRAFT MUSEUM presents:

Nature/Culture: Artists Respond to Their Environment and Christina Bothwell: Invisible Realities
February 3–March 30, 2008

(Columbus, OH)—The Ohio Craft Museum is pleased to present “Nature/Culture: Artists Respond to Their Environment,” an exhibition of 45 works by 16 artists working in clay, met- al, fiber, wood and found objects. On view February 3–March 30, the show “compares works by contemporary artists who identify with culture and the byproducts of an urban society with artists who are responding to nature and the natural environment,” according to Kate Lydon, director of exhibitions at Pittsburgh’s Society for Contemporary Craft, who organized the show. “The 16 artists in this exhibition show a fascination with where they live and work, and attempt to make sense of their physical, as well as social and political environments, by creating contemporary forms that share narrative stories of memory, time, absence, location and representation.”

Kathy Buszkiewicz’s work, for instance, “is meant to deceptively lure the viewer into believ- ing it is purely a beautiful object. Upon closer observation, decorative shapes or repeated patterns have been created from pieced U.S. currency,” she explained. “Pairing money with ideas, objects or resources implies worth or references commodity….The crafting of altered bills, which are void of intrinsic worth, questions greater values.” On the other hand, much of Reinhard Reitzenstein’s work “centers around the tree as an archetype for self and the symbi- otic relationship we share with the forests of the world. The tree has for me become a marker of the ravages upon, and attempts at reconcilation with, the natural world.”

Presented alongside this show is “Christina Bothwell: Invisible Realities,” an exhibition of figurative sculptures made from pit-fired raku clay and cast glass. In these enigmatic forms, “Bothwell often touches on the serious and the profound, but she does so with such a sym- pathetic and generous manner, with dollops of humor and such delight and openhanded- ness that her work invites a smile of recognition as often as it does more solemn stuff,” notes

James Yood, director of the New Arts Journalism program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the accompanying catalog. Originally trained as a painter, Bothwell began working with clay in 1995, and glass in 1999. “The question that fascinates me the most is what makes us human,” she says. “I am particularly interested in what makes up our spirit, versus what makes our physical body. I like my pieces to be a metaphor for the interplay between the two.”

The Ohio Craft Museum is owned and operated by Ohio Designer Craftsmen and receives ongoing funding from the Ohio Arts Council and the Columbus Foundation. The museum is located at 1665 West Fifth Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43212. Parking and admission are free. Hours: Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday–Sunday, 1–4 p.m. For further informa- tion, telephone (614) 486-4402, or see our website www.ohiocraft.org.

Twist + Shout Artists List

Stephen Beal
Linda Behar
Sara A. Christensen
Blair Reina
Mia Brill
Robert Calvo
Pate Conaway
Tom Lundberg
Lindsay Obermeyer
Liz Whitney Quisgard
Patricia Roberts-Pizzuto
Donna Rosenthal
Hrafnhildur Siguroardóttir
Elly Smith
Nathan Vincent
Sally Broadwell (estate of)

Material and Space Artists List

Susan Ewing
Fred Fenster
Catherine Grisez
Douglas Harling
Andrew MacDonald
Richard Mawdsley
Myra Mimlitsch-Gray
Dennis Nahabetian
Gary Noffke
Suzanne Pugh
Elliott Pujol
June Schwarcz
Helen Shirk
Rick Smith
Billie Jean Theide
Kee-ho Yuen