Wayne Higby, one of the most prominent American ceramic artists of the past few decades is now exhibiting his work at the ASU Art Museum. He has been creating ceramic pieces and larger architectural installations for almost 50 years and is currently a professor and chair of ceramic art at Alfred University in New York.
The 60-piece exhibition, “Infinite Place: The Ceramic Art of Wayne Higby,” opened on Saturday and is the first major retrospective to provide an in-depth view of his work. The collection ranges from his first pieces created in the 1960s to his most recent pieces created in 2012.
“Putting this retrospective together has been an odd process," Higby said. "Some of the work I haven’t seen in nearly 50 years, so I sort of recognize it, but I also feel a disconnect. It’s as if the work was made by an imaginary friend and not by me."
Higby came to ASU for the premiere of the exhibition. He spoke to art students and also held a public lecture about his career and body of work. He described the major events that inspired him to make ceramics and influenced of many of his pieces, which vary between ceramic pots, bowls, plates, boxes and three-dimensional tiles.
“It is especially meaningful that my retrospective should begin its journey here. I grew up in Colorado, and much of my inspiration came from the soil of the West,” Higby said.
Higby’s pieces center around landscapes including mountains, rivers, canyons and skies. They are very colorful pieces with images designed to work as you walk around them.
“The images collapse into flattened pieces and then open up again," Higby said. "This was done to play with the experience of walking through the actual landscape."
The exhibition highlights both Higby’s earlier raku-fired ceramics, as well as his more recent large-scale, architectural wall installations. Higby also gives viewers a look at the behind the scenes making of his larger works, from the preliminary drawings to the installation process.
Peter Held, curator of ceramics at the Ceramics Research Center at ASU, worked closely with Higby to put the exhibition together.
“Wayne, myself and several others at the Ceramics Research Center have been working on this for the past three years, so it's great to finally see it completed,” Held said.
Along with the exhibit, Higby has also published a 216-page color monograph that features both pictures and essays by scholars and writers about his work.
The exhibit, “Infinite Place: The Ceramic Art of Wayne Higby,” will be at the ASU Art Museum until July 20, 2013. The exhibition will then embark on a two-year national tour, traveling to museums in Washington D.C., Pennsylvania and New York.
Reach the reporter at julianne.defilippis@asu.edu or on Twitter @juliannemarie25
