The Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg presents Contemporary Ceramics by Jennifer Forsberg, Sarah Lindley, and Jeanne Quinn, exhibition open March 5 – April 24, 2011.

This dramatic exhibition brings together three large-scale ceramic installations by Jennifer Forsberg of Malmö, Sweden, Sarah Lindley of Plainwell, Michigan, and Jeanne Quinn of Boulder, Colorado, for the first time. The striking objects created for Place in the last three years express and interpret notions of space with three complementary approaches: form, structure, and air.

Jennifer Forsberg’s work solidifies the intangible. She creates amorphous forms in response to an internal place, trying to reconstruct or understand an experience or emotion and turn it into a tangible embodiment. Sarah Lindley’s structural renditions of small town mills and contaminated watersheds loosely frame past hopes for prosperity in a post-industrial era and defy traditional expectations of the ceramic medium. The open structures call attention to the artist’s workmanship and to the fragility of clay, inviting the viewer to contemplate the increasing decline of American industry. Jeanne Quinn suspends porcelain objects that reference traditionally decorative elements, and transforms them into sensual metaphors that invite participation. The overhanging components of her work within the exhibition create an environment that offers access into an alternate reality.

These inventive works engage our individual perspectives through the use of layers and elevations of the pieces themselves and their installation. Forsberg’s weighty forms are “earthbound,” Lindley’s structural forms are elevated on mounds and platforms, and Quinn’s pieces are hung from above, creating an ethereal quality. The three combined in one spacious gallery offer a journey to a new sense of place.

This exhibition was chosen as a Concurrent Independent Exhibition by the organizers of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and is being presented by the Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the National Conference taking place in the Tampa Bay area March 30 through April 2, 2011.

Image: Jennifer Forsberg (Swedish, born 1970) Proportions (2010) Clay, wood, iron, cotton, thread, and plexiglass ©Jennifer Forsberg

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