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E x p e r i m e n t a l i s t
San Francisco Museum
of Craft + Design
Fred Ball Enamels
San Francisco, California
July 24 - October 4,2009
sfmcd.com
The inventive spirit of Fred Uhl
Ball (1945-1985), one of the
great innovators in the field of
20th-century enameling—the art
of fusing glass to metal—is cel-
ebrated in this exhibition orga-
nized on the occasion of the
Enamelist Society’s biennial
conference in Oakland. The son
of two artists—the noted cera-
mist and educator Carleton Ball
and the graphic artist and enam-
elist Kathryn Uhl Ball—Fred
Ball found his way to art, and
especially enamels, as a child,
and was participating in shows
and winning awards by the time
he was in his early teens. Ball’s
career spanned 26 years, begin-
ning when he was 14, and end-
ing with his untimely death at
40, from injuries he suffered
during a mugging. For much of
that time his work was charac-
terized by intense experimenta-
tion. This exhibition, curated by
Hal Nelson and Bernard Jazzar,
whose recent traveling survey,
“Painting with Fire,” included
Ball’s work, presents a selection
of the artist’s most experimental
pieces produced between 1970
and 1985.
Ball’s techniques included
torch firing, metal collage, ex-
ploration of firescale (the burnt
areas enamelists usually try
to avoid) and the use of liquid
enamel materials. He is among
those credited with transform-
ing enameling from its tradi-
tional association with small
size and preciousness, to a larg-
er, sometimes epic scale consis-
tent with postwar painting and
sculpture. He spread the word
in
Experimental Techniques in
Enameling
(1972), the first tech-
nical book to advocate such an
approach to enameling, and it
influenced a generation of young
makers in the field to liberate
their practices and stimulate
their imaginations.
From the late 1970s on Ball
took on a number of public com-
missions for Sacramento, his
hometown, of which the most
famous is
The Way Home,
one of
the largest murals ever created
in enamel on copper. Based on
aerial views of the city, it com-
prises 1,488 individual tiles, each
12 by 12 inches, on a 6-by-62-
foot installation on the wall of
a parking garage. At the time
of his death, at the peak of his
career, Ball was working on
a mural for a local hospital.
But even as he focused on
commissioned work, Ball con-
tinued his artistic explorations
on smaller-scale pieces, and
these enamel-on-copper panels
are highlighted in this show.
Ball embraces collage in an un-
titled 1985 gold-colored work©,
and bold rhythmic graphics, in
Jukebox Boogie,
1974, with its
jigsaw puzzle-like composition,
and the use of ordinary objects
as a source for form in
Pillow,
ca. 1970s©.
Two Gold Sea Scrolls,
1976-77, has a Klimt-like rich-
ness. In such works, wielding
enamels like an abstract expres-
sionist, Ball combined his un-
orthodox techniques with re-
fined craftsmanship, steadily
expanding the boundaries of his
medium. His works are not at
all out of place in the 21st cen-
tury. — B.S.
OH / Portsmouth
© Southern Ohio Museum
Let Them Make Cake
Sept. i-Oct. 30
somacc.com
An artful display of deftly
crafted visual treats, such as
Kristen Cliffel's
Say I Do,
high-
lights the museum’s 30th birth-
day blowout.
PA / Harrisburg
State Museum of Pennsylvania
A rt o f the State: Pennsylvania
2009
to Sept. 20
statemuseumpa.org
Talented artists from the Key-
stone State generate functional
or decorative craft using any
natural or synthetic medium in
this 42nd annual exhibition.
Italy /Faenza
International Museum
of Ceramics
56th Premia Faenza
to Sept. 20
racine.ra.it/micfaenza
Artists no older than 40 signal
new orientations of ceramics in
this benchmark juried exhibi-
tion that became an interna-
tional event in 1963.
Wales/Ruthin
Ruthin Craft Centre
Duckworth at Ninety
to Sept. 6
ruthincraftcentre.org.uk
The centre celebrates the se-
renely elegant and thought-pro-
voking ceramics of an extraor-
dinary talent, sculptor Ruth
Duckworth.
022 american craft aug/sep09
