Form meets function in Catherine Satterlee’s hand-crafted pieces. Her geometrical vases are one-of-a-kind. Colorful ornaments and inlays are embedded onto their surfaces. The pictorial legacy that guides her current work in ceramics can be credited to her background as a painter. Her rich and disparate influences include subway air vents, Allan McCollum’s installation, Plaster Surrogates, a utility cover in a Tokyo street, etc. She returns from trips with countless pictures of surfaces, all of which contribute to the forms and designs that inspire her creations. Satterlee's production process is deliberately long because she employs techniques that can only be used in work made by hand. This practice has an element of surprise and favors the unexpected thereby exposing voluntary or involuntary distortions to the medium. By playing with glazed or rough surfaces, she draws out the stoneware's raw essence and texture. For this collection, the gallery has selected pieces decorated with floral, geometric and abstract patterns.
Catherine Satterlee is an American artist who lives and works in Washington. She was introduced to ceramics at Bennington College in the late 1960s by artist Stanley Rosen. Her multidisciplinary professional and artistic career lies between contemporary art, design, graphic design and painting. Catherine Satterlee has been in charge of exhibitions for renowned museum institutions: the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Arlington. After working ceramics intermittently for a long time, she decided in 2015 to devote herself entirely to this medium. Since then, she has participated in numerous exhibitions and won several prizes. In the spring of 2021, she wrote the article "Japan In Mind" for Pottery Making Illustrated magazine.
Wistful and dreamy, the characters in Louka Butzbach’s drawings often look out into the distance, lost in thought or contemplating time. Sometimes pensive, sometimes serene, they elegantly wander through verdant landscapes caressing nature and its elements with their long, thin fingers. Butzbach seeks to work in harmony with nature and, as such, surrenders to its bucolic poetry from which stories form. Sauntering and frolicking, the protagonists' androgynous silhouettes can be observed enjoying every bit of their impromptu adventures. They explore places full of warmth and light where lush vegetation can flourish unhindered. They lean against spongy mushrooms to read or run through hills that are defined as precisely as they would be on a relief map. They are on a quest for rare specimens of rocks or plants and their ardent curiosity seems inexhaustible. Butzbach’s art can be characterized as a delicate balancing act transforming each escapade into a thought that can be illustrated and admired. Through his stories, he takes the viewer on discerning, yet subtle, literary strolls. The beauty of his watercolors magnifies the candor characteristic in his writing. A romantic form of theatre is at play here with whimsy as its only through line. Geoff Vallon, ÉLÉGIE EN BLEU