Craig Mitchell Smith

"Poppies", Deep Red and Orange Glass, Vase,

2000s

This Jose A Cunha Portuguese Palissy Majolica plate features a snake, spider, frog, caterpillar, and butterfly on green shredded clay ground. The piece bears the maker's marks for Jose A Cunha pottery. Palissy ware is a style of ceramics that is also known as rusticware due to their earth-toned palettes and naturalistic plant and animal scenes that are cast to it. The style was coined in reference to the 16th century French potter Bernard Palissy and experienced a significant revival in the 19th century thanks to Charles-Jean Avisseau. It's strongest revival however was in Portugal where it was produced by the potteries of Mafra, Jose A. Cunha, Alves, José Francisco de Sousa...

"Pod" is a precious sculpture with a decorated tactile surface and a warm glaze giving the piece a soft glow. The transparent glaze enhances the creamy tones of the clay. Ms. Oka Doner created unique hand-size sculptures during the 1960s of which the "Pod" is an exquisite example. Her clay technical skills cover a wide range from enormous wall pieces to small decorative pieces that demand to be touched and held. This piece, despite being a fruit, is the perfect example of her famous "Tatooed" figurative sculptures. Michele Oka Doner (born in Miami Beach, Florida, United States) is an American artist and author who works in a variety of media including sculpture, prints, drawings, functional objects and video. She has also worked in costume and set design and has created over 40 public and private permanent art installations. She is best known for her “A Walk On The Beach,” a one and a quarter mile long bronze and terrazzo concourse at Miami International Airport. It is composed of over 9000 bronzes embedded in terrazzo with mother-of-pearl. At one and quarter linear miles, it is one of the largest artworks in the world. She is granddaughter of painter, Samuel Heller. She attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her art instructor Milton Cohen was experimenting with The Space Theater and George Manupelli began the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Their students were engaged in poetry, dance, light, music, all combined into a unitary vision, a motif that shaped Oka Doner's student years and is characteristic of her work today. She participated in a Manupelli experimental film, a "Map Read" performance with art drawing instructor Al Loving and Judsonite dancer Steve Paxton as well as several "Happenings." Another influence was art historian and Islamic scholar, Oleg Grabar, who illustrated how patterns in architecture are able to dissolve space. She received her BS and MFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 2008 she was a U of M Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Germans Van Eck Gallery, New York; Diane Brown Gallery, New York; Art & Industrie Gallery, New York; Willoughby, Marlborough Gallery, New York; Studio Stefania Miscetti in Rome; and Gloria Luria Gallery in Miami, Florida. During the 1960s Michelle Oka Doner was living and working in Detroit, Michigan, where she became acquainted with Charles McGee and his gallery located in the Fisher Building...

During the 1960s America’s storytelling sculptor, Michael Garman, lived a vagabond lifestyle on the cheap and in the run-down neighborhoods of Dallas, S...

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY “Santa Cruz de las Huertas Jalisco” is a whimsical, charming and colorfully ceramic rendition painted blue and red of a local bus that traversed the town where the artist Candelario Medrano...