From Gallery 221’s press release: Gallery 221’s Project Space is showing an installation of new work by artist Mary Roehm through July, 2006. Ms Roehm maintains a studio in High Falls, NY, and is a professor of art at SUNY New Paltz, in New Paltz, NY. The layering of ideas that saturate Ms Roehm’s work is a mix of the visceral and cerebral. She creates a critical discourse between the personal and experiential by exploiting the physical properties of her material with simple shapes, perfectly rendered, obsessively punctuated, intense, and provocative. The unglazed black and white porcelain works are fresh and a departure from the vessel format that Roehm is best known for. The repetition of pattern and rhythm in Roehm’s work creates a complex whole. This use of such an archetypical surface treatment reinforces the forms in much the same way as a pattern enriches Islamic art, by adding surface content to the work’s structure. This helps create art that becomes profound in much the same way that the use of repeated riffs in a jazz performance enhances the impact of the composition. Ms Roehm will be working in the project space from time to time for the duration of her exhibit adding, subtracting and modifying her installation.

A reception to meet the artist is scheduled for Wednesday, June 28, 5pm to 8pm. PS 221 is located at 221 east 88th street, between 3rd and 2nd avenues. Beginning June 6 through August 5; PS 221 will be open Tuesday through Thursday from 10am until 5pm and always by appointment, If you are planning to visit, please call in advance. Project Space 221 is a twelve hundred cubic foot storefront at 221 east 88th street between 3rd and 2nd avenues, New York City. It is devoted to the presentation of all forms of contemporary art.

Tel/fax: 212.426.5646; email: info@gallery221.com

On June 18-19, 2006 from 11 am to 5 pm, there will be a showing and sale of wood-fired stoneware by Willi Singleton at the home of Kunio and Emi Kikuchi, 6216 Wiscasset Road, Bethesda MD 20816, phone 301.320.3328.

The Potters Council regional conference in July at Adelphi University  (Garden City, NY) is about firing techniques: raku, pit, horsehair, saggar,  majolica, single firing and printmaking on clay. We’ve also included lectures on anagama firing and the works of George Ohr, and you’ll see wheel demos by most of the presenters, as well as pick up information on how to teach alternative techniques in an educational setting.

The presenters have much to offer: Randy Brodnax and Don Ellis; Dan Christoffel, a world renowned sculptor; Steven Hill, the single-firing artist; Bill Shillalies, Adelphi University professor demonstrating horsehair and soda firing on his double walled vessels; Gina Mars demonstrating her large raku forms and how she teaches and fires; Mel Jacobson (need  we say more?); Linda Keleigh with her pit firing techniques; Posey  Bacopoulos, with her incredible majolica; Harvey Sadow with his sand blasted raku vessels; and demonstrations by Steven Branfman, the master of raku. You’ll have the opportunity to fire a few of your own pots and exchange a bowl with others!

Registration information available online.