The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet

Karen Shapiro, Campbell's Soup, 2009. Raku-fired ceramic. H 13 1/2, D 9 in.

A reaction to the high-art elitism of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art emerged in Britain and the U.S. in the 1950s, freely employing mass produced imagery of comic books and product labels to prove a point: meaning in art is in the associations with an image and its context  rather than intrinsic to the artwork itself. Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns, to name just a few of the well-known practitioners, celebrated mass production and often borrowed its techniques to make multiples that liberally embraced irony and kitsch. Everyday objects were elevated from the mundane to the profound by the change of context. All of this makes Pop art an unlikely partner to the contemporaneous (in the U.S.) Craft movement that rejected mass production in favor of the handmade in works that remained highly Formalist and borrowed heavily from the ideology of Abstract Expressionist painting.

Yet an exhibition currently on view at the Boston Society of Arts & Crafts is bringing together these two long-time opposites with a range of work that layers irony upon irony, as in the case of Karen Shapiro’s handmade and Rakku-fired version of the often-reproduced Warhol image. Other work fuses the serenely decorative with the mass-market profane, in the case of Joseph Cavalieri’s blending of sacred stained glass form with characters from the irreverent television series “The Simpsons.” [see image below].

Already on view, the exhibition will have a reception on the evening of Friday, September 11, and will remain on view through October 22, 2009 . Titled “POP Craft,” the exhibition is an attempt “to discover and present the ways in which the lessons of Pop Art have been absorbed and filtered by contemporary artists working in ceramics, fiber, glass, metal and/or wood,” according to a press release.

Exhibiting artists include: Rick Beck, Joseph Cavalieri, Ken Derengowski, Ianna Nova Frisby, Shannon Goff, Arthur Hash, Alexander Beaulieu Hibbs, Ai Kijima, Silas Kopf, Margaux Lange, Peter Morgan, Erica Rosenfeld, Justin Rothshank, Sean W. Scully, Karen Shapiro, and Connie Verrusio.

Joseph Cavalieri, Funerale Di Un'amica (Funeral for a Friend), 2009. Vitreous enamel, layered stained glass, solder, displayed in a light box. H 24 1/4, W 34 1/8, D 2 in.

In an article in the Boston weekly newspaper The Phoenix, exhibitions director of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts Fabio J. Fernández explained his inspiration: “I was interested in getting a sense of how Pop Art translates into the different media that we exhibit. We selected artists from around the country working in some Pop Art-inspired way in these other media, whose statements are valid and strong. A sense of color is something I always thought of when thinking and talking about Pop Art – and a sense of humor. What are the contemporary objects that resonate and that become important? The Simpsons and Viagra are right up there.”