Blunk Space is pleased to present Inez Storer & Gordon Bryan, an exhibition of new and historic paintings and works on paper by Storer and new ceramic vessels by Bryan. Five new collaborative ceramic works, fashioned by Bryan and painted by Storer, bring the two Point Reyes Station-based artists into direct conversation.
Inez Storer (b. 1933) has lived and worked in West Marin for over fifty years. She taught at the San Francisco Art Institute (1981-1999), Sonoma State University (1976-1988), San Francisco State University (1970-1973), and the College of Marin (1968-1979), and has exhibited internationally. Storer brings a tongue-in-cheek tenderness to her works on paper and paintings, combining deft lines with collaged wordplay and sourced imagery. The exhibition presents a selection of never-before-exhibited early figure drawings, enigmatic interiors with jaunty green shoes, alongside a very early painting of a fantastical landscape exhibited at Mills College in 1976. Two new paintings on panel make reference to Matisse’s Mediterranean interiors, but with a wink of humor all her own.
Gordon Bryan lives and works in Point Reyes Station. Bryan’s coil-built ceramic works combine reverent references to the forms of antiquity and a playful, modern sensibility. After running a ceramic tile business for nearly forty years, Bryan now embraces the freedom and risk of handcrafting, manipulating glazes in an electric kiln just as JB Blunk did. A new series of soot black and ivory white standing vessels incorporate elegant ancient Greek handles into forms that are almost Seussian.
For their collaborative pieces, Bryan and Storer worked in succession, each ceding some portion of artistic control to the other. Bryan would build the shaped vessel, and Inez would then paint with glazes he provided. He also provided her with a cheat sheet so she could understand the glazes, but, he said, “she didn’t look at it.” The resulting plates, tea set, and ceramic paintings have Bryan’s characteristic textured, encrusted forms and Storer’s buoyant, witty imagery.