I found Ani Kasten’s latest ceramics exhibit, which opened yesterday at the Lacoste Gallery in Concord, MA, inspirational. The work, comprised mainly of vessels of irregular shapes and sizes, is delicate, with seams sometimes held together with thin wires, and replete with beautiful, unexpected embellishments, cracks. colors and patterns that make the viewer stop to contemplate.
Entitled From the Ruins, the show focuses on vessels and sculptures that are “deconstructed… ‘barely holding together’, ‘coming apart at the seams’, and searching for a cohesive beauty in their tenuous state of existence,” according to the exhibit writeup.I mentioned to Kasten that her work “spoke” to me, especially because too many of my close friends and family members have passed away, recently, and that I’m working on writing and photography projects that I hope will help bring shape, beauty, meaning and new life to past experiences. Kasten responded that she, too, has gone through several major losses, which in part, inspired her current work.
Ani Kasten
“They investigate the nature of change, the compiling of memory, and a feeling of profound loss– the recognition of temporal beauty bound inextricably with grief. The pieces are like remnants, a landscape of objects that remain after some kind of significant change, grave markers, or organic matter that has survived a great fire.
According to a gallery publication, Kasten was drawn to the medium of clay as an apprentice to British ceramist Rupert Spira, Then she headed a stoneware making facility in Nepal for four years before returning to the USA to set up ceramic studios in California, Maryland and most recently Minnesota. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally with works in the permanent collections of the Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; the Weisman Art Museum Minneapolis MN; and the Sana’ a Collection, the US Embassy, Sana’ a Yemen.
Anita Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
