Margaret Bohls seeks a connection between form, function, line and planes in her work. It also recognizes the historical context of the ships.
Bohls, who currently teaches ceramics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, creates her pieces through slab working and a process called coil and pinch, rather than using a potter’s wheel.
Rick Brown, Yard Light Media
KEARNEY — In her latest exhibition, ceramic artist Margaret Bohls is inspired by historical objects she saw while traveling in Europe.
“Nebraska Now: Margaret Bohls, Italian Studies,” on display at the Museum of Nebraska Art through June 6, features three large tables filled with ceramic objects. Admission to the museum is free.
“Each of these groupings is based on a particular type of historical ceramics from the Italian peninsula,” she said in an interview from her home in Lincoln. “The shapes are directly based on historical objects. The surfaces of at least two of the sets are invented by me, but inspired by my love of ceramics from the mid-century and earlier modernist era.
Bohls grouped the pieces of his show together very deliberately.
“These three groups of objects behave a bit like a still life or a museum exhibit, in the sense that it looks like a diorama,” she said. “They are based on my explorations in museums of historical objects abroad, in Italy and England.”
In an article in Pottery Making Illustrated, Bohls wrote of her process of creating vessels: “The process is a main inspiration for me. A sense of inventive play when folding, cutting and joining the clay slabs provides a stream of new information to work with. My soft tile work is done simply and assembled relatively quickly, giving it a smooth, casual simplicity. For me, each pot is like a three-dimensional gestural drawing. Each shape is defined by the edges of the tiles from which it was created. These edges or lines create a pattern in space that defines each shape.