Circle of Influence
May 13th, 2022
CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE
Curated by Carlos E Prado
The Kendall Art Cultural Center in collaboration with the University of Miami ceramics & fine arts department presents Circle of Influence. This exhibition features the work of four graduate MFA students from UM's ceramic program. Their work, exhibited alongside professor Carlos E Prado'S solo show TAUTOLOGIES, includes ceramic sculptures, installations, murals and plates.
This exhibition features artworks by
Anthony Magnetti. M.F.A.
Kim Bauldree. M.F.A.
Sepideh Kalani. M.F.A.
Elizabeth Guignino. M.F.A.
CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE
This exhibition represents the coming together of four graduate students from the University of Miami’s ceramics department, to showcase their work. While each artist has their own individual narrative and style, they are bonded by their experiences studying and learning from professors Ivan Albreht and Carlos Enrique Prado; ultimately becoming a part of their program’s legacy. CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE embraces the power of development that occurs when you work around others and how the people around you influence your creativity.
The Kendall Art Cultural Center is an institution that actively participates in South Florida’s art community. Home of The Rodriguez Collection, they are committed to promoting and preserving contemporary art through exciting programs and exhibitions. CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE is part of KACC’s collaboration with the University of Miami's ceramic program, presenting recent Master of Fine Arts (MFA) graduates in Visual Arts. Each year, the KACC launches curatorial projects exclusively for these MFA students: SOLFO NEW ART. In doing so, the KACC supports emerging and mid-career artists and provide a platform for visibility and exhibition experience.
Coordinators
Carlos E Prado
University of Miami
Ceramics professor
Odette Lopez
Kendall Art Cultural Center
Director
Ivonne Ferrer
Fine Arts Ceramic Center
Art Director
Artists
Elizabeth Guignino
Our brains are wired to notice patterns and see the familiar in the unknown. We look for things that look like us, to connect, to recognize friend from foe. These vessels are, in essence, surrogate self-portraiture in the moments of creation. Once they are placed within the gallery setting, in relationship with the viewer, it is the aim that they become projections of the audience’s experiences and their own psychological states.
Ultimately, for this work, the notion of representation is placed in the balance between overt and implicit. I aim to create suggestions of “figure” and “emotion.” The vessels are an amalgamation of a container and an intuitive anthropomorphic creature that I have poured myself into. It is my intent that the ability to trace my fingerprints on the surface gives the work a special universal understanding: that is, the deep knowledge of the feel of clay that most humans have, combined with the long history of cultural significance.
Just as I have become a different artist through growth, struggle, control, and balance, it is my hope that the viewer recognizes themselves in the universal concepts contained in each vessel. It is my intent that each vessel become a conduit of experience as the viewer relates his or her own body to the work, and recognizes their own, unique becomings.
Elizabeth Guignino is a New England born ceramic artist currently based in Miami, Florida. She obtained her BA in Ceramics from Central Connecticut State University in 2016. After graduating from Central Connecticut State University, she worked under Vicente Garcia as both the University Ceramics Technician and as his apprentice in his personal studio. Elizabeth earned her MFA in May 2020 with the completion of her thesis exhibition, Becomings, during which she participated in various exhibitions. She has twice received the Jose Bernardo Ceramic Award through participation in student juried shows at the University of Miami, and was awarded the Summer MFA Fellowship Award in 2019 from the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, Coral Gables, FL.
Sepideh Kalani
The “Next Target” represents people who are close to death. Their last moment has come. They are scared. Their eyes are filled with fear. It looks like they are waiting for death. They know that their lives are part of a target. Are they victims for the next target?
Sepideh Kalani is a ceramicist from Iran who studied cognitive science and painting. Most of her works are about human beings. As she pictures her inner pulse with clay, she tells stories with the medium and expresses compassion through working and her art.
Kim Bauldree
These works each began with a photograph, either self-generated or scavenged from public archives, as source of rumination on the paradoxical ways humans interact with blue spaces. Studies indicate mental and physical health benefits for all people when they have access to blue spaces but, like all natural resources, the power struggle between public access and private ownership limits that access.
The struggle also lies in caring for those resources, between exploitation and neglect. The works presented in this exhibition invite the viewer to create their own narrative and ponder multifaceted perspectives pertaining to public access and stewardship of our natural water resources...As a multidisciplinary artist, she uses alternative photo-printing methods, digital filmmaking, and ceramic art to explore the nuances and complexities of human relationships with water. Her current work is about the erosion of the shorelines, of social responsibility for the planet..It is also about water and its glorious, powerful, destructive, life-sustaining magnificence. Her artwork navigates between these extremes and seeks to pique dialogue about our relationships and responsibilities to “Blue Spaces,” and to celebrate the wonder and beauty of these natural spaces.
Kim Bauldree is a multi-disciplinary artist and fourth generation Floridian who is curious about the natural world and the complex ways that humans revere and exploit natural water resources. Kim embellishes hand-built ceramic surfaces with manipulated images sourced from her own photographs as well as those from public archives. She earned her MFA from the University of Miami, and a BFA in Creative Photography and MA in Mass Communications, Documentary Film, from the University of Florida. Kim worked as a photojournalist in New York and Florida, taught photojournalism at the University of Florida, Hand-built ceramics at the University of Miami, and currently operates a private art studio in North Florida.
Anthony Magnetti
Here Magnetti is using the structure of a mobius strip (a surface with only one side and one boundary curve) to reference the cyclical feeling he has of time. Ceramic is used for structure, for its durability corresponding to how he view events as being permanent. In contrast, ephemeral materials like sidewalk chalk and paint are used for surface designs in hopes that as these pieces live, the fragile surfaces will get erased and altered similar to our memories as time passes.
Anthony Magnetti (b. 1985, Salt Lake City, Utah) is a ceramic artist and current graduate student at the University of Miami. His ceramic sculptures delve into his interests of music, Funk-Art, cartoons, communities, and his looming fear of mortality. He uses multiple firing methods and repurposed materials to build structures that become platforms to express his observations in his surrounds. He has exhibited at the University of Miami Wynwood art gallery, Miami, Florida (2020 and 2021); Art Access, Salt Lake City, Utah (2017); The Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, California (2014); Smaart Gallery, San Francisco, California (2014); Regency Square, Davis, California (2014). He lives in Ogden, Utah and Studies in Miami, Florida.
This exhibition was made possible with the support of the University of Miami and the University of Miami's ceramic and fine arts department
