Podcasts
Virginia Eichhorn Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
This podcast is intended for educational use only.
Carl Beam (1943-2005) has distinguished himself as an artist who does not so much as reconcile distinct and sometimes opposing or even contradictory cultures and traditions within his art works but rather they become part of his ongoing exploration of "…the interconnectedness of world events as an extension of microcosmic ecologies…"
Although he has had formal art training, Beam also had a number of life experiences not specifically related to art-making. He culled images from his own life experience and frequently juxtaposed them with historical and contemporary images, thus relating the "personal" with the larger "societal" picture. Stylistically his technique is more connected to Rauschenberg than to the Woodlands or traditional native art styles. His innovative techniques, in fact, have been emulated by a new generation of artists – native and not.
His work stands at the cutting edge of contemporary art and push insistently at its boundaries. The autobiographical cast of his work and his use of personal, commercial, and classic imagery from the histories of art and photography offer complexities of style and content.
In Canada, best-known for his paintings and works on paper, Beam has had an active ceramic practice that began in the early 1980s and continued until his death in 2005. Drawing inspiration from Anasazi and Mimbres cultures and techniques, Beam combined these with his own signature techniques creating a unique approach to ceramics as a means of contemporary art-making. In an artist statement in 2005 Beam wrote: The hemispherical quality of a large bowl still excites me…it is a universe unto itself, where anything can happen – the designs are limitless.
---
L'auteure parle de la vie et de l'oeuvre du peintre et céramiste canadien Carl Beam (1943-2005).