Val Cushing

   On January of 1931, Val Cushing was born in Rochester, New York. He studied at the School of Art & Design, and after two years serving in the army he returned to work there as a teacher. He retired from the school after forty-one years and left a huge impact on all students that he met. His courses concerned clays, glazes and other related subjects. He travelled a lot to give lectures abroad, including in England, Norway Spain and in the island of Maui. Wherever he went, he challenged himself to give good memories to the students and to make friends. His pottery has received many awards and Honors, and his work has been exhibited in over 200 exhibitions around the world. His work was made with dedication and some where made to have a functionality and other to be visually beautiful as a sculpture. He looked for ideas and inspiration in various places, but mostly in nature. It is in nature that he found the rich colours, the dynamic textures and the harmonious forms that he loved to make.

The above four jars are from the same collection, as you can tell maybe because they have the same lid. Even though the lid is the same in each one, each jar has a complete different shape from each other. They have different forms and shapes. The one with brown tones looks very naturalistic especially with the shell- like forms at the bottom, while the blue and white ones are more vibrant and fun. Personally the all blue- one is the most aesthetically pleasing because it is very symmetrical in shape and also pattern and the bright blue glaze would give some life in a room. At the left is a jar made from Matthew Metz in 1961- around the same time of Val Cushing. The difference of this jar and the ones above is not only the fact that it has a more traditional shape of a jar, but also the decoration. First of all Metzs’ has not texture at all, but it is smooth from every angle, while the others have a lot of different textures and lines. Second, the painted pictures of Metzs’ are much less abstract than the other. You can tell that the artist wanted to paint trees and faces, even though they are not realistic, but in Cushings’ works you cannot tell what the artist had in mind when drawing those abstract patterns with the glaze. 

    On the left is a Val Cushing bowl which is a bit different than the other jars because it is more clean in shape and style. It has not texture but very smooth. The shape of it is very circular, circles on top of each other forming the shape of a bowl. This method is called coiling. The bright blue and white colours give it more of a fresh look. The vertical stripes on the bowl are a contrast to the horizontal coils of the clay.

On the left is Ursula Scheids’ cup made also in the twentieth century and I don’t know if it is a coincidence but the pattern glazed is almost exactly the same as Val Cushings’. The shape of the cup is more boxy than circular, it is kind of a diamond shaped. The vertical blue and white strips are the same as the ones of Cushing, they are fresh and vibrant and will give the room some energy.

Working in pottery dates back more than 20,000BC and today is still very popular and a must-needed material in our everyday essentials. Designs and patterns will always be invented and each ceramics should be very proud on what he can do with his hands.

Bibliography:

2013 Museum of Ceramic Art http://ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/collections/

2009 http://www.valcushing.com/gallery.html

All searched on the 2nd of January 2014