Artwork in most museums stays in a case, preventing visitors from touching it regardless of the artist’s original intention. But at the Curious Vessels exhibit, visitors can use cups that would usually only be on display to serve themselves tea.

The exhibition, which will be in the Everson Museum of Art until Oct. 2, displays hundreds of pieces of pottery, with pieces from several different artists. Vases, bowls and even a pre-rolled joint container fill the gallery’s shelves.

Louise Rosenfield, an art collector who lives in Dallas, Texas, brought the exhibit to the museum. Rosenfield, who is a potter herself, owns just under 4,000 pieces of functional pottery that she has collected from around the country. She has two very important criteria for which pieces are bought for the collection: the artist must be alive and the piece must be functional.

“Functional pots are the most democratic art form,” Rosenfield said. “With a functional pot, you are using every single one of your senses to engage that object. You have to pick it up, you have to look at it, you hear if you are pouring liquid in it…you are touching it with your lips, and you’re tasting.”

Rosenfield started her collection in the early 1990s as a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Originally, the potter had no intention of starting a collection, but after buying pottery at almost every showing she went to, she had amassed a sizable collection.

After conversations with her husband and close friends, Rosenfield decided to document all the pottery she accumulated. She put all the information together and created the Rosenfield Collection website, where visitors can find every single piece of work in the collection, along with the artist who made it.

As Rosenfield and her husband moved around from Athens, Georgia to Dallas, the collection moved with them. At one point, it grew too large for their first house in Dallas, and they had to move to a new home, with a specially designed closet to fit all the pottery.

While Rosenfield has always known she had no interest in monetizing the collection, she was unsure how best to use it. She did not want to ever sell it, but also did not want to force it upon her children.

Luckily, the Everson and its director, Elizabeth Dunbar, helped her solve her problem.

“Elizabeth asked me what I was going to do with my collection. And I said, ‘Well, it has to go to a restaurant, it has to be used until it’s all broken,’” Rosenfield said. “She said, ‘Ah, well, I think the Everson needs a cafe,’ so we started talking about it.”

The pair decided that the Everson would use the collection not only as a gallery, but also as the plateware and cups for the Everson’s new cafe, fittingly named “Louise.” Significantly to both Johnson and Rosenfield, they feel as though the exhibition and the cafe will be true to the artists’ intention for their art.
Daphne Hutcher, an artist with 31 pieces in the Rosenfield Collection, feels that pottery should not be contained to just one purpose. Hutcher feels that specifically ceramics offers the artist the opportunity to make something both functional and beautiful.

“When you think about all the different kind of art that you could do — whether it be weaving, woodworking, or painting or sculpture — there aren’t very many things in your life that you actually hold in your hands and lift to your lips and touch to your mouth,” Hatcher said in an interview. “Pottery is a very intimate thing”

Garth Johnson, the curator of ceramics at the Everson, organized the exhibit. He said he’s thrilled that can use all of the pottery the way the artists intended their works to be used.

With the exhibition, Johnson has been able to utilize the functional pottery, whether it be serving tea for his guests in pots and cups that are a part of the collection, or by using a different vase every week to display flowers in the gallery.

“We just set up a little tea station and people can choose their own cups and sit down at this red table that a neighbor loaned to me,” Johnson said. “It’s funny, (Rosenfield’s) collection is full of the kind of things that have a longtable (effect), that give us the ability to rally people around food and drinks.”

While the new cafe won’t be completed until next spring, Johnson said he’s excited for what’s to come, and he knows that he and the Everson can’t stop there.

“It’s gonna be amazing to finally get the thing up, but the possibilities are really almost infinite,” Johnson said.

Published on September 20, 2022 at 9:46 pm