Join ceramicists Anna Mayer and James C. Watkins on Facebook Live for an artist-led tour of their current exhibitions, Forms of Inheritance: The Work of Anna Mayer and Texas Master Series: James C. Watkins.
Anna and James will walk through the exhibitions together to discuss their approaches to clay, alternative firing techniques, and the motivations behind their work. The virtual audience is invited to submit questions via the Facebook chat function for a brief Q&A session following their tour.
ABOUT ANNA MAYER
Anna Mayer’s art practice is sculptural and social, with an emphasis on hand-built ceramics. Her methodology emerges from enacting formative, site-specific, analogue firing projects in Southern California. Mayer revels in the fact that ceramics historically has been used to create highly functional items as well as wildly symbolic objects. Her work is part of this lineage, with equal concern for the future and a dramatically shifting climate–ecological and political. Mayer recently had solo exhibitions at AWHRHWAR, Adjunct Positions, and A-B Projects, all in Los Angeles. Her work has also been exhibited at NCECA’s 2021 Annual Conference (invited artist), at Ballroom Marfa (TX), Kendall Koppe (UK), Commonwealth & Council (CA), Hammer Museum (CA), and Glasgow International (UK). She has a 14-year collaborative practice with Jemima Wyman, called CamLab, which has been exhibited at MOCA Los Angeles and Hammer Museum. Mayer is currently the assistant professor of sculpture at the University of Houston, where she oversees the ceramics program.
ABOUT JAMES C. WATKINS
HCCC recognizes James C. Watkins as its newest Texas Master for his more than 40 years as an outstanding ceramicist and educator. Watkins received his MFA from Indiana University and his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Based in Lubbock, Texas, Watkins taught architectural ceramics for 12 years and architectural delineation for 35 years at Texas Tech University, where he received the honor of Paul Whitfield Horn Professor Emeritus, among many other awards. He served as assistant dean of undergraduate studies in the College of Architecture between 2003 and 2006. In 2005, he was awarded a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to build a ceramics program in Vietnam at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture. Watkins has written for numerous publications and is the author of several books, including Reflections Made of Memories (2019); Alternative Kilns & Firing Techniques (2004) with Paul Andrew Wandless; and Architectural Delineation, Presentation Techniques and Projects (2001) with James T. Davis. His work has been featured in 40 solo exhibitions and 164 group exhibitions around the world. He has pieces in 23 permanent collections, including the White House Collection of American Crafts at the Clinton Library (Little Rock, AR), the Shigaraki Institute of Ceramic Studies (Shigaraki, Japan), and, most recently, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX).
Image credits left to right: Portrait of Anna Mayer. Photo courtesy of the artist. Studio portrait of James C. Watkins. Photo by Bonni Oakes.
