Doug Herren's INDUSTRIA: The Creation of Happiness

by Kukuli Velarde

Philadelphia, known for many as the newest borough of New York (Philadelphia is a historical city 2 hours apart from Manhattan), is becoming an attractive destination to many artists. Such artists, who are unable to afford New York, find in its streets, spaces suitable for living and working at manageable prices. Philadelphia also has an additional attractiveness, for the ceramicist, it is where one of the most important ceramic institutions exists: The Clay Studio. Douglas Herren came as resident of the Clay Studio 11 years ago, and like many of his colleagues, stayed in the city of "brotherly Love".

Of his current work, Mr. Herren says: it derives from my training as a functional potter.  In my most recent work I create oversized vessel forms….teapots, vases, platters, etc…that are infused with an industrial sensibility. While the sources I use are utilitarian pottery forms, I have recast them to resemble industrial detritus.  While there is still the echo of function in these pieces, that function and purpose can only be guessed at and intuited.  I depart further from my past work as a potter in the treatment of surfaces.  Rather than the use of traditional pottery glazes for finishing, I strive to replicate the surfaces of abandoned machinery.  Here I employ sign-painter’s paints in multiple layers applied over a black-matt glazed surface.  Then I scrub the surfaces with steel wool to erode and distress planes and edges, exposing under-layers of color.  The result actually gives an extra punch to the overall color palette.  While the work is about abandonment and decay, the final result actually comes off as something more playful and boisterous.  The ambiguity of the work’s intended function and purpose has less to do with nostalgia than to tease and prod the viewer into inventing their own story lines."

The scale of this body of work also reminds us of the American fascination with size, it grows beyond the intimate object to the object that can be part of the human landscape which is an interesting departure from his past pottery.  Most all the work is enlarged beyond a scale of usefulness.  In this sense the work invites a play-school sense of proportion.  While the scale is imposing, the bright color palette enlivens what could easily become grim and overbearing pieces.  Playfulness really is what is primary to the work, and in the context of a full show, the atmosphere effected can only be described as circus-like.

If we were to define America's culture as one  prone to recreation and even of  inventing a past we wouldn't be far from the truth. America longs for history and culture, even though it does have a history and has developed a culture, a culture that has become today's contemporary international culture. America's approach to history is usually playful, though it might be at times irreverent, but always enthusiastic and creative. This is because for America, the past is not something to be held with nostalgia but with curiosity, an attitude we can find, in the most positive side of the spectrum, in Doug Herren's new body of work "INDUSTRIA".