March /April 2016 - art ltd 71Hanging Sculpture by
JEAN SMITH
featured in
Art Angels: 7th Heaven
4/28 thru 5/21
Ice Cube Gallery
3320 Walnut St
Denver, CO 80205
For all their obvious heft, all these works betray
Haft-Candell’s fascination with linear form. “I’ve
been very interested in the idea of making clay
look like a knot. But I find it really hard to draw
it in two dimensions,” she says. So the built
work becomes a form of problem solving, of
translating the immediacy of drawing into clay.
“The works have a snake feel, they still have
this movement, in contrast with its heavy and
static material,” she notes approvingly. For the
floor piece, “I wanted to sculpt, not just a knot,
a braided knot... But it all had to be hollow so
it’s just sort of an illusion.”
Ultimately, her works are doggedly authentic
to their own materials and process, including
all the scars and flaws that occur along the
way. “My hand is always in all the work, I’m
not trying to erase my touch on material,” she
states. “The process, the chinks that happen,
the struggle, I like revealing that. I think it
makes the work a little funny, and more per-
sonal, and relatable... They reveal some, but
there’s still a lot of questions about them.”
While the fragmentary nature of her pieces
helps inform their open-ended, comparative
process, it also serves another purpose. “I’m
really interested in making large things in
pieces, it gives me more freedom. In that I
can lift them by myself, transport them, I can
fire them in a small kiln if I want to, I’m not
reliant on other people. It’s kind of liberating.”
Also noteworthy is the artist’s subtle engage-
ment with issues of gender. “In my view,
the men are the ones making the big, heavy
things, so I want to challenge that, add a femi-
nine perspective to that,” she says. “In the
Ochi show, that braid, it felt like something
girls do, something traditionally feminine, but
done on a scale not traditionally feminine.”
While she is clearly comfortable working in
large-scale, those bulky pieces are just part
of the story; in the studio, they are arranged
along the wall like characters in a ceramic line-
up, while a myriad of small, fist-sized, even
more experimental works peer down from
shelves. “I think it’s really important for me
to [work on] really different scales, from tiny
to large... I think they have a very different
feeling in relation to the body. Small could be
monumental, and large could be precious and
cute, all those things we associate with some-
thing miniature.” Standing amid her works,
she adds cheerfully, “I’m not convinced by
the mid-sized.”
—GEORGE MELROD
“Julia Haft-Candell: Double Knot” was on
display at Ochi Projects in Los Angeles.
January 16 – February 20, 2016.
http://www.ochiprojects.com
Her work is also featured in “Beyond the
Object: the 72nd Scripps Ceramic Annual,” at
Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps
College, in Claremont, CA. January 23 – April
3, 2016. rcwg.scrippscollege.edu