February 10, 2006 - August 2, 2006
Philadelphia artist Candy Depew is known for her interest in the fine arts, decorative arts, ornamentation, and interior design. Her site-specific installations blur the boundaries between these genres as she creates arrangements of handmade ceramics, found objects, and sometimes furnishings-within a backdrop of colorfully painted, patterned walls. Depew's interiors are often staged like period rooms, albeit with a curious mix of decorative art styles from Victorian and Japanese to Art Nouveau.
In "Curioscape-curious landscape," Depew has created an arrangement of primarily black and white organic forms made of cast vitreous china, a medium she discovered during an artist's residency at Kohler Co., where artists are given unlimited access to the manufacturer's porcelain factory. Depew made stylized organic forms such as leaves and crystals by casting liquid clay into plaster molds that were fired over several days in the factory's tunnel kilns.
Her porcelain black and white arrangements are reminiscent of a landscape-mountains, valleys, and streams-each element flowing into the other and set within an elegant pink wash.
