Untitled (Triple Series), 1996 earthenware 14 1/2 in. x 26 in. x 12 in. (36.83 cm x 66.04 cm x 30.48 cm) The Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection: Purchased with a gift from the Vineyard in the Park, 1996. 96.31
Bennett Bean
Bennett Bean's early vessels are easily assigned to a "potter," for a pot-maker usually makes wheel-thrown, symmetrical, contained and static forms, with surface manipulation providing additional visual rhythms. However, when a couple commissioned the artist to create two works in 1994, Bean marked the beginning of the Double and Triple Series. These new forms are wheel-thrown, cut and manipulated - their rims inscribing elliptical orbits in space. The result - gesture and dynamism come to the fore.
This three-part vessel form involves a fifteen-step process where the artist balances accidental 'soft' elements such as pit firing smoke and glaze with the controlled 'hard edge' elements of drawing with cut tape and post-fired decoration with acrylics. The decoration consists of positive and negative curlicues, lines, bars, and bow-tie figures that, in recent work, are larger and more complex - they tend to obscure the ground. The artist then works to create interrelationships between the various parts. The designs appear to emerge and radiate from the crevices between the parts.
Bennett Bean was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1941. He has a B.A. from the State University of Iowa at Ames and attended graduate school at the University of Washington and Claremont College. He currently resides in Blairstown, New Jersey.
  
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