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Opening Reception: Chris Gustin and Peter Marcus at OVERLAP
Chris Gustin, a ceramicist, and Peter Marcus, a printmaker, have each spent years honing their craft, achieving a profound mastery of their respective mediums. This deep expertise has enabled them to push the boundaries of their art, exploring new and uncharted territory. They have also both built large tools to help them achieve their artistic goals. Peter Marcus has designed some of the biggest etching presses in the country, one of which is in his basement, and Chris Gustin built one of the largest and most unique wood-fired kilns in the country at his studio. Their common experience as professors also informs their artistic practice. On an aesthetic level, they share an interest in abstraction and the importance of form and composition.
With a career spanning nearly half a century, Chris Gustin is recognized as one of the most esteemed ceramic artists of our time. Renowned for his skillfully made voluminous forms and luscious surfaces, Gustin's work spans a remarkable range of scales, from handheld vessels to larger abstract sculptures. His unparalleled mastery of glazing techniques is evident in his signature surfaces, achieved through secret combinations of glaze, ash, and metal oxides, and fired in an anagama (wood kiln). At Overlap, Gustin will showcase a selection of sculptures from his Spirit Series. These cloud-like, vaguely figurative pieces delve into "pure form as a means of expressing the emotional essence of our individual life experiences."
Peter Marcus has built a decades-long career rooted in material exploration within the medium of printmaking, recently culminating in a distinctive composite collagraph process. This innovative technique blurs the boundaries between painting, printmaking, collage, and sculpture- resulting in large-scale, multi-surfaced prints. Marcus begins by crafting highly contrasted fields of topographical marks—lines and shapes produced by inking and pressing a rigid, multi-textured collagraph plate constructed from various materials in his studio. With the recent addition of sliced and curled colorful paper, repurposed from previous studio experiments, Marcus creates dense, vibrant compositions that are both disruptive and delightful.
Chris Gustin (South Dartmouth, MA) is a studio artist and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. With over fifty solo exhibitions, he has exhibited, lectured, and taught workshops in the United States, Caribbean, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. His work is published extensively and is represented in numerous public and private collections in this country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art, the Crocker Museum of Art, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. Internationally, Gustin’s work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation in Icheon, Korea, the Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taipai, the Museo de Azulejo in Lisbon, and the Shiwan Treasure Pottery Museum in PR, China. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowships, and four Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships. Chris is cofounder of the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine, and currently serves as Honorary Trustee on its board.
Peter Marcus (Jamestown,RI) is a studio artist and former Professor of thirty-plus years at Washington University, St Louis. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Newport Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX, St Louis Art Museum, Joseph Pultizer Jr, Queens College, Newark Public Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and Washington University. He has received awards from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Recently Peter was named the Distinguished Artist of the Year by the Jamestown Arts Center in 2024.
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