Images(3)

Installation 1–183

Artist Daniel Johnston American, born 1977

Date2019

MediumWood-fired clay: 175 ceramic cylinders

ClassificationsCeramics

Credit LineCommissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art. Gift of Pat and Tom Gipson

Object number2020.11

On View

On view

Label TextThese 183 ceramic columns, ranging in height, form a level line to highlight the dips and rises of the landscape. The pillars were hand built out of local Piedmont clay and fired in a wood kiln at the artist’s studio in Seagrove, NC.

Pushing the conventional boundaries of pottery, Johnston creates large installations that turn familiar forms into awe-inspiring experiences for the visitor. This artwork reveals questions of walls, borders, and boundaries and of how we move through the world, both literally and metaphorically.
[L. Dougherty, 2024]ProvenanceCommissioned by NCMA, 2019 [1]; created Seagrove, North Carolina, 2019; sold to NCMA, 2019.

[1] Commissioned with funds provided by Pat and Tom GipsonPublished ReferencesHenry Glassie, A Portrait of the Artist as a Potter in North Carolina: Daniel Johnston (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 178–223, illus. (color).
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