Dunderberg Gallery will feature 10 ceramicists at 118 Marion Boulevard, Gilbertsville NY 13776, starting December 3 from 4-6 p.m. and then open Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Submitted Photo)

GILBERTSVILLE - Dunderberg Gallery in Gilbertsville will hold an opening reception on Sunday, December 3, 2023, from 4-6 pm to honor the last show of its Winter 2023-24 season, featuring 10 ceramicists who have worked at the Elizabeth Nields Clay Studio Workshops over the years.

Flat on Their Backs: Tiles seeks to define the idea of tile not in terms of function, material, or form, but rather by an aspect that all tiles have in common: they are Flat on Their Backs.

Upon entering the gallery, one is welcomed by three of Nields’ “temples,” which hold tile paintings in stoneware sculpture bases.

In the main gallery, Carla Hall’s monumental ceramic wall mural, Pañcīkaraṇa, is seen in a large photograph printed at Light Work Lab on the campus of Syracuse University. Measuring 16’ x 5’6”, the mural is now installed in an artist’s studio in Davis, California. Several ceramic studies illuminate Hall’s thinking as she worked through the form and content of this commissioned piece, based on the Vedantic theory of the five primordial elements.

Also in the main gallery, a ”sculpture” composed of seven hay bales displays functional tile that Swiss-born Magali Veillon and her family made for floors, shower walls, backsplashes, etc. in the straw bale house that Magali is building in Treadwell.

Marcus Villagran, a ceramic sculptor who moved to Gilbertsville and founded Dunderberg Gallery, has contributed a set of three large stoneware dancing women based on three of Elizabeth Nields’ earlier drawings. Originally designed to stand on a triangular base, Villagran’s tile dancers now cavort on his gallery walls. In the back room, Rolling Thunder is a mosaic portrait of Bob Dylan in The Basement Tapes mode.

In the back gallery, Jody Isaacson stretches our ideas of what a tile is, with five works of irregular form, charged with concentrated emotion.

Inspired by perusing Nields’ large collection of her work over 50 years, Lucinda Eden has developed glossy and creamy matte black glazes to make tiles for a bathroom renovation in her house—they are intended for both walls and floors.

Esperanza Roncero, from Spain via Rochester, draws upon her childhood summers in Andalusia for a series of work inspired by the Arabic tile tradition of the Spanish Mediterranean.

Inspired by the beauty of the Butternut Valley, Kim L’Heureux works in the traditions of the ceramic arts, making clay and glazes from scratch, throwing pots on a kickwheel, and firing in reduction “flame” kilns.

Anne Rinehard has been making ceramic sporadically over the past 25 years with Nields. Since retiring from the City University of New York, she has moved upstate, and sold antiques: she greatly enjoyed juxtaposing various pieces. That enjoyment manifests itself in her work in this exhibition.

Dunderberg Gallery, at 118 Marion Boulevard, Gilbertsville NY 13776, is open Fridays and Saturdays from 11 am to 4 pm.

Please consult www.DunderbergGallery.com for information about upcoming events, including our ongoing concert series featuring jazz and classical music, with the support of the Music Performance Trust Fund.

- Information from the Dunderberg Gallery