Looking Forward, Looking Back: Jay Lacouture

This exhibition of works by Jay Lacouture, Professor of Art at Salve Regina University, showcases two distinct bodies of work: one that is assembled from pieces made over the course of his career that explore the teapot idiom, and another that brings together works from the past several years that reflect the artist’s visits to China.

“The Ubiquitous Teapot” features a collection of teapot forms that Lacouture made during his forty-year career. The complexity of the teapot provides the potter with the ultimate challenge of disparate parts conforming to a unified whole. Informed by function and inspired by a quest for the beautiful, these works highlight Lacouture’s artistic exploration and innovation in both porcelain and stoneware over a sustained period.

For The “Post-Industrial Mingware Series,” Lacouture includes an array of classically inspired blue and white Mingesque porcelain, displayed in a fashion reminiscent of a European porcelain room. He made the various components of this complex arrangement over that past six years. Since his residency in Jingdezhen, China in 2009, Lacouture has continued to work almost exclusively in porcelain fired in a soda vapor glaze atmospheric kiln. Lacouture was a fellow and former president of the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts and recipient of a RISCA Fellowship in Crafts.

Exhibition overview from museum website