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Who isn’t excited about spring? Maybe a lost misanthropist or a hay fever patient who hates those pollen. But on the whole, people in general and artists in particular are very happy with spring. The glazed ceramic vase "Solar Joyeux" by Dan McCarthy is a good example of this. Born in Honolulu and raised in Southern California, this artist trained as a painter has lived in New York for over thirty years. His low-tech ceramic works look rather dishevelled and clumsy at first glance. This desired result stems from McCarthy's method, based on an intuitive way of dabbling in chunks of clay with the open-mindedness of a child. For example, he creates smiley-faced characters and rainbows that hover somewhere between reality and fiction: they do not exist, but you still recognize them as old acquaintances. His "facepots" are as happy as they are empty, as perfect as imperfect: not the perfection of the final product but the process of growth itself and the accompanying undefined status fascinate this artist. And that can be compared to a nest that is still under "construction", an embryonic bird falling from the tree, a fresh rainbow, an unhappy smile, or a surprised expression. Just like in spring it is all there, but you do not know exactly which way it will go. The promise of what is yet to come, of the intermediate stage, seems more important than celebrating the end result.
That's why McCarthy's paintings and ceramics are "darker" than meets the eye. After all, the rainbow can become a thundercloud and one tear can become two. But still, the attraction is in the expectation of what beautiful things are still to come ...
(rodolphe janssen)