The effect is to suggest some form of erasure-a persistent theme in African American culture, from Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man to Simone Leigh’s Brick House, a commanding figure with conspicuously absent eyes (installed on the High Line in Manhattan in 2019, and now on permanent view in Philadelphia, on the University of Pennsylvania campus). Facial features are conspicuous by their absence in these works, but they are “jug-eared,” clearly signifying a personage. In a few cases, the reference is more head- on, as in Blank Faced (2020) and the earlier Faceless Face Jug (2016). Often, they feature spouts and handle-like appendages. They are always part pot,with an overall squat shape. Othello’s figures refer explicitly to face-jug typology. But it seems safe to say that, like the blues, they were a way for makers to work through the reality of their surroundings: acknowledging, transforming, and transcending all at once. (Scholars have pointed to nkisi-ritual figures and containers made among Kongo peoples-as probable antecedents.) Really, we can only guess at the intentions that lie behind these powerful ceramics, and the significance they may have had in their communities. They may well represent ideas transplanted from Central Africa. These vessels, expressively embellished with eyes, noses, and toothy mouths all rendered in coiled clay, were first made in the early 1860s by enslaved Black potters in and around Edgefield, South Carolina. The blues had a correlate in ceramics long before Othello came along, in the form of African American–made face jugs. (As Crouch has also observed, “you play the blues to rid yourself of the blues.” To which we might add: and when you’re done, you play the blues again.) He’s found a way to deal with sorrow, letting it in without giving in. This music is the wellspring for so much in American culture-critic Stanley Crouch once described it, perfectly, as “the sound and the repository the nation’s sense of tragic recognition.” The way that great blues singers dismantle themselves in public, and are all the stronger for it their improvisational methodology, at once supremely skilled and hanging out there, loose their ability to work through a painful subject, rather than around it: all these traits are found Othello’s work. We can begin with the blues, surely the most important creative context for these works. They were indeed made at a heartbreaking time, but they also have a lot more going on: other aspects, equally present. Photo: John Wilson White.The same goes for Othello’s heartbreaking sculptures. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Image: Woody De Othello, Freeflow, 2021 ceramic and glaze. John Michael Kohler Arts Center is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10am-5pm, Saturday and Sunday from 10am-4pm, and Thursday from 10am-8pm. Some of the vessels will emanate sound from within, as if imbued with a spirit. Made in response to the work in the exhibition, the ambient composition is designed to subtly guide the viewer through the space,?creating an immersive environment. In addition, many of his new works feature both ears and mouths, offering meditations on listening, hearing, and being present.Ī new sound piece by Oakland, California musician?Cheflee will accompany Othello’s sculptures. These concepts, and the power to deprive people of their breath and their ability to breathe, are now more highly charged. Breath and breathing are ideas often expressed in Othello’s vessel-like forms covered in mouths. Othello draws on African Nkisii, or objects that are believed to be invested with spiritual protection and energy. The residency was cut short by several weeks and forced Othello to bring home some of the molds to continue his work. While he was in residence, the world outside the factory began to shift with the beginning of the pandemic.

Many of the sculptures were produced using molds that Othello created during his Arts/Industry Pottery residency at the Kohler Co.

For Hope Omens, he will present an entirely new body of work. Oakland ceramicist Woody De Othello is best known for his large-scale anthropomorphic figures, which are often humorous portrayals of domestic objects.

Woody de othello