Diane Solomon Kempler Exhibit at Ewing
Artwork by Diane Solomon Kempler, titled From Then To Now, is on exhibit at the Ewing Gallery in the UT School of Art from August 17, 2022 – September 14, 2022. A closing reception takes place Sunday, September 11, 1-4 pm.
Diane Solomon Kempler was a professor at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, where she taught ceramic sculpture for many years. She has been a practicing artist for over thirty years, has had major exhibitions and received many awards. She has also created public art works in the United States and Bosnia. Her ceramic work focuses on the ideas of transition and transformation in the natural world as well as in humans.
She has traveled extensively to such places as Mali, Turkey, Indonesia, Peru, and Nepal. Her travels to Asia, especially Burma and India, allowed her to pursue one of her research interests, observing hand building pottery techniques that exist in rural villages. She was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholar grant to pursue this research in India and created several films from this research. She has participated in ceramic studio residencies in Hungary, France, India, and Denmark where she has spent time developing her ceramic and photography work.
From Then To Now is a retrospective that includes work from the past twenty plus years as well as present explorations. All these works utilize change as a thematic thread. The most recent work is influenced by frequent travel where rich and varied observations of the natural world are recorded. The oldest works consist of clay sculptures that are weathered, narrative and psychological, while the present work. especially the photographs, looks at the idea of finding beauty in the deciduous, the dying, the changing.