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Louise W. King's exhibition, "Clay Horses Again," marks the third visit of her hand-built clay horses at the GNC Gallery. The collection of conventional-glaze, Raku-fired and wood-fired horses have been featured regularly at the New York Ceramics Fair. Other recent stops for the horses have included Virginia and Saratoga NY, as well as periodic exhibitions at the Washington (Conn.) Art Association.
Louise King offers these observations on her recent works:
"New glaze combinations have worked well, as has wood-firing with Kristin Muller at Dingman's Ferry, Pennsylvania. Ira Mandelbaum of Woodbury invented an excellent non-functional wooden stand for a clay rocking horse, while William Trowbridge continues to make iron stands for the galloping horses."
"Mud Ponies To Go," smaller and less complex than the clay horses, also return to the Good News Gallery after their successful debut here two years ago.
Louise W. King: An autobiographical note
Born in New York City before WWII, I must have fallen in love with the first horse that crossed my path... a police horse?... a horse pulling a milk wagon?... a pony in Central Park? Or could it have been my wildly glassy-eyed blood bay rocking horse with its real horsehair mane and tail?
This enthusiasm received little encouragement. My father disliked horses. But nothing stopped me from studying every shape and kind of horse: Mustangs, Beswick china horses, Trigger, merry-go-round horses, hunters, Tang horses, mules, circus horses, Citation, etc. C.W. Anderson was my idol, his pencil drawings of great thoroughbreds were so exact. A ton of paper and pounds of pencils were wasted in my efforts to imitate his style.
When it was evident I wouldn't be another C.W. Anderson, it didn't matter because Skeaping and Haseltine were my gods. Mother took me to Glen Echo Park (near Washington DC) where the merry-go-round was enchantment, with its agonizing choice of superb steeds.
I took a sculpture class in 1978 at the Washington (CT) Art Association. Plasteline was OK, but stickily pedestrian... then I encountered clay, in its infinite variety. The horses started small, static and primitive... then took off, getting bigger and livelier with time. I've built about a hundred horses a year of the past 14 years. Each horse is built "from the ground up"... using slab, coils and pinchpots in thier construction... something imagined, something dreamt, something seen out of the corner of the mind's eye. If nobody bought the clay horses, I'd make them anyway and bury them in the backyard for future archeological mystification. Clay and glazes are an endless adventure, Raku firing and a few fired in Joy Brown's wood kiln. My approach to clay is like the optimistic child in the stupid joke: "There must be a horse in there somewhere...."
For the past few years, some of the horses have been airborne thanks to William Trowbridge's iron stands. Since, January 2001, the horses have had a studio to call home, in a reconstructed cottage at the Old Red Mill in Bridgewater, Connecticut.
-- Louise W. King
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