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about > Partnerships > Archie Bray Critic
Experience a place where partnerships with other programs acknowledge excellence in writing through residency awards.
For more information about the residency award and application process, please check www.archiebray.org/residence_program/jentel_critic.html or email jentel@jentelarts.org.
Archie Bray Foundation and Jentel Foundation Partnership
With the intention of creating an opportunity to develop more informed and thoughtful critical writing about the ceramic arts on a national and international level and further enriching the creative environment of the residency programs, the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT and the Jentel Foundation in Banner, WY established a collaboration on a shared residency that promotes critical and creative writing and thinking.
Since the end of the nineteenth century the cultural status of craft has slowly and continually eroded, in part, through the changing role of technology in western society. Simultaneously, there has been an increasing emphasis on the “conceptual” and intellectual over the object in mainstream art. This shift in aesthetic appreciation has spawned elaborate but limited definitions of both art and craft and heated debate about whether they are mutually exclusive.
The resulting by-product, then, is a dearth of meaningful writing about ceramics. Too often what is written is reduced to simple description, is driven by a need to make ceramics “art” using “art’s” terms, or is focused on an intellectual art-versus-craft debate that virtually ignores the object at hand.
The Bray was in the beginning and remains an on-going experiment where everything is possible. Extensive facilities, freedom to explore and a profound opportunity to grow as artists support the responsibility for residents to participate seriously and think critically about their work. Bray Resident Director, Josh DeWeese believes that this environment of free exchange and experimentation is ideal for an interested writer to explore, inquire and learn about the ceramic arts including a more complete knowledge of materials and the intuitive science involved in creation. The annually awarded residency includes time at the Bray to experience this environment that simultaneously encourages and challenges the individual.
After a few weeks at the Bray, the writer also has time at Jentel to focus, to develop material gathered at the Bray and to produce two essays about the Bray fellowship artists. The Taunt Fellow and the Lilian Fellow each receive $5000 awards based on the merit and promise of their work and begin one-year residencies in September. They work towards solo exhibitions of their work, scheduled for August of the following year at the Bray. The essays are published in a catalog of their work that accompanies the exhibitions.
Jentel Critic at the Bray Residency Recipients
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