Noise, light are at play in last craft show

Weekend!Arts: Art review - Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Feb 16, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

DENISE FARWELL / P0RTLAND TRIBUNE

Not content to just let her art buzz about the gallery, Hilary Pfeifer has donated her “’s Warm” to the city’s premier craft showcase, which moves downtown this summer.

The Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery is going out with a bang. The hard-to-find gallery at 3934 S.W. Corbett Ave. currently houses three grand shows that contain elements of installation art, something not often found in the world of pots.

Visitors can’t fail but be wowed by Eliza Au’s “Hymn to Calamity.” It comprises a wall of ceramic tiles illuminated from

The wall is about 7 feet high and almost forms a circle. Standing within it you notice the soothing amber light and the slight sag of the slip cast forms, as though the tiles were made from wet paper bags.

But the circle also has interesting acoustic properties. Like the hush room at the airport (a soundproof cubicle where they test jet engines), it absorbs sound, making it eerily quiet in there. Yet anyone standing in the center hears his or her voice extra loud and echoey.

Canadian artist Au spent six months as the museum’s final Halvorsen Artist-In-Residence program working on this sublime statement about the whirlwinds of trouble that can surround an individual.

In a room she painted sky blue for the occasion, sculptor Hilary Pfeifer’s “’s Warm” (like ’s wonderful) consists of 1,500 handmade black objects pinned to the wall, looking like insects on the march.

Pfeifer was inspired by the complex swirling movements insects – such as the lovebug – make when they swarm.

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