Overview

Jim Melchert (1932-2023) is often described as the ""great philosopher of the post-war craft movement."" This is the first monograph to document Melchert's esteemed and influential career. The book is a long overdue tribute to one of America's great artists, who challenged ceramic traditions of expression, form, and function and helped elevate the medium's acceptance into mainstream contemporary sculpture. It presents an overview of his storied 60 year career, including his work in the 1960's helping elevate ceramics to a contemporary art form. It documents the artists involvement in the California Funk movement, his groundbreaking 1970s performances, his work in conceptual art and showcases the thrilling broken tile works that preoccupied the artist at the end of his long career. Embedded in his late tile artwork, we see a philosophical concept that when something is broken, it can be repaired and made stronger and more beautiful. We see in Melchert's tile work a metaphor for life. What lies behind these broken shards in Melchert's mesmerizing works is something remarkable: Optimism. Nothing is beyond repair. These remarkable works are born from the belief that we have the power to bring positive change from our misfortune and contribute to the depth of our shared story.

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Griff Williams is an American painter, filmmaker, author and gallerist. In 1993, he founded Gallery 16 in San Francisco and has exhibited and published scores influential artists including Lynn Hershman Leeson, William Kentridge, bell hooks, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen and Mark Grotjahn. In 2021, Williams made an acclaimed feature film, Tell Them We Were Here, a documentary about eight of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. The film was included in film festivals around the world and was awarded best documentary at Newport Beach Film Festival and Nevada City Film Festival. His recent books include The Gay Seventies: Hal Fischer is the first monograph to feature the complete collection of works Hal Fischer produced in San Francisco's Haight and Castro neighborhoods in the 1970s. His book on the life and artwork of the late San Francisco artist Rex Ray including essays by Rebecca Solnit was published by Chronicle Books in 2021. Sequoia Miller is the Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto. He holds a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University; an MA in Design History from the Bard Graduate Center; and a BA in Cultural Studies from Brandeis University. Recent curatorial projects include Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects and Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me. Publications include Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects (2024), Ceramic Art (2023); and The Ceramic Presence in Modern Art (2015). Prior to his academic and curatorial work, Sequoia was a full-time ceramist who exhibited and led workshops across the United States Tanya Zimbardo is a San Francisco-based curator and the assistant curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her research on Bay Area Conceptual art and performance has informed such guest curatorial projects as Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970 (Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture), Organic Logic (The 500 Capp Street Foundation), Equilibrium: A Paul Kos Survey (di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art), Public Works: Artists' Interventions 1970s--Now (Mills College Art Museum), and Scoresfor a Room: David Haxton and Jim Melchert (Worth Ryder Art Gallery, UC Berkeley). Renny Pritikin was co-director of New Langton Arts in San Francisco from 1979 to 1986 and executive director from 1986 until 1992. He was chief curator at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from 1992 to 2004. He was director of the Nelson Gallery and Fine Arts Collection at UC Davis from 2004 until 2012. He was chief curator of The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco from 2014 until 2018. Career highlights include a lecture series in Japanese museums as a guest of the State Department in 1995. In 2003 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to lecture in museums throughout New Zealand. Pritikin is the author of five published books of poetry, most recently Westerns and Dramas, published by the Prelinger Library, where he was poet in residence (2020). Maria Porges is a writer and artist. Since the early '90s, her reviews, articles, and interviews have appeared in many publications, including Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture, the New York Times Book Review. She has also authored more than 150 exhibition essays and book contributions. The recipient of a SECA award from SFMOMA, her studio practice focuses on sculpture and works on paper; over 25 solo shows of her work have included exhibitions at galleries, museums, and alternative spaces across the country. Porges received a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Chicago and has twice been in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is currently a full professor at California College of the Arts.

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