Ceramic Sounds at Potters Wheel Gallery

On Saturday, June 25, noon – 5 pm, new works by ceramic sound artist John Hansen will be featured at Potters Wheel Gallery, Gibraltar Road at Highway 42 in Fish Creek.

This year marks the 20th anniversary for Hansen’s work at the gallery and the 54th Door County season for Potters Wheel founders Abe and Ginka Cohn. The opening will include music by longtime Heritage Ensemble performer and American Folklore Theatre co-founder, Gerald Pelrine. Hansen will demonstrate making ceramic speakers and drums as well as playing doumbeks and “katungas” he has made.

Ceramic Sounds will feature new and redesigned “Planet Speakers” – individually hand-crafted ceramic spheres that encase stereo speakers. The interior sphere, usually globe-like, houses a high performance coaxial speaker. The large enclosing sphere reflects and projects the full range of the music played through it. Planet Speakers are unique art objects that surprisingly veil their function as a highly effective speaker.

Planet Speakers developed from the collaboration between internationally acclaimed sound artist Bruce Odland and Hansen for a sound installation exhibit in Linz, Austria in 1990. The two artists – one working with sound, the other with clay – met in 1976 at the Colorado Centennial Art Tour after which they began making a line of ceramic percussion instruments called Handland Drums, which are also available through the gallery.

Other drums and instruments are available at Potters Wheel this year as well as recent work by Abe Cohn and Scott Frankenburger, Joanne Kirkland, Royce Yoder, and 40 potters from around North America.

Potters Wheel Gallery is open noon – 5 pm everyday but Thursday, through October.