"Mudworks and other appendages" - works by artists Hideo Mabuchi, Simone Shabuck, and Thomas Campbell, delve into the possibilities of ceramics as a medium in dialogue with other formats and materials. Curated by Thomas Campbell
A physicist by training, Hideo Mabuchi explores a nexus of conventional scientific research, traditional craft, interdisciplinary scholarship, and integrative education. As a maker he works mainly in clay and textiles, guided by a materiality-driven aesthetic and a desire to let technique and serendipity lead while ideas emerge and manifest in the final stages of making. He wonders what it is to be a maker, researcher, scholar and teacher all at once rather than by turns. His overarching practice explores this question in the studio, laboratory, library and classroom.
New York based, Simone Shubuck creates riotously colorful mixed-media paintings on paper and canvas, as well as hand-built ceramics that evoke alternate forms of life. She is the co-founder of Wifey, a roving pop-up art, food and floral platform that has been forging unexpected collaborations in New York City since 2017. Shubuck’s background as a florist directly informs her work, as she combines specific images of plants and flowers with fantastical figures and motifs, minting a visual language all her own. An invented world wherein a sculptural ice cream cake can correspond with a book of Victorian portraits that have been altered and make a kind of complete magical sense. She has exhibited at Corbett vs Dempsey in Chicago, Susie Q in Zurich, Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco, and Kantor/Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles and Zach Feuer in NYC . She has works in the collection of MoMA, NY Public Library and the Tang Museum.
Simone works in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan.
Thomas Campbell is a self-taught painter, sculpture, photographer, and filmmaker. He splits his time between his painting/sculpture/stuff making studio in Bonny Doon, California and traversing the globe making films. Campbell's artworks combine scribbles and scriptures, taking slogans and anecdotes from his unique vocabulary and juxtaposing them with a profound look at human nature. His movement-oriented paintings are as layered with meaning as they are with paint. The works, typically composed of several panels, are free-flowing with wide expressionist swipes of color, bold graphics and intricate renderings of characters and text. His photographs mimic the bold graphics and intricate renderings of characters and text. His photographs mimic the intensity of the paintings, yet in a more abstract fashion. Campbell has mounted solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Denmark, The Netherlands, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Morocco. In 1999, he completed his first feature length surfing film, The Seedling, and in 2004 released his second, Sprout, and in 2009 he completed "The Present". Campbell was also part owner and creative director of a small independent record label called Galaxia, based in Santa Cruz, which has released records by contemporary artists Tommy Guerrero, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Peggy Honeywell and The Black Heart Procession, among others. Galaxia was established in 1993. In 2014, Campbell started a new creative platform called UM YEAH ARTS which is a nexus for the making of books, music, and films.
Campbell lives and works in Bonny Doon and Santa Cruz, CA.