Art Review: 'Art vs. craft' misses point in 'Sticks'

"Porcelain Flower" illustrates how artist Niles Wallace has moved beyond functional objects in his ceramics work.

Niles Wallace slyly poses a question in his exhibition "Sticks & Stones (one thing follows another)," at Gallery Fifty Six through June 25. It's not the traditional question whose implication we often expect at displays of ceramic art, that is, "Is it art or craft?" No, this question is more basic: "Who cares if it's art or craft?"

Take the installation called "Collection Cabinet," in which two sets of compartmentalized cabinets sit one atop the other. In the top section are 25 carefully arranged small ceramic vessels made by Wallace; in the bottom section sit, also carefully organized, 20 objects that look like distorted glass or crystal bowls that a touch -- I know, "Don't Touch the Art!" -- reveals to be plastic.

Niles Wallace installs his piece "Blossom Wall," a display of dozens of vessels bent and pulled beyond usefulness.

The artist apparently bought sets of cheap plasticware, subjected them to a little heat and allowed them to slump and otherwise become twisted and gnarled. We're supposed to look askance at plastic, but these things are oddly attractive. The very fact that they are contained in a "collection cabinet" allows them value equal to the pieces that Wallace made; well, he did "make" these, too. It's a "gotcha" moment for the viewer, but a wry, gentle one.

Wallace has taught in the art department at the University of Memphis since 1976 and is an associate professor and graduate program coordinator. He long ago gave up making functional objects in the traditional manner and, indeed, for the past decade or so has operated more as a sculptor than "ceramic artist," creating, among other bodies of work, a series of beautiful wooden ziggurats.

"Sticks and Stones" includes several pieces fashioned from knotty pieces of slender tree limbs fastened to each other with wooden dowels. These constructions make intriguing shapes but are not as interesting as the other works in the show.

Besides "Collection Cabinet," the major pieces are "Abundance" and "Blossom Wall," each of which actually takes up a whole wall in the gallery. "Abundance" uses about 90 -- I made a quick count -- of the clear, partially melted plastic dishes of various sizes and flings them, as it were, across a long wall in a glittering, galaxy-like formation.

"Blossom Wall" spills over to an adjacent wall in a display of perhaps 80 or 100 small flower-like vessels that the artist bent, shaped, pushed and pulled so they extend just beyond the edge of usefulness; yeah, you could put a few olives in them, but it would be an awkward fit. On the other hand, these are not beautiful objects, so Wallace forestalls any conflict between use and beauty; neither one nor the other, they simply are, deriving their surprisingly powerful aesthetic appeal from the sure presence of the artist's hand.

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Niles Wallace: 'Sticks & Stones (one thing follows another)'

Gallery Fifty Six, 2256 Central, through June 25. Call 276-1251.

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