24th annual ‘Feats of Clay' on display in Lincoln

It's fun to look at a juried art competition and pretend you're the judge. Which piece would you choose from more than 1,500 entries to win the first-place ribbon? Every year, artists from across North America send in their entries in hopes of getting into this coveted ceramics show.

The work is always finely executed and of high quality. Sometimes, though, you come to a grand prize-winner and wonder, "What was the judge thinking (or drinking)?"

But not this time, at the 24th "Feats of Clay" competition, exhibited at the 136-year-old Gladding McBean clay factory in Lincoln. Juror and Davis ceramic artist Donna Billick nailed it, festooning Julia Feld's "Contemplation of Chaos" with the first-place blue ribbon.

Feld, a San Jose resident, used coil-built stoneware to fashion a smooth surface of a curious shape, like a cross-section of a gourd, but with a thick stem that becomes a hook. On that surface, she hand-painted underglazes and low-fire glazes in an almost photorealistic style.

The result is that the viewer becomes a voyeur looking into this other world as a face peers out. You walk around the piece, and bits of a scene come together. The abstract shape and photorealism meld into a direct dichotomy, oozing an irresistibly contemporary take on clay, displayed in a beehive kiln at the century-old factory.

Whitewater, Wis., resident Jared Janovec's "Broad Cast" scored the second-place ribbon but had less impact, with a ceramic base sprinkled with fine red glass. A small figure of a baby walking across was a little too macabre. The baby had a distinct resemblance to the dancing child who haunted television's "Ally Mc Beal" in years past.

South Bend, Ind., artist Stephen Wolochowicz's "Orange Spots Balloon Inflation" attracted a lot of attention, with a highly textured "balloon" that grew out of — and dwarfed — an old-fashioned lamp. The size difference appeared to contradict all rules of physics and overshadowed the artist's tongue-in-cheek title.

Lin Xu, an artist from Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, had fun with "The Spring," a life-size gorilla bust that grows out of the wall and is a little intimidating at first, until you catch his wary expression as he holds a banana that contains a mini-me version of himself.

It's always a treat to check out the "Feats of Clay" annual exhibit. Where else can you drive through a parking lot flanked by stacks of massive terra-cotta pipes to visit the oldest clay factory east of the Mississippi? The history is as pervasive as the perfume of clay that lingers amidst the kilns and even between the buildings and especially in the building that houses the other part of the "Feats" exhibit.

You have to take an ancient elevator up to the third floor, but you can see all the plaster molds that fill the second floor as you go up. And on the third floor, you can check out the historic examples of clay work that have adorned buildings across the continent and even across the big pond for more than a century. It's a marvelous taste of the old and new that you can only access once a year. Don't miss it!

You can see "Feats of Clay" from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays in Lincoln through May 29. Reservations are required. The 95-minute tours are $12 per person, include about a 1-1/2-mile walk and are wheelchair accessible. Closed-toed shoes are required. Children younger than 10 are not permitted. For tour reservations, call Lincoln Arts at 916-645-9713 or email info@lincolnarts.org.