New Pewabic Exhibition “Mommy Dearest” Talks About Childhood Fragility Through Art

Starting on April 10, 2015, with a reception running from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. and running through June 7, “Mommy Dearest” is an exhibition featuring the ceramic work of artists Beth Lo and Michaelene Walsh.

Childhood nostalgia and familial memoir gives the work of Beth Lo and Michaelene Walsh a personal quality reminiscent of the fragility of childhood. In the exhibition, “Mommy Dearest,” subtle Freudian cues, coupled with soft colors and prepubescent imagery, pushes the work into a realm of memory and imagination that is only found deep within the psyche of adult/childhood transformation.

Artist Beth Lo was born in Lafayette, Indiana to parents who had recently immigrated from China. She studied Art under Rudy Autio and assumed his job as Professor of Ceramics at The University of Montana-Missoula’s School of Art when he retired in 1985. She has exhibited her work internationally, and she has received numerous awards including The University of Montana Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2006 and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship Grant in 1994.

Lo’s work in ceramics revolves primarily around issues of family and her Asian-American background. Cultural marginality and blending, tradition vs. Westernization, language and translation, are key elements.

Michaelene (Mikey) Walsh received her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art in the Ceramic Area at Louisiana State University. Mikey’s work can be seen in numerous national and international exhibitions, most recently at The Huntington Museum of Art’s Modern Masters/Sources and Influences exhibit.

“Images I use have become proxies, tangible reminders of life’s plain and simple joys, as well as its bittersweet attendants – impermanence and loss,” said Walsh. “An ice cream cone, a gift bow, an old stuffed toy, or the temporary moment a bird alights upon a snowball; each image embodies an ephemeral quality I want to hold still for.”

The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Pewabic, locatd at 10125 East Jefferson in Detroit, is open seven days a week, Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.