MARJORIE DIAL | When you are gone

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present When you are gone, an exhibition of new work by Marjorie Dial.   

Marjorie Dial is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice includes sculpture, print-making, and writing. She graduated from Yale where she studied history and later in life earned an MFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft. Dial’s ceramics incorporate her knowledge of history and reflect her practices of writing and research, often possessing a philosophical, narrative nature. In 2018, Dial founded an artist residency in North Carolina called Township10 which offers artists, writers, and art professionals an intimate, private retreat to deepen their creative practice. She is part of a lineage of women who have built a space for artists. A percentage of sales from the show will be donated to the Craft Emergency Response Fund (CERF+) to aid artists affected by Hurricane Helene, in western North Carolina.

Artist Statement:

“When you are gone arose from a year of intensive studio practice in which I grappled with the certainty of loss. I could not shake an image of full sails at night. Persistent and insistent, they overtook my practice and posed questions to which the attendant works respond: How will I find you? How will you know me? How long do we have to wait? The sculptural vessels—beacons, planets, spell bowls—offer up maps, modes of navigation, in response.

“The sailing ships are drawn loosely from Scottish fishing vessels called smacks that ran in the Western Isles, a place of my ancestry and daydreams. The ceramics are rooted in historic vessel with a through-line to North Carolina pots. These works continue to push against the rule-bound lineage in clay, eschewing perfectionism and productivity, embracing vulnerability and chance. I leaned into honesty in the material, exposing seams, adding back remnant pieces, and pushing melting points. I take deep pleasure in experimentation in the studio and fire materials that are intimate, specific, and unpredictable: ash from the wood stove, gemstones collected by my mother, broken glass from wine bottles.”