You can do better with your housewares.
Friday night, Studio & member-artist Lorna Meaden will kick off her new show, “Tools of Habitation,” with an opening reception at the gallery, and it will include everything you need for a better – and better-looking – kitchen, including her iconic ceramic bowls, pots and plates and new pieces.
Meaden’s pieces are created to be used, not just looked at, and, after having just gone through more than a year of being at home a lot more, she said she found herself becoming a lot more domestic.
“In fact, I’m calling it the ‘Domestic Landscape’ because we’re all trapped in our houses and instead of looking in the distance, we’re looking at what’s right in front of us,” she said. “The pandemic made us stay home, everybody had to stay home more and people started looking around their houses – people learned to bake bread, people started cooking more, people started remodeling. And just like looking around – what do we surround ourselves with? So, the tools of habitation are what are the things we live with? I’ve always made functional pots, bowls and plates, and I branched out and made some new stuff that’s like measuring spoons and funnels, and juicers, so it’s very specific functions.”
Something to consider about Friday night’s opening: If you see something you like, grab it and growl – member-artist Tim Kapustka said that the pieces that aren’t sold Friday will be put into the gallery’s online shop at noon Saturday.
“It’s going to be a feeding frenzy. She’s got this national, international following and those people just going to devour the stuff that is left online,” he said. “Locals, if they want to buy, they should be buying on Friday because we’re going to open it up to the world online at noon on Saturday.”
Buyers should know that when they buy a piece, it will remain at the gallery through the end of the exhibit.
Kapustka said Meaden’s solo show is an exhibit that the gallery has been waiting to put on for a while.
“Lorna has been a partner with the gallery, a co-owner for about a year and a half now. We represented her work for three or four years before that. So this has been a really long time coming to have a solo exhibit,” he said. “We thought about doing one last year, but then almost everything we had planned just fell by the way. ... With Lorna, literally, for years we’ve been talking about this and she’s been saying, ‘This is what I want to do.’ For us, I’m a co-owner of a gallery with Lorna, but even more so I’m a fan of what she does – she’s big-time in the ceramic world and rightfully so. Just to be able to have that in Studio & after all these years, we’re looking forward to it – it’s going to be great.”
Studio &, which has been open full-time again since March 1, also has a host of shows planned through the summer. And, for the audiophiles among us, it also carries albums made by local musicians.
Kapustka said the idea to carry music happened in the couple of months leading up to the pandemic, adding that once the idea was said aloud, it was an obvious move, especially given that after Southwest Sound closed a few years ago, we’re without a record store. And even though the gallery has carried music for the past year, there really hasn’t been a big push to get the word out because of everything that’s happened.
“What Studio & is, is we’re a marketplace for local artists to bring their work for sale. And we curate a selected group and we’ve been doing this now for over 11 years with visual artists, and we are getting pretty good at it and people trust us,” he said. “We have a lot of friends who are working musicians in this town, and we’re not trying to fill the void of a record store, but we’re trying to have a little bit of a record store and it’s just local. We’re not going to get you whatever vinyl you want, we’re not going to order it up for you. But we are, with our local artists – we have about six or seven of them right now.”
If you go
What: Lorna Meaden: Tools of Habitation – A solo exhibit.
When: Opening reception 5 to 9 p.m. today. Exhibit through June 19.
Where: Studio & Gallery, 1027 Main Ave.
More information: Visit anddurango.com.
Note: There will be a limit of 15 patrons in the gallery at a time.
For more information about Meaden, visit www.lornameadenpottery.com. Check out more about Studio &’s music section at www.anddurango.com/the-music-section and listen to its playlist on Spotify at https://spoti.fi/3izeeI6.
The musicians currently at the gallery are: Stillhouse Junkies, Six Dollar String Band, The Crags, Lawn Chair Kings, Jenn Rawling, Cody Tinnin and Brendan Shafer.
To add to the musician selections, the gallery has also started putting together playlists on Spotify featuring the musicians with the plan of making a new list every season, Kapustka said. And, going one step further, maybe even having the musicians curate playlists for the gallery.
After Meaden’s reception tonight, Studio & is planning on a one-day pop-up show at the end of July for represented artist and jeweler Crystal Hartman, and in August, member-artist Shawn Lotze will have a solo show.
“So much of what Studio & is is welcoming people and creating a place for the community to gather and it was a really tricky 14 months for us to – pivot’s a buzz word, but that’s what we did. We pivoted and had to kind of redefine ourselves in a different way to welcome community not face to face,” Kapustka said. “To get back to what we’re doing ... it’s just like the band’s back together and we’re on the road, you know?”
katie@durangoherald.com
