What should one call a “school” of ceramics that crosses under or over all schools, that has no campus and no compass? Its primary characteristic is understatement. It owes more to the northern European than to the southern. It is more Nordic than it is Italianate. It is, all in all, aggressively modest.

For several decades Erteman’s vessels have quietly inserted themselves into this tradition. One thinks of Hans Coper and Lucie Rie; one thinks of the Natzlers; and even the more dramatic work of Elsa Rady. This tradition --- and perhaps tradition is a better term than school – comes with a sense of responsibility. Art works must be made for the home, not the palace.

Therefore one does not have to justify Erteman’s feeling for affordable editions, handmade and even mass-produced dinnerware. Such productions go with the socially-conscious territory of Apollonian ceramics. The goal of Erteman’s dinnerware is to provide a platform for food. The goal of her artware is the kind of contemplation that only the most rarified of ceramics can provide.

Restraint, however, does not necessarily preclude evolution or development. Known for her utilization of black and white surface treatments, recently Erteman has unveiled her forays into subdued color in a series of monochromatic wall squares. The wall squares come in sets. The seemingly solid and sometimes quite thick squares are actually hollow, allowing them to be hung directly on the wall. The artist’s four-square arrangements must be meticulously followed. These wall pieces are not variables. They are not tiles; they are not paintings. They are elegant ceramic variations on the minimalist grid, one part Agnes Martin, one part Sol LeWitt, but with an investigation of color that is strictly Erteman.

But there is more than the wall pieces going on.

Noting that inks and paints could be transferred using clay, Erteman has been investigating the monoprint, first on cylindrical vessels and then, opening up the cylinders, on flat, rectangular tablets, most often shown in simple groupings. Using the monoprint technique, she has developed a rich vocabulary of circles and ellipses. She associates the configurations with unselfconscious social configurations that may be observed on the street or at informal gatherings. Using monoprint techniques on clay surfaces references the classical uses of accident in ceramic decoration and the give and take between application and surface. Ceramics and the monoprint are such a comfortable fit that it is astounding that no one has thought of it before. Other techniques such a transfer prints, decals, and screen-printing have been used in the production of commercial dinnerware and parodied in art ceramics, but never, as far as I know, the humble one-off monoprint.

Erteman has usually worked with tightly thrown or molded vessel forms, so the monoprint images provide a foil to the precision, or vice versa. Erteman is also obviously attracted to the lo-tech, hi-tactility of the process.

The rectangular tablets and the wall squares highlight flat surfaces and the kind of compositional closure that vessels deny, marking a new stage in Erteman’s career. As if migrating from the wall squares, blushes and stains of subdued color are now slowly making an appearance in the monoprint tablets.

The cerebral wall squares and the lyrical monoprint tablets carry forward Erteman’s commitment to clay and a certain classic, conscientious modesty, while allowing room for artistic growth. One is not surprised that the same kinds of emotions that prevail in her earlier work are also celebrated in these new endeavors.

John Perreault
new york, 2008