Wright Auction

IAN MCDONALD’s work stems from a constant organizing and arranging of a vocabulary of forms and materials. His architectural ceramic vessels are made in parts, measured, cut, rejected then saved, and assembled at the potter’s wheel to achieve their final form.

McDonald (b.1975) currently holds the position of Artist-in-Residence and Area Head of Ceramics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has shown throughout the U.S, Europe and Japan, including The Cranbrook Art Museum, Play Mountain and the Curators Cube in Tokyo, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, The New Wight Gallery at UCLA in Los Angeles and Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York City. European venues include, Nieuwe Vide Gallery in Holland, Sophienholm Exhibition Hall in Copenhagen Denmark, and the Svendborg Kunstingbygning Museum in Svendborg, Denmark. In 2007 he was awarded the “Premio Faenza” from the Museo Internazionale della Ceramiche in Faenza, Italy. He has completed residencies in Holland at the European Ceramic Workcenter, the Museum of International Ceramics in Denmark and the Museum of Fine Arts at the De Young Art Center in San Francisco. His work has appeared or been mentioned in numerous publications including Art Forum, Metropolis, Wallpaper Magazine, Ceramics Monthly, Dwell and The New York Times.

If asked to select one word to describe Patrick, I would resist and pick two. The first would be curiosity — a fundamental essential, to stimulate inquiry and rigour in all things, both great and small, of any era or region, type or surface. Even the most fleeting survey of this selection for sale is a celebration of innovation and of inspiration — an unerring eye for the unusually exceptional, or perhaps the exceptionally unusual. The chances are, that these are indeed discoveries that you have not yet realised that you needed to make. 

Mentor, would be my second word. If artefacts and objects articulate visual, cultural and historic language, then the fluency of skillful mentorship — to guide, nurture, describe and explain — releases the eloquence of murmuring histories. In this capacity Patrick is that most earnest and sincere of excellent narrators. If ever I had friends, clients or colleagues visiting New York looking for unusual inspiration, there was always the certainty that Patrick’s venues would offer them a glimpse of the hitherto unseen or the unusually seductive, always with the reassurance of the most fascinating story waiting to be told.