Center Gallery opens with clay-based art

from staff reports
Pottery has returned to the Lake Street Studios after a hiatus of half a decade. And for the first time, ever, it is on display at the Center Gallery in Glen Arbor. Thirty-two-year-old Matthew McGovern, a native of Vermont who has also lived in Maine, California, Wisconsin and South Africa, and just completed his MFA in three-dimensional art at Bowling Green State, arrived for the first time in northern Michigan for his opening at the Center Gallery on Friday, June 8, and he hopes to stick around until the weather turns sour or, he jokes, until silversmith Ben Bricker chases him out with a machete. McGovern’s pottery will be on display at the Center Gallery until June 28.
Photo by Joanne Rettke

“My work is all based around the idea of it having a context outside of the cabinet,” Matthew explains, “Allowing it to function in way that’s synonymous with a painting, or also on a utilitarian level.” His work displayed in the Center Gallery includes teapots and cups, vases and whiskey boxes.

“We talk about what a handmade teapot means to you and me if we sat down with it. Not so much aesthetics but how you spend time the thing. Objects pick up baggage based on the experiences that happen around us … that’s what really interests me … how we build a relationship with the object through experiences, and how we allow that object into the moments of our lives. The tea shared between you and your father as you told him you were getting married, for instance.”