Bobby Silverman
Untitled (Text Tile), 2013

About the Text Tile by Bobby Silverman

This Untitled Text Tile by Bobby Silverman features a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Thought on Art, The Dial, I, January 1841, which reads as follows:

Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten…. In nature all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful because it is symmetrical and fair.

This quote is particularly poignant in the context of Bobby Silverman’s work, which seeks to highlight the implications of man on the natural world and explore the balance between acts of both destruction and creation by the human hand. Silverman’s artworks toe the line of human influence through explorations of organic form and the use of manmade materials.

Tiles by Bobby Silverman

This piece is a departure from much of Silverman’s body of work, which is in large part made up of sculptural ceramic objects – typically abstractions that mimic forms found in nature, which are often reminiscent of fungi and other organic forms. This particularly unique wall hanging echoes Silverman’s overall mission of “defining the beauty found in a post-natural environment, the world in which we must live, survive and create,” as Bobby Silverman himself states.

Bobby Silverman: Artist’s Statement

“First trained as a Social Geographer and later as an artist, the enclosed body of work reflects my fascination with the visual representation of information.

The works are based on the rich history of recorded information in ceramics (and the idiosyncratic possibilities of the ceramic medium), beginning with the earliest forms of written expression; the Cuneiform clay tablets of 4,000 B.C. The Demon pots of Iranian and Iraqi Jews found in the 6-8th C. AD and the epigraphic pottery of medieval Islam are also unique as the text written on the pieces varied in legibility depending on the potters’ literacy skills, the calligraphers’ desire to embellish, or a determination that the text was only a secondary component that could be recited orally. Something simultaneously narrative and decorative provides a fascinating opportunity for exploration; where semantic interchange is impossible; the beauty of the symbolic language takes precedent.”

About Bobby Silverman: A Post-Natural View

Bobby Silverman is a contemporary ceramicist exploring the duality of beauty and destruction in the relationship between humans and the natural world. His works explore a “post-natural” world in which he seeks beauty amidst a catastrophic environmental crisis and looks to the present state of the world for inspiration. He looks to make the most of the current state of our world and create beautiful things ethically and using what is currently available as a medium of artistic expression.

Silverman holds three degrees: his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and his BA in Social Geography from Clark University Worcester. He has taught and lectured in China, the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East and currently serves as Director of the Ceramics Center at the 92nd St. Y in New York City.

Bobby Silverman’s work can be found in public and private collections across the globe.

Designed and created by Bobby Silverman in 2013.

Material:

Glazed Porcelain, Decal