POWER IN RAW SIMPLICITY
Jonathan Cross makes Santa Fe debut at Touching Stone
It’s always thrilling to discover a fabulous new artistic talent. Tim Wong, co-owner of Touching Stone Gallery, is not immune to that elation. It occurred when he first saw the work of Jonathan Cross, a young Tempe, Ariz.-based ceramics artist.
Although Touching Stone concentrates on Japanese ceramic aesthetics, Wong and his wife Akiko Harani also are open to presenting artists from other countries, including the United States. Cross, said Wong, “is doing refreshingly exciting work that we believe will leave a mark in contemporary American ceramics.”
Cross is a graduate student in ceramic art at Arizona State University, known among ceramics artists as a top
program.
“Jonathan came to our gallery last year asking for critiques on his work rather than for a show,” Wong said. “We were so impressed by what we saw that we offered him a solo show on the spot. This has never happened before and it will be his first major show in Santa
Fe. It features a body of recent work that showcases the distinctive vision and artistry of this up-andcoming artist.”
“I’m very humbled and excited by the opportunity,” Cross said in a telephone interview.
His work has, as Wong noted, an exceptional elegance and power. “There is power in the raw simplicity,” the gallery owner said. “He has a rare gift for three-dimensional design and sculpture. Using minimalist forms and direct and purposeful lines, he sculpts clay into forms with such visual impact that they seem to command as much attention as large monuments.”
Cross has had a long journey. He grew up in Dallas and attended Northlake College in Irving, Texas before earning a bachelor’s degree in printmaking from the University of Dallas in Irving in 2003. He moved to Los Angeles, his wife’s hometown, where he worked as a printmaker for seven years.
As a hobby, the printmaker began growing various cacti, and did not like the kitschy/ cutesy options he found for containers. Remembering that he’d enjoyed ceramics in college, he took an inexpensive clay class at Los Angeles City College and started fashioning his own ceramic containers. Friends and acquaintances liked them and spread the word. Soon he was selling his handmade containers to select nurseries.
Realizing he’d found his life’s niche, in 2009, Cross returned to the University of Dallas/Irving as a post-B.A. portfolio student in ceramics. In 2011, he began working on an M.F.A. in ceramics at Arizona State.
“My vessels were getting very sculptural,” he said. “The negative space needed to be filled. I wanted to get away from the utilitarian aspect, so I began making plain blocks of clay. I felt some of them needed a metallic line or a carved pattern to break up the mass. I use a three-dimensional tool to break them up with what I call ‘veins.’
“I start with a solid block of wet clay and I carve it,” Cross explained. “Some of them go through a post-firing process once the clay becomes stonelike.”
The evolution from cactus container to monolithic sculpture seems to him “like it’s just been a natural shift,” Cross said.
A transformative material
He loves clay because “it is a transformative material,” the artist said. “It goes from wet to semi-wet to hardened, and has the ability to capture the process. And it has the potential to exist for a long time.
“Clay is a very forgiving medium,” Cross added. He said he is “enamored” of the firing process, and the layering on of color and patina.
Cross used both wood firing and salt firing for his pieces. Wood firing, as the name would indicate, uses only wood in the kiln. Salt firing is basically gas firing, but when the kiln temperature reaches 2000 degrees, the artist adds a salt-water solution. “The salt vapors interact with the clay, adding patina and texture,” he said. “It basically comes from an old German technique.”
Jonathan Cross’ show, “Origin,” will be up at Touching Stone through May 25.