A triptych by Metuchen ceramist Linda LaStella will be one of numerous works featured in her “Taking Time Apart” exhibit at the Rotunda Gallery inside Metuchen’s Borough Hall. METUCHEN — Taking some time apart proved to be the missing piece from borough ceramist Linda LaStella’s current exhibit, “Taking Time Apart.”
The exhibit in word and wall sculpture — ongoing until Dec. 31 at the Rotunda Gallery in Metuchen Borough Hall, 500 Main St. — encompasses works using porcelain clay as a basic medium and incorporates other media, including the insides of old clocks and watches.
“I had been working with this concept for several years, but when I left in July for three weeks in Alaska, those materials, along with some phrases playing on the words ‘taking time apart,’ were all I had to develop the exhibit,” LaStella, owner of Metuchen’s Earthsongs Studio, said. “I had great hope that this very concrete ‘time apart’ would help me to bring the work into being.”
On her journey deep into central Alaska, LaStella came in contact with a unique world that was “wild and expansive, dangerous and unpredictable, rich in natural resources of all kinds,” she said.
“The remaining artifacts of human presence on the land shared some of those same characteristics, especially the massive pieces of machinery, relics of efforts from the previous centuries to mine gold,” she said. “I found the form and color of those rusting hulks to be fascinating and photographed them — in whole and in part — each time we came upon them. While the metal rigidity was in definite contrast to their pristine wilderness environment, at this point they seemed to have absorbed something of the land, a patina that marked them as part of the place.”
Upon going through the photographs she had taken, LaStella was struck by the similarity between the machine parts in them and the clock parts she had slated to incorporate in her sculptures, she said. It was then that she decided to work some of the photographs into her sculptures.
“The rest was a matter of manipulating material, sculpting the raw clay, firing, deciding placement of glazes and color choices, maneuvering the clock and watch parts and photographs, finding serendipitous connections,” she said. “In that way, each sculpture came together.”
During the Oct. 5 opening of the exhibit, a number of visitors voiced personal connections with various pieces on display, but one attendee noted what turned out to be a bit of “happy serendipity” for LaStella.
The friend pointed out a photo of a bulky piece of machinery and informed LaStella that it is the part of the machine that regulates its speed, or slows it down, making the photograph fit perfectly with the theme of the exhibit.
The gallery is open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
For more information, contact LaStella at [email protected].