A Traveling Dialogue

Ronald R. Miller Art GalleryMeridian Community College

Meridian, MississippiSeptember 29 - October 30, 2008

Verde Art GalleryYavapai College

Clarkdale, ArizonaOctober 17 - November 15, 2008

A Traveling Dialogue

This catalog is a companion to two simultaneous exhibitions bringing together work by artists Clive and Virginia Rood Pates, who have spent the past five years traveling from the U.K. and Europe to the Gulf Coast, the Southwest and Mexico. Clive’s paintings are a Plein Air record of their travels, while Virginia’s ceramics are constructed from the materials that created these same landscapes.

The work in this exhibition has been funded in part from grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Andy Warhol Foundation, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.

Education

1999 MFA in Ceramic Art, University of Wales Institute at Cardiff, Wales, UK.

1995 BFA, Emphasis in Ceramics, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS.

Selected Exhibitions

2008 Traveling Dialogue, Meridian Community College, Meridian, Mississippi.

2008 Traveling Dialogue, Yavapai Community College, Clarkdale, Arizona.

2008 Domo Arigato: Thank You, Mississippi Clay Invitational, George Ohr Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi.

2006 Mac and Andy Show, Mississippi Arts Commission and Andy Warhol Foundation, The Cedars, Jackson, Mississippi.

2006 Faculty Exhibition, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Gulfport, Mississippi.

2006 Oracle Arts Auction, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.

2003 Alumni Invitational, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi.

2002 Rood Contemporary Fine Art, Bristol, England.2002 Colours, Bristol Arts Guild Gallery, Bristol, England.1996 Mississippi Collegiate Art Competition, (juried).1996 Mississippi-Alabama Bi-State Competition, (juried).

Awards

2008 Mississippi Arts Commission Mini-Grant.2008 Mississippi Arts Commission Business Grant.2007 SouthernArtistry.org, Invitational Membership2006 Andy Warhol Foundation Grant.1995 Donovan Dodd Memorial Award for Excellence in

Ceramic Art, Mississippi State University.1995 Mississippi Collegiate Art Competition, Best of Show

in Ceramics.1994 Michael C. Johnston Memorial Scholarship

for Achievement in Fine Art, Mississippi State University.

1994 Mississippi Collegiate Art Competition, Juror’s Award in Ceramics.

Ceramics

Virginia Rood Pates

b. 1969, Memphis, Tennessee

Education

1996 Post-graduate work in figurative studies at the Art Students League, New York City.

1995 MFA study in figurative art at the New York Academy of Art.

1993 Post-graduate Degree, (Drawing and Foundry), University of the West of England, Bristol, England.

1991 BFA awarded with First Class Honours, University of the West of England, Bristol, England.

1983 Foundation Degree in Art and Design, Cheltenham College of Art, Cheltenham, England.

Selected Exhibitions

2008 Traveling Dialogue, Meridian Community College, Meridian, Mississippi.

2008 Traveling Dialogue, Yavapai Community College, Clarkdale, Arizona.

2007 40 for 40, 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.

2007 The Will to Endure, George Ohr Museum, Biloxi, Mis-sissippi.

2005 Mississippi Invitational, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi.

2004 Clive Pates, Mississippi University for Women, Co-lumbus, Mississippi.

2004 Clive Pates: Twenty Minutes of Light, Gallery 119, Jack-son, Mississippi.

2003 Clive Pates: From the Sea of Cortez to the Tombigbee River, Delta State University, Cleveland, Mississippi.

2003 Clive Pates: The Light in August, Sylvia Schmidt Gal-lery, New Orleans, Louisiana.

2003 Clive Pates: Portraits, Rood Contemporary Fine Art, Bristol, England.

2002 Clive Pates: Recent Work, Department of Art Gallery, Mississippi State University.

Awards & Residencies

2008 Mississippi Arts Commission Mini-Grant.2006 Andy Warhol Foundation Grant.2006 Mississippi Arts Commission Business Grant.2005 Mississippi Arts Commission Visual Arts Fellowship.2005 Guest Artist, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.2004 Elected to the Mississippi Artists Roster.2002 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.2001 Robert Fleming Residency, Hospitalfield House,

Arbroath, Scotland.2000 Roundstone Open Arts Residency, Connemara,

County Galway, Ireland.1999 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.1999 Juliet Gomperts Tuscany Residency, Casolé d’Elsa,

Tuscany, Italy.1996 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.1995 Fulbright Scholarship, New York Academy of Art.1995 Andy Warhol Foundation Scholarship.1995 Posey Foundation Scholarship.

Paintings

Clive William Pates

b. 1965, Worcester, England

C l i v e W i l l i a m P a t e s

Every thing we look at, as it is apart from us, is

a purely abstract subject. Our conception of the

world or a landscape painting represents a lifetime

of learnt experience about how to look. The first

thing that a painter has to accomplish is to unlearn

the mass of experience and preconception, and look

at pure tone and colour as unlabeled shifting fields

of light. Next, the painter has to consider form and

evolve a way of seeing and inter-

preting that information that is

not too invasive. In my own paint-

ing, I try to be economical with the

information I provide, represent-

ing the necessary series of marks

to interpret the subject painted.

These marks represent a record

of my experience, small points of

perception that form a completed

vision of the landscape. The mark

or gesture has the utmost impor-

tance for me, but as a single mark

it represents my process of under-

standing and would be abstract and meaningless

to the casual observer. Many people look at my

painting at a distance, and are drawn to what they

see as incredible detail. Finding on closer inspec-

tion that the detail dissolves into splodges of paint.

The splodges of paint are the emotional record of

the experience of painting and have no part in a

rational interpretation.

As a painter, the area I’m working from becomes

embedded in my memory, and for many months,

sometimes years, looking at a completed picture

will place me back at that same location. I experi-

ence a layered vision of the scene I have painted

with a very real landscape flashing beneath it. The

emotional experience at the time of painting, my

thoughts and day to day routines are all recorded

there in the picture. I spend a long time looking

at the pictures after I have finished painting them.

A large part of the intellectual and emotional pro-

cess that I have learnt over many

years of painting, becomes an un-

conscious and automatic process,

I guess to give the space and abil-

ity to paint without getting over-

whelmed by the complexity of the

subject. For many weeks after the

picture’s completion, I have mini

revelations about why I chose to

develop certain compositional ele-

ments, or why I combined a certain

colour combination. This for me is

a rewarding and interesting part of

the picture making process. In the

same manner, some of my older paintings strike

me, many years later, by the quality of a particular

emotion. Maybe this is a perspective attained that

allows me to judge the image with greater neu-

trality; Perhaps some of the deeper emotions are

slower and become apparent over longer periods

of time. The pictures I paint will always contain

something of myself and in this sense every pic-

ture, even landscape, is a self portrait. I must admit

to preferring the landscapes that I find to be least

intrusive in terms of this evidence of me.

After the Chubasco, Baja 2003.

iii. Jez’ebels Garden, Bristol, England

Oil on Linen, 18” x 21”, July 1997

David Leach Porcelain & Sushi Rice Glazed with Tin, Soda Ash, Copper & Chrome

Δ 8 Oxidation, 4” x 6”, November, 2000, Bristol, England.

Coleman Porcelain with Pearlite Glazed with Barium, Chrome, Dolomite & Rutile

Δ 8 Oxidation, 6.5” x 5.5”, September 2008, Clarkdale, Arizona.

Dirt is my medium.

I am an experimentalist, and fascinated by the

character and behavior of ceramic materials. Like

all experimentalists, my work builds up gradually.

I use simple forms to throw into relief the varied

behaviors of the clays and glazes.

As a clay and glaze chemist, I create traditional

surface glazes as well as building inclusions into

clay bodies to create reactive surfaces. With no

prejudices, I use both refined commercial materials

as well as substances mined by myself in the

natural world.

I travel often and I work with what is available. I

have thrown bone china in England; built a kiln

in Mexico to make bone ash from the seagulls,

pelicans and porcupine fish that I found washed

up on the beach in Baja; and sieved black granite

dust for gold from arroyos in Arizona. My current

work is evolving from the crushed granite debris

of a parking lot in the high desert.

Complements fascinate me, both in color and

clay. I see the natural beauty of contrast in the

combination of Porcelain stuffed with coarse grog

and thrown to its thinnest point or Bone China

wedged into Crank and somehow convinced to

hold together.

V i r g i n i a R o o d P a t e s

Clay Tests, 2006

Prange Porcelain with Oracle Ant Dirt Glazed with Dolomite, Rutile, Lithium, Cobalt & Copper

Δ 8 Oxidation, 4.5” x 6.5”, April 2008

v. The Riverside Park: A Bradford Pear Tree by the Tombigbee River, Columbus, Mississippi

Oil on Canvas, 24” x 32”, August 2002

and from my experience of Italy at this time,

expected to be confronted by a rich array of burnt

reds and ochres of a dry and parched land. To

my amazement the land was green and alive and

very similar to the English landscape I had just

left. The comparison to my home country was

however limited, the verdure of the Mississippi

landscape was completely transformed by the

intensity of light and filtration effect of the dense

moisture in the atmosphere. The shadows were

deep and barbaric, and the light, lensed by the

atmosphere, created a depth of colour I had not

previously experienced.

The composition of the landscape also

challenged my expectations. I have been used

to a formalized landscape, as the European

landscape has been modified by centuries of

land management and every part of the scene

before you has an historical implication. The

European landscape is subservient to the human

need and possesses a quietude. The Southern

landscape is surly in comparison. I felt not so

much a distance, but a mutual respect between

the people and the land, almost a stand off

between the natural world and the inroads

made by civilization.

Of course, as a painter I hope that the emotion

I experienced is more purely represented in

my work, and am constantly surprised when I

look back at the work, how meaning bypasses

the intellectual process, becoming imbedded in

the work only to be gleaned on a rational level

months or years later.

I arrived in Mississippi at the height of summer

Mulege, Baja, 2003.

i. Looking West-Northwest over Motley Slough, Lowndes County, Mississippi

Oil on Linen, 26” x 24”, November 2003

iv. Looking West-Northwest over Motley Slough, Lowndes County, Mississippi

Oil on Linen, 32” x 24”, March 2004

June 1st, 2003:Clive was determined to paint the cliffs at Punta Chi-vato. We drove about 25 miles down Mex 1 from Santa Rosalia and turned off at a washboarded dirt road that took about 45 minutes to cover 15 miles. At the end we found a small airstrip, the Punta Chivato Hotel (run by Italians), several ex-Pat houses and the most beautiful beach and turquoise lagoon crossed by volcanic out-crops covered with brown pelicans. We pushed further, still.We dropped off our trailer on the beach to explore. We crossed over some steep hills and almost careened down a road with a four foot deep washout at the bot-tom. We got out to explore on foot and found just over the hills the most gorgeous double-curved bay with beaches and cliffs on either end and an outcropping of rock in the middle. The center was a perfect camping spot – high above the beaches and water – but some-one had already thought of that and put an RV (cara-van) there. However, the residents must have long ago moved on because the whole thing had been burnt out. Oh well, I figured that it was like having a bit of Mis-sissippi next door. We decided to try to get there with the truck and trailer. (Our trailer is a tiny utility trailer – I have no idea how someone got that hulk of a motor home there. Airlifted?)Things were a bit hairy. There was another way through next to the washed out gully, but I thought I should do the driving here. (Clive, with his Welsh mountain training, was brilliant on the unbelievably narrow highway with steep drop-offs at the edge of the crum-bling asphalt, but I thought this road needed some of my flying-like-a-bat-out-of-hell technique.) After Clive got out the shovel and, more ceremoniously than prac-tically, moved some rocks around, I took a deep breath and launched the truck. Brilliant truck! We haven’t told her yet that she isn’t a four-wheel drive! Well, we made it over and back. After Clive moved some more dirt around, we hooked up the trailer and resigned

ourselves to spending the rest of the afternoon getting ourselves unstuck. Didn’t happen, though. We almost gracefully made it over to our little bit of paradise (with the burned out trailer, which is starting to sound like a Jimmy Buffet song).So here we are, though we do have to go over the hills if we want to wash in fresh water. So far salt water bath-ing is nice, but clothes don’t dry well because the salt in them absorbs any bit of humidity! I’m getting used to – almost enjoying – the taste of salt in my coffee. And as for eating.....The first cast I made into the Sea of Cortez when we set up camp landed a nice Red Snapper! We ate well! Since then Clive has caught most of the fish (probably because he spends at least 10 times as much time fish-ing as I do! I have to get out of the sun in the middle of the day, but he just plugs along and is getting brown as a chestnut. Once again he proves that saying about mad dogs and Englishmen.) - striped sea bass, cabrillo, corbina, ladyfish (no good to eat), stone scorpionfish (watch out!) and even a very weird cornet fish.Today things are changing, though, as Clive has stretched, sized and primed canvases and has started painting as I write this. Now he can only fish for about 5 hours a day.June 15th, 2003:Finally! The wind has stopped and the weather is beautiful. We’ve arranged to stay here for the whole two months.One morning Clive has great fishing and catches a pair of spotted corbina and a cabrilla. I’m not fishing be-cause I’ve had a bit too much sun and I’m relegated to the shade for the day. In the afternoon Clive primes can-vasses and I go to the little store for supplies and study fish recipes for the evening. However, high on his good luck (or skill, as he would have it) Clive finds it neces-sary to fish some more, and he is so determined that he stays out late in the night until he is far too exhausted to clean the fish he caught earlier. We have egg fried rice for dinner. We are wakened in the night by various scurryings outside the tent, accompanied by clanging and things falling over. I get up and find nothing but

Journal from the Sea of Cortez

Prange Porcelain with Playa Negra Sand Glazed with Dolomite, Rutile, Barium, Lithium & Copper

Δ 8 Oxidation, 4.5 x 5.25, April 2008

iv. The Larger Conical Hill, Punta Cerotito, Baja California, Mexico

Oil on Linen, 28” x 28”, July 2003

the curious sight of the cooler - still closed - lying up-ended. I put it back and classify the event as Baja night life. However, the next morning we discovered that the cooler was still full of ice, but the fish were mysteri-ously gone. Now we were getting worried about what creature might open coolers, steal fish, then close the cooler back up again. Another vegetarian day.Well, fishing droughts never last in the Sea of Cortez.I was brown again, rather than red, and so back on fish-ing duty. Last night we went to the store for beer and ice and had found them out of both, so imprudently we bought a bottle of vodka and a carton of orange juice. Therefore, on this particular day Clive wasn’t any good for painting and we spent the whole time fishing. Numerous bites and inedible fish later (puffer fish, cornet fish, porcupine fish), I was reeling in my lure when sometiing darted out from the base of the rock I was standing on and grabbed it, and I pulled in the biggest fish we had caught so far - a nice, tasty, four pound spotted sea bass. Now I held the records for both the first fish and the biggest fish (not that we were keeping records, but you do notice these things), and I went running back up to camp for the fillet knife and board before it got too dark to see. It was dim when I returned, but I could see Clive bent over something on the rocks. I came running up and Clive stopped me just as I realised it was a stingray. Well, it was technically a fish and, at thirteen pounds, well outweighed my sea bass, so Clive made sure we kept it! That night we ate sea bass fried in cornmeal and drank beer - both with lots of lime. In the morning Clive filleted the stingray and, having read that they were excellent eating, I fried it in butter and garlic. However, I never could enjoy it. It had a strange metallic taste. Maybe it was just my ego catching in my throat.By the 6th of June, Clive has underpainted the com-positions on all four of the Punta Cerotito paintings. They are very complex and exhaust Clive completely. His underpainting is mostly complementary colours to what he is seeing in order to give the finished surface a vibrancy through the layers. So, at the moment the sky is pink, the beach is blue and the water is orange. it’s al-

most enough to make you worry about him. All of this light and colour tires Clive’s eyes out, so in the evening we drink beer and listen to the radio as the sun goes down and we don’t bother to light the gas lamp. We suddenly realise we have a visitor who hasn’t noticed us sitting there in the dark. We scramble for a flashlight and finally see our demon. His bushy, ringed tail gives him away immediately as a raccoon. Of all the strange and foreign creatures in the world we are plagued by exactly the same beasts as who steal all the cat’s food at my mother’s house. Being familiar, this discovery is relaxing and we forget about dinner and Clive falls asleep in his chair.One of the fateful circumstances of our arriving in Pun-ta Chivato is related to a book on geology. Clive likes to study the geology of the landscape he’s painting, so I bought him the only book on Baja geology that I came across on Amazon.com:Discovering the Geology of Baja California, Six Hikes on the Southern Gulf Coast by Markes E. Johnson (University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, 2002.). When we reached Punta Chivato (guid-ed by a photograph in another book), we were amazed to find that Dr. Johnson’s book was specifically about this 9.5 square miles of Baja! On the 8th of June, with Clive unable to paint and frustrated by renewed winds, we decided to try out one of the walks described in the book. Well, I said “walk” just then, and it declares “hike” in the title of the book. It’s the little details that sink ships. It was definately a “hike”; maybe “march” is a better, more British, approxomation of the event. It was a strong (albeit fascinating) five or six miles of climbing up and down and skittering along tiny coy-ote trails along the edge of huge dropoffs to the raging surf below and up a boulder and thorn strewn arroyo to a 150 foot hands-and-knees climb straight up - and that got us little more than halfway! We ended up mak-ing it to the hotel by dusk to have several margaritas on parched throats and empty stomachs, and to make friends with the other bartender, Paul, before wander-ing the couple of miles back to camp by the light of the quarter moon. We decided that Dr. Johnson is a true geologist.

i. The Smaller Conical Hill, Punta Cerotito, Punta Chivato, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Oil on Canvas, 26” x 32”, July 2003

iii. The Larger Conical Hill, Punta Cerotito, Baja California, Mexico

Oil on Linen, 32” x 40”, July 2003

Black Pepper Stoneware Glazed with Barium, Rutile & Copper

Δ 8 Oxidation, 4.5” x 6.5”, August 25, 2005, Gulfport, Mississippi. Four days pre-Katrina.

Alligator Porcelain with 8m Grog Glazed with Dolomite, Tin, Copper, Barium & Nickel

Δ 8 Oxidation, 4.5” x 8.5”, October 2005, Gulfport, Mississippi. Six weeks post-Katrina.

Coffee Creek, Gulfport, Mississippi

Oil on Canvas, 32” x 26”, November 2006

After Katrina

It has now been three years since Hurricane Katrina

washed out our Mississippi Gulf Coast, and I am still

trying to understand the experience.

Clive and I only moved to Gulfport a couple of weeks

before the hurricane hit, and I had only been teaching

for a week at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community

College. We left town on the Friday before, but not

to evacuate. At this point no one was worried about

Katrina, who had just crossed the Florida Peninsula

and arrived in the Gulf headed west as a small storm.

By the time she turned and grew and we realized the

danger, the contra-flow was in place on the highways

and it was too late to return to Gulfport, and then we

weren’t able to go home again for two weeks. We were

out of town celebrating our anniversary, which is on

August 29th, the Monday the hurricane came ashore.

Our college began holding classes again in the middle

of September, as quickly as possible, to try to bring

some focus of stability to the community. We restarted

classes, and started over with the few students we had

left. I have to say that those were some of the most

dedicated students I have ever had the pleasure of

teaching. I think we were all clinging to each other for

some sanity, which was in short supply.

Living in Gulfport was what I imagine it might be

like living in the aftermath of a war. It looked like it

had been bombed, especially the scary blocks South of

the railroad tracks where the surge of the ocean had

literally scrubbed everything down to concrete slabs.

Debris was caught all the way up to the tops of the live

oak trees, at the height of the tops of the power lines. I

almost got a choking sense of vertigo standing on the

streets and seeing how high the water was. I felt like I

was on a very high floor of some skyscraper that had

been bombed, with the ocean as the edge I might fall

over into since there were no longer any walls or safety

rails to protect me. That is, when I could manage to

talk my way through the National Guard roadblocks

surrounded by razor wire to get to the beach. I found

it ironic that we were blocked from the beach when the

ocean was the only visual calm for hundreds of miles. I

eventually scheduled my life in Gulfport so that I saw

the ocean at least once a day.

The combination of blocked roads, missing road signs

and landmarks threw me into a state of constant

confusion. I hadn’t even lived there long enough to

know my way around before the destruction, so the

next year or so was utterly hopeless. Combined with

such issues as finding gas or food, life in Gulfport could

be best described as surreal.

Clive says, “The scenes and devastation are reminiscent

of the post war ‘Blitz Landscape’ of much of Europe

and London, where artists, such as William Coldstream

and C. W. Nevinson, actively tried to find some kind of

order and reason within the devastated landscape.”

Clive repeatedly tried to paint in Gulfport, but not only

was the entire scene of the Gulf Coast depressing, but

it was also in a constant flux. The hurricane itself was

in some ways only the beginning of the destruction.

Clive sat down to compositions, only to find a new

pile of debris and a bulldozer the next day. He looked

for an island of stability and found a clump of trees

surrounded by bulldozed city blocks. During his fourth

painting session, the inevitable bulldozer arrived. But

the driver, interested in the painting, delayed the work

order long enough for Clive to finish the painting. In

the three years after the hurricane, Clive completed

exactly two paintings of Gulfport.

Posada de las Flores Hotel Bar, Punta Chivato, Baja California Sur, August 2003.

Downtown Gulfport, Mississippi, April 2006.

For more information:

www.clivepates.comwww.roodart.com

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