Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach, a book talk with Ezra Shales

Greenwich House Pottery is pleased to welcome Ezra Shales to the Barrow Street theater to present his new book Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach. Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach explores the tactile pleasures of drinking vessels and traces the role of these objects as representative art and collective tools—episodes of American history that resonate today in our everyday lives and yearnings for sociability and communion. Discussion ranges from vessels within ancient cultures and religious and family rituals to the growth of mass production and contemporary consumer culture. Shales blends the social histories of art/artifacts with memories of working on a museum installation crew, educating students and himself, and finding a treasure in a yard sale; in each chapter he interprets a single object as a revealing time capsule. Might learning to love a chipped old jug be a better way to cope with aging than other prescriptions? This history of art in a cupboard can liberate us from the usual hierarchies of civilization and the expense of the Grand Tour to build compassion with our immense amount of old stuff. Ezra Shales is Professor in the History of Art department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the author of The Shape of Craft (2017) and Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (2010). He has contributed to exhibition catalogs for artists Polly Apfelbaum, Neil Brownsword, Beth Cavener, Kim Dickey, and Shari Mendelson. He cut his teeth in New York City’s flea-markets and working as an art handler and then an educator at the Brooklyn Museum, which turned into a chinamaniac, aesthetic gadfly, and lifelong scribbler. His newest book Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach condenses forty years of learning and ten dedicated to teaching ceramic history at Alfred, the New York State College of Ceramics, with the existential tailspins of being a devotee to material culture in an era of hyper affluence. His vision of design/craft/art intersecting is a deliberately provocative strategy to move beyond inherited limitations. A book can be purchased in advance from Bloomsbury