Artist Jean Mann To Speak Sunday On The Art Of Porcelains

By Dottie Evans

Internationally acclaimed sculptor Jean Mann will speak and present slides on “The Art of Porcelains” at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library at 25 Main Street on Sunday, November 16, at 2 pm in the first floor Olga Knoepke Meeting Room.

Her talk will touch on the techniques and history of carving in porcelain, which is a material that when fired at very high temperatures, becomes extremely hard yet translucent. An artist for 50 years, Ms Mann has spent the last 30 years working primarily in porcelain sculpture.

 “All my life I was looking for something,” Ms Mann told The Bee in a September interview, “and the moment I touched porcelain, I knew I’d found it. I can’t find anything it won’t permit. All the things I learned you can’t do with clay, you can do with porcelain. It will stand up to any test, and is endlessly forgiving.”

Ms Mann is currently exhibiting approximately 100 pieces of carved porcelain selected from her collection in the library’s first and second floor exhibit cases. The exhibit began October 19, and it will run through Sunday, November 23.

Ms Mann, who lives and teaches in New Fairfield, has spent nearly a lifetime working with various types of clay and stone. Her porcelains are in the permanent collections of 12 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, and the Museum Haaretz in Tel Aviv, Israel. Among her many achievements are the Master Craftsman/Educator Award from The Society for Connecticut Crafts in 1995, and a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in 1981.

From her New Fairfield studio called The Kick Wheel, Ms Mann teaches private students as well as two regular adult education classes in the art of clay and porcelain, wheel, and hand methods of making pottery, glazing, firing, sculpture, and carving.

Please note that while the lecture is taking place, the meeting room will be darkened for the slide show. Any person wishing to view the fabric collages and watercolors by Eleanor Loescher now on exhibit in that room, is asked to kindly wait until Ms Mann’s presentation is over.