Mama Had One of Those

Recently, former director of the Georgia Museum of Art Bill Paul had the staff of the museum out in two groups to his studio in Athens, a contemporary barn with a very Zen feel, to tour us around his pottery collection, which now numbers more than 1,300 pieces. Paul's focus is not so much on the kind of fine-art pottery that most collectors purchase and more on art/industrial pottery, that area that's neither completely mass-produced nor completely unique, and he often has multiples of the same object that demonstrate their slight variations. Hence the title of the exhibition of these objects at the Lyndon House Arts Center, where you can see them through May 30 in the lobby display case: Mama Had One of Those.

Paul will speak at the Lyndon House on Sunday, May 17, from 2 to 4 p.m., and is hosting a "pottery yard sale" at his place (4900 Barnett Shoals Rd., Athens, GA--be warned that 4900 actually comes after numbers it should precede) on this Saturday, May 2, from 9 a.m. to noon.

One thing Paul kept coming back to that caught our interest is the delight in arranging, and the photo slideshow above captures that to some extent. Arrangement of objects can be an art in itself, even a fine art, as artist Fred Wilson's career demonstrates, and Paul's arrangements don't just consist of pottery. You may see a spraypainted high-heeled shoe half-hidden or a stack of paintings or a tangle of wire, all alongside three vases ostensibly glazed the same shade of purple but that show how different that color can be. To large extent, it's an art form that one has to experience in person, but we hope you enjoy the selection of images and that they help convey the space and the arrangements therein.