Ceramicist Roberto Lugo shared his work and his finest recommendation with college students who dropped by his residency on the Workplace for the Arts in mid-November.
“I actually wish to demystify that concept that artwork is just for individuals who have these items or individuals who have traditionally had entry to it,” Lugo stated in an interview. “For me, artwork is for everybody. One of the crucial satisfying components about artwork is seeing somebody determine one thing that they provide that they didn’t suppose they did.”
The Puerto Rican artist, activist, and educator, whose pots might be present in a rising variety of museum collections, labored with greater than a dozen undergraduates — most of them girls of coloration — over two days of campus workshops. Every customer was supplied an opportunity to work on cups or tiles, with Lugo offering beneficiant teaching on all the things from perfecting patterns to portray over grey clay. He even opened up about his Philadelphia upbringing and the inspiration he attracts from hip-hop.
“Throughout every workshop with undergraduates, Roberto impressed college students to consider their lives and cultural backgrounds as a place to begin and an indicator of what makes them distinctive,” noticed Kathy King, director of the Ceramics Program and Visible Arts Initiatives on the OFA. “He then requested them to consider the phrases that got here to thoughts, creating a visible vocabulary to embellish each cups and tiles with florals, textual content, and colourful patterns, amongst different issues.”
Establishments together with the Museum of Fantastic Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork have acquired Lugo’s work lately. Tiffany Onyeiwu ’25, who has a focus in movie and visible research, is a frequent customer to those areas and was excited to fulfill the artist behind a few of her favourite items.
“It’s been actually inspiring to see an artist who has such a major a part of themselves embedded of their work,” stated Onyeiwu, who attended each of the workshops Lugo supplied. “Modern ceramics is changing into extra prevalent in American tradition, which is one thing that I’m excited and grateful for.”
Lugo additionally engaged with the neighborhood throughout a packed public lecture Monday night at Harvard’s Ed Portal in Allston.
The occasion opened with performances by Salome Agbaroji ’27 and Elyse Martin-Smith ’25, social research concentrators who delivered rhymes loaded with intelligent pottery references. Martin-Smith commemorated the Nineteenth-century work of David Drake, a Black potter who produced a physique of vessels whereas enslaved in South Carolina. Agbaroji, the 2023 Nationwide Youth Poet Laureate, captured consideration with witty lyrics that cautioned listeners to “simply keep out of the kiln” if they’ll’t “take the warmth.”
“I used to be making an attempt to jot down one thing that was very accessible and interesting to honor what pottery is and in addition honor the hip-hop tradition that’s so closely infused in Roberto Lugo’s work,” stated Agbaroji.
Lugo’s presentation lined a few of his hottest art work in addition to the folks, music, and life occasions that affected his artistic course of. Whereas most of Lugo’s artwork takes inspiration from European and Asian ceramic practices, he’s additionally deeply influenced by Mexican and Peruvian ceramics in addition to the textile traditions of Indigenous communities of the Americas.
“One of many particular issues that may be a problem for me is that quite a lot of these communities are nonetheless struggling for illustration of their very own tradition,” he stated. “Although I’m impressed by it and a few of my work is influenced by it, I very often persist with codecs which are in some ways tropes or acquainted visible components from ceramics historical past. I attempt to be very considerate with the place I borrow from, as a result of I don’t wish to change a tradition.”
One other of Lugo’s emblems is pottery that includes portraits, from historic figures similar to Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. to influential musicians like Biggie Smalls and Erykah Badu. Lugo linked his penchant for portraiture to rising up amid Philadelphia’s nice mural scene, with partitions that includes folks of coloration.
“Since I didn’t have any artwork historical past in class, that was actually my notion of what artwork was,” Lugo stated.
Newer works combine conventional strategies with broader consultant narratives. His “Orange and Black” collection, for instance, performs on historical Greek glazed terracotta with trendy depictions of metropolis life.
Again on the Ceramics Program studio, Lugo shared a testomony of the connective powers of art work. “As an artist, there’s many alternative methods to interact with folks outdoors of your individual physique,” he stated. “Certainly one of them is thru the bodily art work itself. There’s the show of the art work and the way it interacts and engages with folks. There’s the academic aspect to it, which is giving folks the autonomy to make their very own art work. After which there’s the conversations that get created via each schooling and art-making. For me, that’s the place the magic occurs.”
