Rick Dillingham Globular Disassembled and Assembled Jar [SOLD]

Author and artist Rick Dillingham is best known for his wonderful pottery vessels that were constructed, fractured, and reassembled in the likeness of broken prehistoric pueblo pottery being discovered in excavations in the Southwest. He was fascinated with pueblo pottery, be it prehistoric, historic, or modern.

He began his experimentation with fractured and reassembled pottery while a student at the University of New Mexico in the early 1970s. He would construct a vessel, break it apart, paint each individual shard and then reassemble the pieces using black mastic that would be visible between the fragments. Supposedly, early in his career, Dillingham accidentally broke one of his ceramic pieces and decided to patch it back together, thus determining his path as an artist for the remainder of his career. He dispelled the prevailing thought that breakage of an art object was the end of that object. For him, it was a beginning.

Rick Dillingham (1952 - 1994) built his vessels in the traditional pueblo fashion of coils, not using a potter's wheel. He chose this most elemental form of construction, perhaps, because of his absolute love of pueblo pottery. One cannot simply look at his work, it demands to be held and caressed as the sensual object that it is.

This broken and reassembled jar is globular in shape with a small opening at the top. It has a rounded bottom, so it is resting on a donut ring for security. The vessel was slipped in a cream-color clay. Small dabs of burnt orange and opaque applications were placed randomly over the surface.

It carries the signature Dillingham, the date of completion as July ‘76, and the number 4. This is one of the early art vessels made by Dillingham, as he is known to have made the first such one in the early 1970s.

Condition: very good condition

Provenance: this Rick Dillingham Globular Disassembled and Assembled Jar is from the collection of a client of the gallery

Recommended Reading: Dillingham ‘90 RICK DILLINGHAM August 10-September 5, 1990. Exhibit and Catalog by Linda Durham Gallery, Santa Fe