MOUNT VERNON — Utilitarian ceramic works by Cornell College alumnus Guillermo Cuellar will be featured in an exhibition, “Guillermo Cuellar: Influences and Recent Work,” opening Sunday, Jan. 5, at the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in Cornell’s McWethy Hall.
Cuellar will be honored Sunday, Feb. 9, at a closing reception and artist’s talk, which will also include internationally known potters Warren MacKenzie of Stillwater, Minn., and Clary Illian of Ely, Iowa. The reception and artist’s talk will run from 2 to 4 p.m. Regular gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
Born in Venezuela, Cuellar graduated from Cornell in 1976 with majors in art, geology and French. He studied ceramics with Cornell professor Doug Hanson.
“He was one of the beginning potters in a huge crop of students that became very good,” Hanson said. “When he stepped off the plane upon his return to Venezuela, he was the expert in pottery. His work is really influenced by the ‘mingei’ tradition of Japanese folk art. His pottery is functional but decorative.”
In 1986, Cuellar opened a studio in Turgua, Venezuela. He has shown his work in numerous venues including the Venezuelan National Art Gallery, the Northern Clay Center in Minnesota, the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico, the Smithsonian Institution and private galleries in the United States, England, Venezuela and Chile.
The Cornell exhibition will include recent works by Illian and MacKenzie, whom Cuellar met more than 20 years ago at workshops in Caracas, Venezuela. Selected works from the Rose and Angelo Garzio Ceramics and Ethnographic Collection, and the Joan Mannheimer Collection of the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) will be installed to provide background into the mingei tradition. Among the UIMA pieces are works by Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Michael Leach, John Leach, Byron Temple, Illian, MacKenzie and selected Korean Yi Dynasty pieces.