Full Circle: Bari Ziperstein so far… and the NZ Pottage Award
Chicago born Los Angeles resident, Bari Ziperstein, never set out to work in clay. She learned some basics in high school and more while in college at Ohio University in Athens, OH, but her majors were painting and women’s studies and her parents demurred when she wanted ceramics as a third major as that meant another year at study. After moving to LA early in the new century, she enrolled for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, where “ceramics weren’t even on the table”1. There, in what is called Cal-Arts, an existing knowledge of the practical is assumed in this, one of the most conceptually rigorous arts courses in the USA; one with an esteemed history and renowned current faculty. While her Studio Arts studies there nominated sculpture she kept a foot in the painting arena via another course in aesthetics and colour theory because, for her, drawing with paint was an accomplished skill while sculpture was a newer interest and very much an investigation – one she found demanding. She was aiming at staying with something familiar while addressing what was an unknown – a sort of easy breathing region – but in classes with lecturers such as Michael Asher (where his post-studio class might discuss a single work for many hours), feminist theorist Leslie Dick and lecturer/materialist sculptor, Martin Kersels, she found herself exposed to “exactly what I needed from that school”.2 Caution collapsed and an education was relished.
But neither ceramic as a potential sculptural medium nor its rich and specifically Southern Californian histories surfaced during those years at Cal-Arts. She graduated in 2004 and on leaving became a working artist,
