Caroline Larsen expands upon her Longwy Art Deco vase series debuted here two years ago in “Kaleidoscopic” (2019) with proliferating vases and flowers. Most works feature not-quite-mirror images of two vases of flowers, like the above, where a psychedelic op background further warps your perception of near-symmetry. In other works the vases start repeating even further; four, five, six vases proliferate across the panel making your eyes spin out. Not all vases in this show are from Longwy designs: Talavera pottery from Mexico, Carlton Ware and Imari Ware are included—and in one painting Caroline paints Roxanne Jackson’s vases into the painting.

Roxanne Jackson exhibits vases as well but these are traditional glazed ceramic vases in white and cobalt. Like the Delftware she references, these works are not porcelain (which the Dutch hadn’t yet figured out how to copy from China) but are low-fire raku clay painted with white underglaze. Along with Larsen she seeks to reinvent craft and disrupt historical ideas of pattern and design. In the addition of puckering mouths to the traditional vase, some with gold grills, tongue piercings, black lipstick or draped in gold jewelry, she eroticizes and contemporizes the safe and staid motifs. Like Ruby Neri she uses a feminist punk approach to disrupt and occupy realms of design and craft in the ceramic arts.

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