Feats of clay

The Palo Alto Art Center is known for its annual Clay and Glass Festival in summer and the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch in autumn, yet it’s far more than those two media that you’ll find on offer here. Photography, painting and other modalities are part of the arts education made available to the public. You don’t have to be a Palo Alto resident to take advantage of it. Admission to exhibits is free, and most days you are free to wander the studios and talk with the artists at work.

“The curator, Demetri Broxton, likes to say ‘Clay is earth,’” Kienzle said.

Yes, people have dug clay out of the earth and worked it for tens of thousands of years. Don’t think simply of the lovely pots, plates and bowls you find at craft fairs or in your kitchen cupboards. Think sculpture.

Some of the pieces in this highly eclectic show are moving — literally. Before you enter the room you’ll pass a slowly spinning mirrored ball reflecting colored lights onto a fringed curtain.

Almost immediately on entering you will be confronted by Cathy Lu’s “Yellow Tears,” a pair of enormous eyes with tubes of liquid pumping fluids. You won’t need to read the description to get it.

If you want to see emotion in clay sculpture, check out two by Woody Di Othello, a pair of large black hands each depicting different feelings of adolescence. In “Restless,” a hand grips a large TV remote portraying aggressive boredom. “Grief” is an oversized hand clapped over a face grimacing in psychological pain. If you can’t feel the emotion in the pieces, you just can’t feel.

Wangxin Zhang’s two sculptures are the most traditional works in the exhibit, but not exactly classical. “A Foggy Trip“ is half a horse and rider symbolizing the disappearance into fog, done in the ancient Chinese-style with colorful glazes to match. Across the alcove his other piece, “My Ancestors,“ looks very much like a Rodin model.

“Recuerdos (Memories)” by Anabel Juarez is a giant two-tiered sort of house. It’s topped with a mock corrugated roof mimicking tropical homes that is actually made of glass. On each of the “floors” of the house are oversized interpretations of the mementos she recalls from her childhood in Mexico.

Across from the main gallery is a huge mandala “Collective Earth” by Ashwini Bhat.

There are more variations on how clay can be mixed with other materials. Quite wide-ranging in style, theme and structure.

Though this show isn’t very large, the ambitious scope of ceramic use certainly is.

“The ideas are even bigger than the media,” Kienzle quips.

Come and be awed, or at least tickled.

You Can Create Too: Palo Alto Art Center has several creative classes year-round, and two by clay artists Timna Naim and Larisa Usich are free and open to the public. They are held the second Friday of the month, and there is still space to register for the Dec. 12 class. Sign up quickly: Connect with Clay Workshops.

Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto, (650) 329-2366, bit.ly/4oqLVdw.

Bart Charlow, consultant and author, has been sketching all his life and painting for over 45 years, had a professional photography business, and leads plein air painting groups. Come along as he shares his insights about the local art scene, and bring your sketchbook. His art and story is at: bartsart.weebly.com.