New gallery showcases art of ceramic experimentation

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

In its second-story downtown loft space around the corner from River Street, in an area reminiscent of Boston or San Francisco's wharves, Soullenz Studio is like a clandestine speakeasy. Fairly new on the scene, it has high-beamed ceilings, a red brick wall, wood floors and big windows that look out on the river and the traffic below. Owned by photographer Ronen Zilberman, it is a genuine feel-good gallery space that also offers fresh OJ, teas and coffee drinks for purchase.

Park's 35 tall, metallic, glazed and raku-fired vessels are beautifully displayed on pedestals draped with obi sashes. Dramatic and calligraphic, they explore a wide-range of attractive surface designs. "Copper Sand Tape Resist," a vessel decorated with resist lines flowing through the metallic flashes of color from a raku firing, is suggestive of a piece of modern jazz choreography.

Lum's 10 enormous platters, tea bowls, bowls, sake cups and vases are interspersed throughout the gallery walls and pedestals and fill four shelves. Working in a variety of clays (stoneware, porcelain and a black clay dug up from Pauoa Valley) and glaze treatments, his body of work illustrates his love of experimentation.

Lum's sagger-firing kiln (much like a covered clay bento with fitted bowls inside) is displayed on a center table. The artist used the blossoms from the African tulip tree as reduction material when the clay was cooling. The result is pure sunshine — splendid flashes of bright orange.

Soullenz hosts musical performances. Evening parking is easier.