SEATTLE POST- INTELLIGENCER

R. M. Campbell

(Transcript)

Bem Sams Sculpture is Crafty, but it’s Art

Ben Sams is a ceramicist of considerable imagination, the boundaries of which are discovered only after some examination.

He invites a certain intellectual analysis, but the more important issue, it seems to me, is to enjoy the physicality and imagery of the pieces without worrying so much about their significance as works of art.

It is ceramics such as Sams' which make the shaky line between craft and art even more tenuous than it already is.  Certainly Sams' funky, surrealistic pieces are well within a definite ceramic style, particularly that found on the West Coast. Yet, one senses a kind of obligation to call the works ceramic sculpture.  So, is it craft or art?

I think one doesn't have to look at Sams' art for very long to realize the man is more an artist than a craftsman.

Sams does mugs.  But one is less aware of the function of his mugs than their design.  His plate is a plate, but the memory records the surface decorating the tactile sensations, more than anything else. One is always more aware of the aesthetic content of the piece than its possible "function" in society.

For all of Sams' grotesque fantasies, he has been and continues to be an exhibition devoted to the figure. It is seldom conventional--although most often recognizable--but it appears in its many forms everywhere in his work.  The figure can be large like the five-foot "Texas Ranger" with its multiple variations of the figure appliqued, in a manner of speaking, on the surface or something non-figurative--a mug for example--upon whose surface as applied faces in great perfusion.

Sams often seeks to give the extraordinary ordinary connotations. He doesn't so much celebrate the grotesque but strives to make is less striking.  Sams' works always seem to be assuming poses of one kind or another.  Expressions are often intense and sharply drawn.  Little, in meaning or plain decoration, is left unintended; few seem to have a relationship to anything but themselves. The world of Ben Sams, regardless of its ties to other ceramic and cultural conventions, is something very singular.