In Space in Situ is a book of Amy Evans McClure’s art, twenty-seven color photographs of ceramic sculptures, with an essay by editor for Art in America, Michael Duncan, and poetry by Michael McClure. Evans McClure’s sculptures, such as horse heads (one can whirl, some are on wheels), tall winged Stelae Furies the parts of an outdoor installation, figures of Hathor and of a seated Egyptian scribe (installed in the Bancroft Library, the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley), abstracted features like vitalism in dreams, led Michael Duncan to compare Evans McClure to “fellow contemporary image-builders” Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgeois. Her figures are as if silent containers of language, a relation then supplied by the essay and by Michael McClure’s poem citing the ceramic forms as containers of her immediate actions: “THEN YOU GLAZE / these shapings from long, / sudden childhood memories.”
Amy Evans McClure
Praise for In Space in Situ
Rising with indomitable resolve, Amy Evans McClure’s clay horse heads burst from the ground. Inverted vessels, they hold an ineffable power not easily assessed in today’s commodity-driven art world. Erect, necks outstretched, they lead with their noses, scenting the future as change. Roughly colored glazes and streaked patinas convey a hard-won presence. These are transgender phalli disseminating life.
— Michael Duncan
Imagine a world where nations one-up each other with acts of colossal compassion — and horses made of kiln-fired clay gaze with soulful eyes and turn their noses to the sky.
— Lou Fancher