Lauren skelley bailey: cRAZE

EXHIBITION DATES: may 27 - June 21, 2025

RECEPTION: Thursday, may 29, 5 - 8 pm

Closing RECEPTION: Saturday, June 21, 4 - 6 pm

The Painting Center is pleased to present CRAZE, featuring ceramics for the table and wall by Long Island-based artist Lauren Skelly Bailey in the Project Room. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, May 27, and runs through June 21, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, May 29 from 5 to 8 pm.

Residing close to the sea, Skelly’s sculptural language draws from an interest and awareness of endangered surfaces found in the ocean. The sea wears and ages things in it, but these things then can become a platform for new growth. Like the cyclical life of marine animals living, thriving, and building anew onto old worn environments, Skelly’s sculptures emulate this process, combining disparate surfaces and finishes. Different shapes and tones, employing organic gestural formations. Expressing thought and emotion in her creations.

Skelly uses discarded forms by repurposing older existing work in an act of collaging and assembling pieces. What may have once been a humble bowl might now be given a chance to be a larger, more complex, and varied reef-like vessel exploring color and dimension. This method has enabled her to continue the journey of her forms and their surface through creating a new outlet for parts of the former, to transform into bigger statement pieces that elaborately hold a room.

In connection with her studio practice, this exhibition highlights Skelly’s desire for color and unique surfaces at The Painting Center. CRAZE embodies a dance of thought and emotion expressed through vibrant tones and textures of glazed surfaces. Skelly captures the essence of nature and abstraction in these maximalist compilations of crazed surfaces. Crazing can happen when a glaze is not the right fit for the clay, often this occurs when the clay does not shrink at the same rate as the glaze, leaving the glaze to peel or crawl down a pot. Crazing in ceramics can be troublesome for some, or it can be quite visually pleasing for others. For Skelly, it’s a starting point from which to explore and to use craze glazes as a tool. Skelly works to manipulate recipes to make glazes that would crawl, peel, melt, or semi-flux. In using these crazing moments in her works, she builds up surfaces and color fields.

Lauren Skelly Bailey received her MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MA and BFA in Studio Art from Adelphi University, NY. She has exhibited her work at C.R.E.T.A. Rome Residency, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Marquee Projects, New York, Cape Cod Museum of Art, MA, Rhode Island School of Design, Adelphi University, NY, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY, Caumsett Foundation, Lloyd Harbor, NY, Providence Art Club Gallery, Rhode Island, University of Southern Mississippi, and the Patchogue Art Council Gallery, NY. Skelly currently teaches ceramics at St. Joseph’s University and Nassau Community College.

For more information on the artist, visit: @skelly_bailey and laurenskellybailey.com.