New ‘Relics’

By Thomas Albright

They never seem to run out of clay at UC-Davis. They also continue to produce artists who keep finding powerful new uses for it, as witness a show of ceramic sculpture by a recent Davis grad named Dan Snyder at the Wenger Galleries, 855 Montgomery street.

Snyder’s sculpture is part Stephen de Staebler, part Manuel Neri, and several parts a strong new talent that combines and adds to these influences to create a forceful art of his own.

Snyder’s most monumental piece is a great wall, made of thick rectangular slabs of clay which are chipped, broken, fissured and coated with heavy metallic glazes so that the entire ruin takes on a patina of remarkable richness, warmth and luster.

Most of Snyder’s sculpture, however, deals with the human figure, or, more precisely, with the classical figurative statuary of some long-gone civilization which can be known only through its ruins.

Snyder’s figures are assembled from detachable sections or blocks of clay, put together the way an archaeologist attempts to reconstruct a relic from its scattered debris; Snyder never manages to find all the pieces, however, and his fragmentary forms are also ravaged by decay. He gets a uniquely gritty look in his ceramics, like molding stone slowly disintegrating into earth.

These are ragged ceramic fragments of figures, but they are also exposed skeletons of old newspapers and wood and sawhorse armatures, coated in viscous glazes of violently dripped and spattered colors. Instant ruins, and perhaps that long-gone civilization is our own.

San Francisco ChronicleTues., Dec. 5, 1972

#2 of 2

ARTWEEK

West Coast Art News - San Francisco

Fragments of Antiquity

Dan Snyder’s sculptures, set in a museum of history, could fool all but the most educated eye into thinking them relics of antiquity. Their cracked and eroded surfaces, the apparent details and anatomy, make them seem very old. Even at the Wenger Gallery, where they are showing through December 23, the work has a deceptive look of great age.

Few of the sculptures are identified by titles, but it is easy to think of them as fragmented Nikes and Apollos. Some of the more complete figures even stand in frontal positions, almost life-size, one foot slightly advanced in the pose of an archaic hero.

Others look like worn and disintegrating heads on pedestals and columns. And others are fragments twisted like the casts of bodies that were caught at Pompei in a torrent of volcanic ash.

Some months ago a few of Snyder’s pieces were shown in an exhibit of ceramics from Davis. At that time, most of his figures were so reminiscent of Neri’s that it was like hearing an echo. Now he has developed his own idiom. The new sculptures have obviously evolved from the earlier work, but there is a wholeness of vision and emotional intensity that is personal to Dan Snyder.

In addition to the figures, Snyder has created a handsome ten-foot wall of raku-lustered rectangles as cracked and eroded as the rest. Deep metallic greens and blacks, dark reds and dull golds give this the quality of a painting, but the form remains sculptural.

Dan Snyder uses an unusual clay mix in his work. Compounding it himself, he blends in rice hulls, straw and other organic matter which fires out, leaving a very light porous mass that hardly looks like clay.

Often he seals it with resins or vinyls, but many of the figures are colored with glaze or ceramic stains. All of the sections come apart, making the work easy to transport and store.

Two of the larger figures are built up on wood and wire forms, layers of newspaper and resin filling out some sections and clay added to others. Yet in spite of the variation in medium the visual quality remains consistent. Dan Snyder has found a personal vocabulary of form that goes beyond the materials of its structure. (CNM)

photos-

DAN SNYDER: Untitled sculpture, 1972, clay, wood & wire, 66” x 18” Snyder’s sculpture at the Wenger Gallery, San Francisco, has the look of archeological finds.

DAN SNYDER: Untitled, 1972, fired ceramic, 24” x 30” The figures have an anatomical accuracy.

DECEMBER 16, 1972