Ceramist Susan Beiner’s work has been exhibited in China, France, the Netherlands and across the nation, but it took some persuading to get her to exhibit her creations at Temple Solel’s latest Art Showcase.
After some cajoling, Beiner relented and now her earlier work is on display at Temple Solel through May 31. A reception and talk featuring Beiner are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Sunday, April 2, at Temple Solel, 6805 E. McDonald Drive, Paradise Valley.
A Temple Solel member since 2013, Beiner is an associate professor at Arizona State University’s, Herberger College of Fine Art. Her hesitancy to show her work at Solel came from the facts that she had never considered displaying her art in a synagogue before, as well as the large size of her latest creations.
“We told Susan she was a tremendous resource and a part of the temple and we wanted to see her work,” said Ira Thomas, a member of the Art @ Solel committee. “This is the first time we’ve had a ceramicist.”
Inspired by the crafts movement, Beiner began creating highly detailed, and at times whimsical, teapots in the early 1990s. Although she still took pride in her teapots, by 2003, Beiner said she needed a greater artistic challenge and moved on to large wall installations and sculptures.
“I just didn’t want to make teapots anymore,” Beiner said. “I didn’t feel as though the teapots were about the functional product in any way. I think they were more about a form with which to make more sculptural orientation. After I did my first large wall piece in 2003, I felt I could go further. I consider the teapots in a different way than I do my latest work. [The new work] is a different mindset of how I’m making it, why I’m making it and the ideas behind it.
“The things I make now take a lot longer, but they are more of a challenge and I think they get better and better with time,” Beiner added. “I learn from each one and to me that is worth everything.”
Like her teapots, her new works are highly detailed, but they have gone further into the use of synthetic materials such as plexiglass, foam and acrylics. From afar, the results can look like a garden of flowers until closer examination reveals the man-made, industrial artifice that represents her interest in nature and biotechnology.
“You can’t tell what’s real and what’s made anymore,” Beiner said. “We can grow anything in terms of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and things like that. You can grow any plant to be something else. There are all sorts of things that are being done that make my work seem more real.”
Due to space limitations at Temple Solel, Beiner is mostly exhibiting her early teapots.
Beiner is part of the third call-to-artists for the Art Showcase series at Temple Solel since 2012. She is joined by seven other artists working in such mediums as acrylics, oil, photography and painting. The artists’ work can also be purchased, with a percentage of the proceeds going to fund an art scholarship awarded annually to a temple member high school senior.
“We’ve been really blessed having so many Temple Solel members with so many diverse kinds of talents – talents that some of them don’t even recognize themselves,” Thomas said. Members of other synagogues have visited Temple Solel to see the various Art Showcases. Thomas hopes that interest will blossom into something bigger.
“We’re really hoping that down the road we can get an art community within the Reform congregations in the Valley,” he said.
