Gina Voelker Bobrowski is a native of New Orleans, and a full –time, studio artist and Community arts practitioner who resides in Corrales, New Mexico. She received formal training at the Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina, and BFA at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge and MFA at the University of Georgia, Athens. Her work involves utilitarian earthenware and porcelain pottery, large-scale ceramic and mixed – media sculpture, and site work and community projects. Selected solo exhibitions and installations include Santa Fe Clay Ceramics Art Center,Santa Fe, New Mexico, Laumeier Sculpture Park and Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. Group shows include Ceramics in the New Millennium, WOCEK International Biennale, Incehon, Kyonggi -Do, South Korea Transmission, Macon Country Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia, A Glimpse of the Invisible, Arvada Art Center, Arvada Colorado. Gina is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Individual ArtistFellowships, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, the Mayor’s Award, Cortona Italy, the Young American Award, American Craft Museum, New York and several academic research grants. Public collections include: WOCEK Incehon, Kyonggi Do, South Korea, LaumeierSculpture Park and Museum, St. Louis, MO, Museum of Art and Design New York, San Angelo Museum of Art, San Angelo, TX, Maher Collection, Scripps College, Claremont, CA, Kutani International Ceramics Fair, Ishikawa, Japan Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM, Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA, COPIA Center for Culinary Art, Napa, CA, Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville Al, Wustrum Museum of Art, Racine, WI. Additional teaching, lectures and workshops include UGA Studies Abroad, Cortona,Italy, WOCEK International Artist Workshop, South Korea, Alberta College of Art, Calgary, Anderson Ranch Art Center, CO, Arrowmont School, TN, Penland School of Craft, the Watershed Center, ME. CCAC, Oakland, CA, Ohio State University, Columbus, Cleveland Institute of Art, OH, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, Arizona State University, Tempe, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, University of Arizona, Tucson, University of Miami, FL, Artist – in- Schools, Simmesport.
Bobrowski’s ‘Rabbit with Vase’ is a loose and playful capturing of the animal, interested in capturing the essence of the creature as much as any objective rendering, and opining on the relationship between nature and culture. The works surface is roughly inscribed, accruing detail through a patchwork of glazes that seem latently or automatically introduced — but which, with time, begin to reveal an enclosed network of figurative detail. The simple salt-glazed vessel besides the animal may meditate upon origins of material and the sculptural versus functional application of the work, or else adds some strange knowing legend to the form.
