Just Another Pretty Vase

Fance Franck's Ceramics at the Pucker Gallery

The Pucker Gallery is proud to be the only American gallery that shows Fance Franck's work-this is the second year the gallery's spring show has been devoted to her. Franck is an American expatriate living in Paris whose work has been widely shown in Europe. She's a ceramist, or potter, depending on what you think of her very distinct style. Her bowls and vases are always porcelain and always small, due to the limitations of her kiln. They come in a few very specific shapes-round, rectangular, oval or flat. She takes a simple shape and varies it simply-some pieces are scalloped, some are painted to look like they are. For this show, she has made a few more innovative pieces, the most striking of which is a large (14.5" diameter) disk in a boomerang-like shape, glazed bright red up to the naturally white edges. This, her only titled piece in the show, she calls "Brother Sun."

Franck is known for her intimate knowledge of glazes. While she trained in Japan to learn how to mimic ancient Japanese glazes, her most widely known work is painted with "fresh" red-copper glazes of her own invention. In this show, however, most of the pieces are either black and brown earth-tones or white over blue and green underglazes. It is obvious from each of her pieces that she has masterful control over her medium-every slight change in color or variation in shape is deliberate. Though the show is united by the characteristic grace of her work, there is nothing that visually ties together the thickly painted earth-tone pieces and the light blue and green pieces delicately decorated with silhouettes of flowers and horses.

Upon entering a gallery filled with small porcelain vessels the first question that comes to mind is, "What differentiates craft from fine art?" These pieces are not like the modern ceramics or blown-glass pieces that are so widely accepted as having the same artistic value as paintings. They hold water. Franck was originally attracted to pottery because she felt that a well-made piece could evoke the same emotions and thoughts as a well-written poem. Do these small vessels evoke poetry in the same way that a Kandinsky evokes music? Not exactly, but they are beautiful, and far more useful than a painting for holding flowers.

Fance Franck: Pure Geometry, Natural Grace is on display at the Pucker Gallery, at 171 Newbury St. in Boston, through May 10. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday.