Exhibit reflects ‘the enduring appeal of the vessel in art’

Bowls, vases, and pitchers. 

They may be utilitarian containers, but vessels hold a significance beyond their practicality, says artist Nancy Gruskin. 

Intrigued by that idea, Gruskin conceived of an exhibit that brings together paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, textile art, collage, and ceramics. The result, “Object Lessons,” runs through August 10 at the Acton Art Association.

The dozen artists from Acton and beyond who are represented in the show reveal the reasons why depicting and creating vessels has been an art form “since time began,” says Gruskin, who teaches at the CAA and whose work is included in the exhibit. 

Those reasons include “a desire to interpret the work of artists who have come before, an interest in adding universality to an otherwise personal perspective, a love of shape and form, and a focus on material culture and the politics of objects,” she says. 

Moreover, she adds, “There is nothing more beautiful than the shape of a good pot.” 

‘The lives they lived’

The works on display include Kathleen O’Hara’s “Name Jug: for Women in Old Burying Ground, Acton, MA,” a stoneware, glaze, oxide, and shoelace piece. O’Hara, a Acton artist, says she went on a tour of the cemetery a while back and “was struck by the fact that the women’s gravestones were often less ornate than the men’s.”

She obtained the names of women buried in the cemetery and began creating a series of works listing their first names “in honor of the lives they lived.” 

O’Hara says she realized as a child “that I was an artist” and has pursued art as a career ever since, studying, teaching, and curating. Though she is “deeply involved in ceramics now,” O’Hara is a multimedia artist whose work has been exhibited in cities including Boston, Cambridge, Provincetown, New York, and Philadelphia.   

She is the co-owner and curator of Drive-by Projects, a small art space in Watertown. 

‘A dream list of artists’

Grustin earned a degree in art history and studio art at Connecticut College and a doctorate in art history at Boston University. She has taught architectural history at the university level.

“I’ve been a painter all my life,” Gruskin says, though she went to law school and did criminal appellate work before realizing that “all I really want to do is go back to art.” Her work has been exhibited in galleries in New York, Boston, and Seattle. 

Gruskin teaches painting, collage, and sculpture and began instructing at the CAA about 10 years ago. “Object Lessons” is her first curating endeavor.  

For the show, she came up with a “dream list of artists” whose “interest in vessels for different reasons is a connecting thread.” She was “thrilled” that they all agreed to participate. 

Gruskin has two paintings in the show, “Ottoman Velvet” and “Kiku,” the latter referring to her inclusion of a pale pink, spidery chrysanthemum. 

“Object Lessons” runs through August 10 at the Acton Art Association, 37 Lexington Road. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.