Days of Heaven: Jeanne D’Orge and Brad Schwieger

Days of Heaven: Jeanne D’Orge and Brad Schwieger art exhibition opens Friday, February 19, 2021. The exhibit can be seen during regular gallery hours: Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 4:00 pm or by appointment.

One of Carmel’s preeminent visual storytellers, Mrs. Carl Cherry (Jeanne D’Orge) employed Modernist forms and muted colors to narrate an internal experience so readily indefinable in her paintings of processions, landscapes, rituals and ceremonies. This month, the Cherry Center unites one of Cherry’s most groundbreaking series—Paintings Under Glass (1947–1954)—with the ceramic work of Brad Schwieger.

Cherry's use of blues and greens, contrasting with the whites of the figures, grants the work a nocturnal, dreamlike quality.  Some critics have questioned the extent to which the piece draws on spiritual principles, suggesting instead that it might depict figures from Mrs.  Cherry's own imaginative pantheon, as its visionary intensity seems to suggest. The work is complemented by Mr. Schwieger's large, vase-like ceramic sculptures, which suggest and refer to the Mrs. Cherry's figures.

Brad Schwieger has participated in more than 300 exhibitions including: The Seto Ceramics and Art Glass Center, Seto Japan, 2002; The 2nd Cheongju International Craft Competition, Korea, 2001; American Shino, Babcock Galleries, New York, New York, 2000 Different Stokes: International Wood Fired Ceramics Invitational, at The University of Iowa Museum of Art in Iowa City, among others. He was an Artist in Residence at The Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana and the Watershed Center for Ceramics in Maine, both in 1998. He has conducted more than 50 workshops and lectured across the United States, Europe and Asia. His work has been published and reviewed in American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, and many other periodicals and books.

The exhibit will run through Friday, March 26, 2021.