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      G. William Webb at Room East is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

      Brick Red

      G. William Webb turns old bricks into new sculpture.

      Blake Gopnik

      Blake Gopnik

      Updated Jul. 12, 2017 12:13PM EDT / Published Jan. 14, 2014 4:46PM EST 

      (Courtesy Room East, NY)

      This 14-inch terracotta drum is called “Quantity”, and it’s a days-old work by G. William Webb, now on view in a group show at the little Room East gallery in New York. At first it comes across as a supremely elegant example of modernist formalism – a kind of apotheosis or archetype of the shape that a potter’s wheel most naturally forms. It turns out, however, that there’s a backstory. Webb made his clay from ancient bricks that he found on walks in Brooklyn, then smashed to a powder with a sledge hammer. The darker dot on top is actually a hole into the drum, filled to the brim with Webb’s raw brick dust. So the piece is still about archetypal ceramics, but this time understood as having a history.For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit BlakeGopnik.com/archive.

      Blake Gopnik

      Blake Gopnik

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