Bellevue Arts Museum presents Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser, a mid-career retrospective of a master potter and painter. The exhibition is comprised of approximately forty ceramic sculptures and several drawings that illustrate Weiser’s signature style that fuses the art of ceramics and china painting techniques. Weiser’s porcelain vessels range from classically-inspired, yet amorphous lidded jars and teapots to unique mounted globes that are richly decorated with otherworldly imagery, which are full of allegorical and mythological references and lush landscapes.

Born in 1950, artist Kurt Weiser’s signature china painted porcelain vessels constitute a groundbreaking development in the vessel tradition. The emotional content of the work remains focused on the nature of desire, tenderly in and out of harmony with nature, providing a rich narrative with lush imagery. Many major artists came out of Weiser’s alma mater, the Kansas City Art Institute, under the tutelage of ceramics master Ken Ferguson. Weiser received his B.F.A in 1972 and his M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1976. From 1977 to 1988, he was Resident Director of the famed Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, located in Helena, MT. He was honored as a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2003.

Weiser’s work can be found in public collections around the world such as: Arizona State University Ceramics Research Center, Tempe, Arizona; the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Ceramics, Shigaraki, Japan; Helsinki Museum of Applied Arts, Helsinki, Finland; National Museum of History, Republic of China, Taipei, Taiwan, among others.

Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser is organized by the Arizona State University Art Museum Ceramics Research Center, Tempe, Arizona, and curated by Curator of Ceramics Peter Held.