Large Bowl, c.1980

Phillip Maberry and Scott Walker

glazed earthenware

10 in H x 20v x 16 in

Bursting with color and playful energy, this vibrant work by Maberry and Walker beautifully embodies the artists' distinctive creative vision. Bold hues, dynamic abstract forms, and imaginative composition come together to create a sculpture that is both joyful and visually captivating. There is a similar bowl by Maberry in the collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian.

Whether displayed as a focal point or incorporated into a larger collection, this spirited piece is a celebration of color, creativity, and whimsy, a reminder that art has the power to brighten both our spaces and our everyday lives. Their work is so exuberant that in 1990 the home and studio they designed and lived in was featured in a B52's video.

Artist Statement

Phillip Maberry's earliest memory is of wallpaper with large green and yellow flowers heavily outlined in black in a bedroom in his parents' home in Dallas. A dubious choice, Mr. Maberry now acknowledges. But that wallpaper, along with the vividly colored 50's furniture he grew up with, led him into a garden of fantastical colors he has never entirely left.

Artists Biography

Phillip Maberry studied ceramics at East Texas State University in the early 70's, where he mixed found objects with glazed clay in crazy animal shapes, adding rhinestones and sequins, while his classmates succumbed to what he calls ''the brown pot syndrome.''

A few years later, Maberry with his partner Scott Walker, moved to New York and began adorning their loft on West 20th Street with an anarchic display of psychedelic colors, using discontinued paints bought cheaply on Canal Street. They also blended in wavy shapes cut from wallpaper. They considered themselves, along with the artists Robert Kushner and Brad Davis, part of a pattern and decoration movement establishing itself in playful antithesis to the prevailing minimalism.

This piece was donated by the Family of Marge and Phil Kalodner.

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