City Art Gallery Gayle Tustin


*Five Vessel Forms* Relief Ceramic Wall Sculpture Red Earthware Clay with Terra Sigilatta and Oxide Patinas 21"h x 23"w x 3"d $2200	*White Street. Tribeca* Exterior- Red Earthenware w/ Terra Siglatta and Oxide Patinas Interior- Black Matt Glaze 24"h x 15"w x 13"d $2100

*Towering Waterfalls - Fountain Sculpture* Ceramic with Terra Sigillata and Oxide Patinas 8' h x 15' w x 15' d $8000	*Towering Waterfalls - Fountain Sculpture* Ceramic with Terra Sigillata and Oxide Patinas 8' h x 15' w x 15' d $8000

Gayle Tustin is a full-time studio artist residing in Wilmington, North Carolina. She was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania where her first clay experience was making mud pies on the rolling hills in the neighborhood.

She initially completed an Associate Degree in Business at Robert Morris University in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. Immediately thereafter, she started pursuing her career as an artist/ceramist. Her studies in ceramics at Penn State University, University Park, allowed her to realize her talent in this field.

The summer of 1978 found Gayle climbing the Andes Mountains and traveling throughout Peru. It was here that red earthenware made an everlasting impression in her choice of expressive materials. Subsequently she partnered a tile business in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Near the end of 1987 she moved to North Carolina and set up her own studio. A trip to France and Italy in 1988 fostered a fascination with majolica and the desire to work in tin-glazed earthenware.

In 1992 she was the recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant. This assisted her in the execution of her hand carved, low-relief tiles for wall murals, vessels and sculpture. Attending the renowned ceramic school of Alfred University, Alfred, New York in 1993 significantly contributed to her artistic and technical repertoire.

The International Art Colony in the monastery of Saint Joakim Osogovski, Kriva Palanka, Macedonia filled the artist with endless inspiration and creative challenge in 1995. Working with artists from France, Turkey, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Egypt and Macedonia established a true interaction between art, artists and the celebration of life. This experience, filled with explosive growth, motivated Gayle to become the first student from the Art Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to graduate with honors. Art historian, Anthony F. Janson writes in the April 1997 issue of Ceramics Monthly, "Never has this writer seen anyone develop so rapidly or change so profoundly as Tustin did."

August 1996, the Resen Ceramic Colony in Otesevo, Macedonia invited Gayle to be one of eight international ceramic artists to work on Lake Prespa for three weeks. A visit to Greece before crossing over the Macedonian border had an astounding influence on the artist, leading to heightened interest in the sculptural potential of her terra cotta reliefs.

Gayle returned to Italy in the fall of 1996 to visit classical Baroque sites in Rome, Florence and Venice. The dynamics of this period is reflected in the artist's elevated reliefs. An intriguing journey through the Antalya region of Turkey in July 1997 reaffirmed her tendency toward even higher relief wall sculptures. "Tustin's larger, robust tile reliefs with their muscular abstracted forms have a grand internal scale," explains art critic Kate Dobbs Ariail. Other inspirational travels abroad included London, Prague, Mexico and Canada.

In 1998 she co-founded No Boundaries, Inc., a non-profit organization inviting local and international artists to participate in an artist colony taking place every two years on Bald Head Island, North Carolina.

Gayle's artwork continues to be commissioned and is part of numerous private and corporate collections. Exhibition sites abroad include France and Macedonia.

Terra sigillata is a liquid suspension of a clay or a mixture of clays in which have been captured the finest particles of the mixture. It is made by the process of sedimentation. The finer particles of clay are separated from the coarser particles in a clay mass. The use of a deflocculant changes the electrical charge on each clay particle, causing them to repel each other. The heaviest particles sink to the bottom; the lighter, fine particles stay on top. The finest particles of clay are terra sigillata.

Lustrous, silky feeling surfaces are produced when the liquid is applied to bone dry clay. Beautiful color can be developed by adding coloring oxides to the base. Applied thinly, the sigillata has an elusive, veiled look. Ordinary clay slip has denser, more opaque character and will not take on the special feature of terra sigillata - the sheen, low gloss, or soft luster that makes it unique. (Greek red and black figured wares were terra sigillata.) The gloss also acts to seal a porous clay body somewhat the way a glaze does. Some earthenware clays are used in the manufacturing of drain tiles and are coated with terra sigillata to make them impervious to water.