50-year-retrospective honors Clayton Bailey, art professor emeritus

• October 5, 2011 10:30am

The eclectic work of Clayton Bailey, California State University, East Bay art professor emeritus, will be shown at the "50-year-retrospective" at the Crocker Art Museum, 216 “O” St., Sacramento, from Oct. 22 through Jan. 15, 2012. Bailey will lecture at 1 p.m., and sign books at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on opening day. 

The ceramist, sculptor, and self-proclaimed “mad scientist,” hopes his “World of Wonders” will surprise and delight.

The exhibition will present the full range of Bailey’s inspired eccentricity in clay and metal, including his early ceramic critters, signature “exploding pots, life-sized robot sculptures, and ray guns realized from discarded aluminum.

It also will included Bailey's pseudo-scientific discoveries, including proof of "Big Foot" and ceramic fossils from the "Bone Age," made under the name of his scientific alter-ego, Dr. George Gladstone. 

Visitors to the exhibition will also experience the artist's fully realized environments, including his backyard "Kaolithic" discoveries and mockumentary "Museum of Wonders" from his home in the Port Costa. In all, 180 works and complementary ephemera span 50 years of Bailey's prodigious production of genuine marvels.

Bailey, who holds a B.S. and M.S. in art and art education from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, taught ceramic sculpture from 1968-1996 at then-California State University, Hayward. He was advisor to the Art Department Stone Soup Club, a group of students who met weekly for a soup dinner around a large table they had made from ceramic tiles.

Bailey is experienced in all aspects of the ceramic arts, including high fire, low fire, raku, and vapor glazes, and has expertise in throwing, hand building, mold making and casting of ceramic works. His awards include two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the California Artist of the Year Award in 2009 from the California State Fair.

DD