Cupstravaganza: A Pop Up

Nick Weddell makes sculpture which asks to be lived with— through touch, use, and interaction— in a way that fully casts aside art’s bias against utility. A system of meaning emerges around the work and its viewer, who is also welcome to be its user.

Weddell works with porcelain and glaze (a lot of it). Thus, as objects go, the prehistory (think archaeology), mythos (think Fairy Cups), and current banality of the cup makes it the perfect conceptual and physical subject for Weddell, whose work is a challenge to the mundanity of objects around us. He has developed a practice in which he injects everyday moments with hints of the absurd through familiar shapes and forms.

Weddell’s series of cups is full of color, texture, humor, and surprise— each piece, with its unique form and eccentricity, is a great pleasure to view and handle.

By combining the user/object relationship with the artwork/viewer relationship, Weddell transforms the entire material and psycho-social experience of “the cup” into something goofy and precious through the alchemy of glaze and malleability of form.

There’s no reason a tool and utensil cannot embody joy, novelty, and charm— no reason it shouldn’t be art.