Plinth Gallery

About Plinth Gallery

Located in a “transitional neighborhood”once occupied with light industries, automobile salvage yards, and abandoned buildings, is a unique collection of artists and galleries.  Among them is Plinth Gallery, an intimate exhibition venue for contemporary ceramic art.  Jonathan Kaplan, a well anthologized and noted ceramic artist, serendipitously discovered this location in Denver and established Plinth Gallery, his own studio and home, in a vacant 2 story warehouse. After an extensive four-year renovation, this adaptive-resuse project transformed a once bland rectangular building into a live-work space. Plinth Gallery was honored with a Denver Mayor's Design Award and is now a recognized architectural landmark in Denver’s fast-growing River North Art District.

The vision for Plinth Gallery is not only to showcase fine contemporary ceramics. The gallery also provides a location for education in the ceramic arts with extensive outreach to both public and private high schools and community colleges. Through workshops with visiting ceramic artists, visits to the gallery by art classes, Plinth Gallery has been a gathering place that provides an educational forum for the introduction of clay arts to our community.

The Gallery is an intimate and ever-changing exhibition space for contemporary ceramics. Whether sculptural or functional, Jonathan and Dorothy provide exhibition opportunities for both emerging ceramic talent as well as established career clay artists. The many styles of clay expression demonstrate a broad diversity of interpretation. We schedule one-person exhibitions and represent many ceramic artists both national and international. Plinth Gallery offers a unique venue for those interested in fine, contemporary, and collectible ceramics and is a very well curated collection.

In architecture, a plinth is the base or platform upon which a column, pedestal, statue, monument or structure rests. Gottfried Semper's The Four Elements of Architecture (1851) posited that the plinth, the hearth, the roof, and the wall make up all of architectural theory. According to Semper, the plinth exists to negotiate between a structure and the ground. Semper's theory has been very influential in the subsequent development of architecture.ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin plinthus, from Greek plinthos ‘tile, brick, squared stone.’ The Latin form was in early use in English.

Plinth Gallery conceptualizes that very definition of a platform or base, referring to one of the essential procedures in making ceramics, “centering.” This is an elemental core process which provides the base, platform, or  cylinder upon which form develops. Those artists selected for exhibitions at Plinth Gallery successfully exploit that core idea of the “negotiation between structure and ground” by the artful manipulation of material organized in both traditional and abstract ways. While idea of the vessel is defined by containment, it is precisely the content that gives the work meaning and inviting of dialog.

Gallery artists

Noel Bailey, Hayne Bayless, Bennett Bean, Erik Beavers, Curt Benzle, James Chaney, Matt Conlon, Jim Connell, David Crane, Simcha Even-Chen, Mary Fischer, Thomas Fossier, Shamai Sam Gibsh, Liz Heller, Curt Hoard, Sam Hoffman, Jin Eui Kim, Justin Lambert, Jennifer McCurdy, George Metropolis McCauley, Ernest Miller, Sara Moorhouse, Liza Riddle, Elke Sada, Peter Saenger, Junya Shao, Jose Sierra, Kevin Snipes, Will Van Dyke, Sasha Wardell, Lotte Westphael, Cole Worden, Gwendolyn Yoppolo

Associated artists

Johan Amedeaus, Mark Arnold, Neil Celani, Trudy Chiddix, Josh Clark, Nick Devries, Forrest Ceramics, Brett Freund, Andrew Gilliantt, John Hamilton, Curt Hammerly, Bradley Klem, Martin McWilliams, Branan Mercer, Mata Ortiz Pottery, Sebastian Moh, Bonilyn Parker, Chris Pickett, Peter Pincus, Josh Teplitzky, Bobby Tso, Bill Wilkey

Hours

Thursday – Saturday: 12pm - 5pm

and by appointment