“White Men” by artist Bob Trotman.
Art that speaks across time and mediums
As part of the newly rotated permanent collections at the Mint Museum Randolph, the installation Crafting a Response: Bob Trotman and Anne Lemanski, shown alongside the contemplative ceramic vessels of Toshiko Takaezu, explore identity, power, and the human connection to the natural world.
Though rooted in different materials and traditions, all three artists challenge how we see—and what we choose to remember.
Power and Play
Renowned for their craftsmanship, North Carolina artists Bob Trotman and Anne Lemanski use wood and paper not just for form, but to critique social structure and its influence on our lives.
Self-taught in woodworking, Trotman began making functional furniture that, over time, began incorporating the human figure, before turning fully to sculpture at age 50. His suited male figures—drawn from a 1950s corporate archetype—satirize systems of dominance with a sharp wit reminiscent of MAD Magazine.
“Cover Up” by artist Bob Trotman is made of wood, tempera, and wax.
Raised in Michigan but long settled in Spruce Pine near Penland, Anne Lemanski creates a “skin” for her forms that tell a tale. Lemanski scans collages created with cut-out images from mid-20th century reference books or photographs of everyday objects—deer corn, plastic straws—seemingly randomly discarded and then duplicated into a kaleidoscopic repeat pattern. These skins are stretched taut and sewn over metal armatures that Lemanski painstakingly bends into shape.
Whereas Trotman’s figures mainly linger in the corporate world, Lemanski’s wander all terrains—the plains, the home, and industry.
“A Century of Hair” is comprised of 10 multimedia works representing hairstyles through the decades from 1900-1990.
A Century of Hair by Lemanski addresses feminine expectations or conditions for each decade of the 20th century by constructing a popular hairstyle from a material rife with symbolism.
Other works—Bride of Monsanto, Simulacra—detail the dangers the natural world experiences as humans continue to modify and manipulate it.
“Simulacra” by Anne Lemanski is made up of three difference works.
Unity in Form
If one word captures Toshiko Takaezu’s creative vision, it’s unity—of surface and form, interior and exterior, functional and aesthetic, painting and sculpture, East and West, maker and medium, body and spirit, life and art. Over seven decades, she explored clay’s sculptural potential and glaze’s painterly effects, ultimately creating abstract three-dimensional paintings.
A group of ceramics by Toshiku Takaezu on view at Mint Museum Randolph.
While she began with functional vessels, her signature form became the closed, spherical pot—ranging from handheld to over five feet tall—evoking natural forms like stones, trees, and moons. Her layered glazes, applied through dripping, brushing, and immersion, often recall Hawaiian landscapes and reflect her rich cultural identity as a Japanese American born in Hawaii.
This installation features all 18 of Takaezu’s works in the Mint’s collection, most on view for the first time, displayed in groupings that emulate how Takaezu often displayed her work, with various sizes of vessels placed together on low platforms, evoking a rock garden or riverbed.
Works from the Mint’s permanent collection by these three artists are on view for a limited time, through August 10 at Mint Museum Randolph.