{"id":1358,"date":"2009-12-08T14:47:59","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T22:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/12\/robert_sperry_-_mud_and_foam\/"},"modified":"2009-12-08T14:47:59","modified_gmt":"2009-12-08T22:47:59","slug":"robert_sperry_-_mud_and_foam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/12\/robert_sperry_-_mud_and_foam.html","title":{"rendered":"Robert Sperry – mud and foam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the early 1990s I ran into Robert Sperry<\/a> (1927 – 1998) in Oaxaco and commented on the brightness of his shoes, remarkable in a dusty town. His wife, Patti Warashina<\/a>, rolled her eyes. Turns out, because there were half a dozen kids with shoe shine boxes in the town square and Sperry couldn’t bear to favor only one with his trade, every day he gave all a turn, big tip added. The day I saw him, a boy had lined up for seconds, but Sperry recognized him and said, “You already shined them.” In response, the boy spit on Sperry’s shoes and said, “Now they need another one.” Because the jokes he liked best tended to be at his expense, it was Sperry’s favorite story from his trip.<\/p>\n

Untitled,<\/i> Clay and glaze, 1983<\/p>\n

\"robertsperrycrakedplatr.jpg\"His retrospective, Bright Abyss<\/i>, is at the Bellevue Arts Museum<\/a> curated by Stefano Catalani and accompanied by a 270-page catalog with full color illustrations, written by Matthew Kangas. In light of the fact that catalogs are getting harder to find (the Seattle Art Museum’s astonishing Calder show<\/a> doesn’t have one, for instance), BAM’s commitment to full service is admirable.

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