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All am,

TEPPER-WARE from page 77

of dish washings and existing on their last legs.
"Deconstructed" is Tepper's way of
describing them. So is the word "survived."
Although the artist has tried his hand with
different media, his primary area of concen-
tration has included ceramics and sculpture.
He focused on both while earning his bache-
lor's degree in fine arts at the Kansas City Art
Institute and his master's degree in fine arts at
the University of Washington.
After pursuing personal projects and teaching_
for 12 years in California, at times employed by
the San Francisco Art Institute and the Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley, he moved to New
York, where he subsequently accepted teaching
assignments at the Pratt Institute.
Tepper started his career as a potter and
moved on to narrative sculptures, creating
diorama-like pieces and associating stories
that he would tell as they were shown. Some-
times, he produced videos to communicate
those stories.
One of Tepper's dominant artistic interests
has been photography. His book, Art Cars:
Revolutionary Movement, shows photos and

Suzanne Chessler is a Farmington Hills-based
freelance writer.

Left:: These Cups Talked, porcelain, 1997:
Expressing emotions.

Top: Untitled, porcelain, 1998:
`Ylfrozen moment of destruction."

Above: From Art Cars: Revolutionary
Movement: "The Ultimate Sacrifice,"
photograph, 1996

Opposite page: Iry Tepper: "Like people,
Ithese objects] wear down and show their
real character."

3/13
1998

80