Author Description

Ron Jude's Vitreous China is comprised of photographs he made while exploring areas of light industry in American cities. The photographs depict the zones peripheral to these environments: big rig parking lots, side exits, and other secondary spaces in which Jude imagines his grandfather might have daydreamed during his many years as a kiln operator in vitreous china plants, first in the Midwest, and later in Southern California. The photographs, interwoven with a series of short texts by Mike Slack, attempt to tease out an experience that embraces both the physical crudeness of these spaces as well as the intangible complexes of memory and narrative encoded within them.