Earth Oven
Opening: November 8, 6—9pm
Gallery hours are Saturdays 12-5pm, through Dec 13.
Join us at MASS Gallery to celebrate the opening of Earth Oven: a communal, functional sculpture project led by Tanya Zal grounded in the practice of hand-building and created in collaboration with the help of many, including Alison Whitworth, Addie Oscher, Aaron Amin, Jamie Lerman, Mac Benson, and Penny Halcyon.
Using natural building techniques we created a cob oven using locally sourced materials- limestone, soil, sand, and straw. It's decorated with recycled ceramic pieces made during our summer Clay ReWork-Shop, where we reimagined broken bisque and glaze ware into tile and mosaic. The oven will be a permanent part of MASS Gallery and a space for sharing food and community on a regular basis.
On November 8 we gather to celebrate the close of the build phase, and the beginning of Earth Oven’s new life. Enjoy oven-fired pizza in the yard 6-9, and a materials archive inside the gallery space including a browsable reference library curated by Time Being Books.
“If you build it, they will come”
Text by Maggie Mitts
Not unlike conjuring a baseball field from dreams—a site built out of earth beckoning locals to gather and cavort—human beings have been called to build communal spaces out of earth for millennia. While this line invokes a different ghostly presence, Tanya Zal, a sort of choreographing ceramicist, explains “big clay” similarly beckoning her to gather people and materials to build the earth oven—a communal, functional sculpture project led by Zal, and grounded in the practice of hand-building. This project emerged with the help of many hands, including Alison Whitworth (graphic design, fabrication), Addie Oscher (of Time Being Books), Aaron Amin (pizza), Jamie Lerman (mosaic, tile), Mac Benson (zine), and Penny Halcyon (photo/video). Thank you to the ensemble build crew who showed up to give hands-on support: Abbey Weber, Alexis Hunter, Amanda Vaughn, Ani Bradberry, Anne Chen, Ariel Wood, Camila Restrepo, Carmen Rangel, Caroline Dunn, Clayton Cain, Emily Meeks, Ian McDowell, Katherine Lain, Leah Danze, Leika Aguinaldo, Maddie Mondshine, Paloma Mayorga, Phoebe Schuman-Goodier, Sabine Fletcher, Samantha Melomo, Sofie Cardinal, Sophia Hatzikos, Terri Mashburn, Tova Katzman, and Travis Byargeon. Together, the builders welcome visitors to celebrate the end of the building phase, culminating in an oven, and the beginning of the hearth phase, marked by the oven’s warmth, food, and a gathering to enjoy each other’s company.
Zal and her cohort created the earth oven according to the cob building technique, whose name brings to mind “to cobble together”—to roughly assemble or put something together from available parts or elements. As its name suggests, cob building is a process born of resourcefulness: the builders used their unique and varied skills to combine what was at hand to create the thing they could, having a conversation of give and take with materials that respond, have been around, and—thankfully, strangely, rightly—will be here long after we are gone. Toward the spirit of sustainability, and considering time cycles that extend beyond our own, Zal and fellow hand builder Lerman held a “clay rework-shop” to transform abandoned leftover bisqueware (half-made ceramics) into tiles to adorn the outside of the oven: their playful, organic forms suggest the mass of hands that contributed to its building.
Though the term cob is an english word dating to the 1600s, the practice of building with earth can be traced back at least four thousand years to Iran, and has since seeped into Indigenous cultures across the world. Here in Texas, recent and historical locals may be familiar with adobe, our local form of earth-building related to cob. People have combined heat and earth to sustain themselves with food and warmth for too long to tell; like working with earth, the oven transcends borders, eras, and climates. The builders coaxed local limestone, soil, sand, and straw into that quintessential form that summons people to gather round: a hearth.
Inside the gallery space is a materials archive of the project, including a browsable reference library curated by Time Being Books in the spirit of earth ovens. When you go outside to get a bite to eat or walk around the oven, you’ll see not only the symphony of the tiles’ colors and shapes, but also the result of many arms of support, hands lent, and sweat chipped in to cobble this earth oven together. And, maybe, you’ll see how you yourself can be folded in.
About The Artists
Tanya Zal (she/her) is an Austin, Texas-based artist interested in practicing deeper care- with ourselves, others, and the things around us. Her sculptures are a playful celebration of the creative process, an anchor to joy, and an invitation toward curiosity. Originally from upstate NY, where she completed her BFA in 2010, Tanya has spent the last decade working in art nonprofit, community organizing, and reproductive justice spaces. She is a current Curatorial Advisor at Future Front Texas and part of the leadership team for MASS Gallery.
Addie Oscher is a bookseller and collector, gathering works for her bookstore, Time Being Books—a project for material exploration. In 2023, Time Being Books originated as a reference library and independent creative practice bookstore. Based in East Austin, they offer a curated selection of secondhand books, specializing in unique reference materials, eclectic monographs, and out-of-print art books. Its greater purpose as an independent bookstore is to preserve the practice of analog discovery. The collection is accessible through their studio situated within the yard of MASS Gallery. There you’ll find books and ephemera spanning genres, with an emphasis on content concerning art, nature, and the avant-garde. Learn more about Time Being Books here and follow them on Instagram.
Inside the gallery space during the Earth Oven exhibition Nov 8-Dec 14, you’ll find a browsable reference library, curated by Time Being Books, inspired by the spirit of “Earth Ovens". From uncovering natural building practices, living materials, and functional sculptures, to open-fire cooking, communal histories, and the alchemical nature of the oven and its fire––The books will serve as food for inspiration as guests of the occasion visit the site. Accompanying the experiential installation inside the gallery, visual excerpts from the texts in the form of bookmarks have been designed as mementos for guests to take with them.
Alison Whitworth (they/them) is a multidisciplinary designer and fabricator based in Austin. They have worked in a variety of creative fields including set design, architecture, furniture design, and most extensively in publication design and arts marketing. Across these areas, their work focuses on integrating craftsmanship and playfulness with effective storytelling. awhitworth.com
Aaron Amin (he/him) is an artist and DJ from Texas. He brings people together with food and music. A founding member of the Near Mint DJ collective that had a weekly event series at Community Garden 2023-2024, and a current resident artist at Lolo Wine. Amin will be bringing the oven to life making pizza del popolo.
Jamie Lerman (b. 1998) received her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York before moving to Austin, Texas where she lives and works. Having grown up in Texas between a Baptist Church and Reform Synagogue, she places her spiritual upbringing under a critical lens, reflecting on ideas of adaptation, transformation, and sentimentality. She has most recently completed an A.i.R position with the Dougherty Arts Center in Austin, Texas and has been in residence with Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Edgecomb, Maine, Oxbow School of Art in Saugatuck, Michigan, and MASS Gallery in Austin, Texas. Her work has been featured in Glass Tire and A.Y.F.P (A Yarn & Fibre Publication).
In addition to sculpture, Lerman operates Double Cradle, a pottery project designed to celebrate the sentimental; a creation of objects that we can't help but hold with both hands. All pieces are hand-built with care and attention by the artist.
Mac Benson (b. 1998, Cleveland, OH) is a Texas-based interdisciplinary artist and naturalist. She has participated in citizen-based environmental research since 2016, volunteering with UT’s invertebrate fossils and minerals collection, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the Native Prairies Association of Texas. In 2023, she collaborated with Caroline Perkison on A Place in the Park, a scavenger hunt exhibition at Red Bud Isle that encouraged visitors to "experience features in the landscape as fully as they would a sculpture or painting." In 2024, she was a recipient of the Frick Arts Foundation award. She has exhibited at the Visual Arts Center, MASS Gallery, and Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking.
Penny Halcyon is a photographer and filmmaker from Texas. She is observant towards process, movement, materiality, and the feltness of things.